Flat Earth.

Okay, so I'm not in to conspiracy theory that much at all, and generally think it's a bit off the wall.  Then one day I came across the moon landing conspiracy, which I found quite interesting, but am not convinced either way.  That led me on to the 9/11 conspiracy, which was a lot more interesting, but still I could take it or leave it.  Then I moved on to the flat earth theory.

About six months or so ago I was listening to a Bible teacher online and he mentioned folk were asking him about the flat earth.  The second I heard him say that I thought 'what a lot of idiots, of course the world in spherical!'  The Bible teacher said the same thing, and went about proving the fact that the earth is round.  Great, all done, finished, closed shop and go home... then a few days later he said more folks were asking him about it, and again he replied it's a load of rubbish.  The earth is spherical and that's that.  Then again a few days later the subject came up, and he said again that they were wrong.  Which is pretty much where I was.

Anyway, being rather inqusitive I went to Youtube and had a look.  Turns out it's not as stupid as it looks!  I still favour the round earth theory, but some of the 'evidence' for a flat earth is very very interesting.
I always understood that the horizon was about 3 miles away (it turns out to be 2.9, so that was pretty close!!) and after that boats start disappearing over the curve of the earth.  But that's not true.  Some of those clips on youtube show you zooming in to a boat, that starts of invisible and then seems to come up over the horizon, although obviously it's just the camera zooming in.

Here's a little video for you to look at...

It gets interesting from about half way through.

(There's a little bit of swearing on it, so avert your ears at certain points!)




What does everyone else think?

Last year if someone said they believed in a flat earth I'd probably have fell on the floor laughing.  Now I'm more, 'okay, I can understand why.'

Of course it's flat. I have a picture to prove it, this has been common knowledge since 1977 when this photo was first discovered:

The way that this video was done comes off more as sarcasm than real.  I wouldn't take much of it as real.  If they wanted to prove it, then they need to be more serious.  They use too much humor to try to make you doubt what you know.  This isn't the way you go about proving anything.

The big problem I see with it is the circumnavigating the globe.  They assume that we aren't smart enough, if the earth were flat, to actually move off the equator line and fly or sail to the furthest point.  You should either fall off or run into the "dome" that keeps us from falling off.  NO ONE has ever done it.  If they did, why no record of that?  If it is so flat, why not prove it by actually doing this and presenting your finding?  Because you can make more money by coming up with conspiracy theories and monetizing those videos on YouTube if you get enough followers.

And if you play the video backwards ...

BearDad wrote:

And if you play the video backwards ...

You get your wife back, your dog back, your truck back...oops, that's a country song.

messiaen77 wrote:

You get your wife back, your dog back, your truck back...oops, that's a country song.

Reminds me a book I read once called Flatland.  It took the absurdity of a "flat world" to it's ultimate conclusion that the entire world/universe was only 2 dimensional......and you couldn't look at it from above.  So basically everything would look pretty much one dimensional. It was all very satirical (and very dated as it was written in the late 1800's).

Apparently someone made a movie about it back in 2007


It kind of points out though that the world cannot truly be "flat" as in only having two dimensions.
There has to be some depth to it (or we wouldn't be able to dig tunnels, wells, have depth to any body of water etc.).  So if the surface we live on is flat, the planet has to be (at least) a cylinder or even a cube.

alldatndensum wrote:

The way that this video was done comes off more as sarcasm than real.  I wouldn't take much of it as real.  If they wanted to prove it, then they need to be more serious.  They use too much humor to try to make you doubt what you know.  This isn't the way you go about proving anything.

The big problem I see with it is the circumnavigating the globe.  They assume that we aren't smart enough, if the earth were flat, to actually move off the equator line and fly or sail to the furthest point.  You should either fall off or run into the "dome" that keeps us from falling off.  NO ONE has ever done it.  If they did, why no record of that?  If it is so flat, why not prove it by actually doing this and presenting your finding?  Because you can make more money by coming up with conspiracy theories and monetizing those videos on YouTube if you get enough followers.

By starting from the premise that you cannot trust NASA or mainstream scientific authority, they shut down the reasonable discussion about this.  They won't accept any other evidence, so of course you can't give them the proof they are asking for.  It's like arguing with a postmodernist--it all comes down to them rejecting the dominant paradigm and belittling those who aren't with them.

I found the video to be very circular in its reasoning as well.