1

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Alec Baldwin a murderer or an idiot?

« on: February 17, 2023, 11:59:17 AM »

Alec Baldwin is neither a murderer nor an idiot.  He's not a murderer because he had no intention to hurt - much less kill - anybody.  He's not an idiot because he is obviously sentient and, further, was told that the gun was loaded with blanks.  He might have been somewhat careless but I do not know if Baldwin was sufficiently expert with guns to distinguish live rounds from blanks.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Christianity and the concept of alien life in the universe

« on: February 17, 2023, 11:54:42 AM »

Traditional Christianity rejects the idea of extraterrestrial intelligent life because Christ did not die for them but only for his believers, who would be here on Earth.  Judaism might accept extraterrestrials because the only requirement is a belief in a single Supreme Being, or, in the absence of a belief, an adherence to some rules of basic civilization (the Noahide laws).  Islam requires a confession of faith not only to a Supreme Being but also to their Prophet, so maybe not Islam. Unitarians would probably accept them without any qualification.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: How does the midnight sun occur in antarctica?

« on: March 23, 2022, 02:38:50 AM »

The original question laid bare one of the serious weaknesses of the Flat Earth theory, especially if one is relying on that "ice wall" map.

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Flat Earth General / Re: Why would the government hide the earth’s shape?

« on: December 20, 2021, 09:19:30 PM »

A recent FE booik argues that governments are lying about the shape of the earth, but their motives are unclear.  Is there money in this?  Is there secret land beyond the supposed ice walls?  Would people go beserk if they were told that the earth was flat?  None of these suggestions make sense. 

Ands if the shape of the earth were a secret kept by the governments of the world, howcome even in wartime no enemy country has revealed the true shape to demoralize the other side?

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Flat Earth Maps?

« on: December 19, 2021, 06:38:56 PM »

IF the earth really were flat, then a flat map would be very easy and would have been worked up long ago.  IF the earth were really flat, then maps of the earth would all look the same, except be printed in different sizes.  And they wouldn't require higher mathematics, just a simple ratio.

But the earth is round, not flat, a making a map of the earth requires higher mathematics to project a sphere onto a flat map.  There are hundreds of different projections for earth maps, each different and each with its own distortions ("interrupted" maps have the fewest distortions).  Distances on flat maps of the earth are difficult to approximate.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: FE map with scale

« on: December 19, 2021, 06:28:22 PM »

A map of the whole earth would not have a usable scale, or it would have a very complicated one that required measuring across latitudes and longitudes for each measurement.

A map of a fairly small area - such as a city or even a country - might have a simple scale but the bigger the area covered by the map the more approximate the scale would be.

This is because the earth is NOT flat.  It is round and representing it on a flat page requires a projection using higher mathematics; invariably there will be distortion of distances, especially near the edges.   There are at least a thousand different projections that can be used when making maps; some are useful only for small areas such as cities, some for larger areas such as countries, and some are useful for the whole earth.  The closest earth map to distortion-less is the interrupted map that is printed flat, trimmed, and then glued to a sphere to make a globe; on paper it looks very odd with a narrow strip for the tropical zone and the rest of the earth, north and south of the tropics, in acute triangles that are eventually glued tio each other on a globe.  Measuring distances on the flat map cannot be done with a straight line but with a line broken up among the triangles with slight changes in direction from triangle to triangle.

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Flat Earth General / Re: The FE map

« on: September 06, 2021, 06:18:33 PM »

Books on map projections can be found in your public library under Dewey number 526.

Understanding Map Projections by Melita Kennedy and Steve Kopp (2000) displays about 60 different projections, some of which (about 30) are good only for world maps and about dozen useful only for small areas like England and the rest suitable for continents.  Each projection has its advantages and disadvantages and most, if of a large enough area, have serious distortion at the edges.  All of them presuppose that the Earth is ROUND.  Even Mercator's projection, dating from 1569, was baed on a round Earth.

If the Earth really was flat then mapmaking would be a breeze; essentially a floor plan and the only math required would be the scale of reduction.  And every world map would look like every other world map - there'd be no different projections.  But this can't happen because the Earth is ROUND!

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Flat Earth General / Re: The FE map

« on: September 05, 2021, 05:24:38 PM »

There are entire books, and websites, displaying various projections for drawing maps on flat paper. The Mercator is now used mostly for wallpaper, serious atlases use a variety of more sophisticated projections.  That old FE map with the North Pole dead center and the South Pole spread all over the edge (similar to the UN emblem) is the Azimuthal Equidistant projection but distances only work when exactly north-and-south; east-west distances are distorted.

A good cartographer can draw you a map of the world in any of a hundred projections, but you won't find one who believes the Earth is flat.

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Flat Earth General / Re: Why isn't there a specific Flat Earth model.

« on: September 05, 2021, 04:56:24 PM »

This thread started with a very valid question.

And the answer is there cannot be a specific FE model because the earth itself is ROUND.  All this flat planet talk is nonsense, and if you start asking questions about what's on the sides or the underside of the flat planet or why no government, even in wartime, announced that the earth was flat, etc., you get vague nonsense from the incels who take FE seriously.

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Flat Earth General / Re: Dark theory regarding Stephen Hawking

« on: August 11, 2021, 08:51:08 PM »

You obviously haven't read Hawking's stuff or else  you would know that he was no puppet but one of the most brilliant physicists in history.

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Flat Earth General / Re: The FE map

« on: August 11, 2021, 08:47:49 PM »

The Mercator projection of the world is famous or notorious for having all the longitude lines straight and parallel right up to the poles.  Distances are difficult - almost impossible - to measure on Mercator's projection.  However, for mapping smaller area, such as a city or county, Mercator is perfectly acceptable.

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Flat Earth General / Re: Why isn't there a specific Flat Earth model.

« on: August 11, 2021, 08:42:54 PM »

There's no reliable FE model because, simply, FE is fantasy, and every model attempted by FE enthusiasts runs smack into reality that makes the attempted model impossible.

Yes, a flat planet should be easy to map on a flat sheet of paper.  But every version of a flat world map present distortions in shape or distances, especially near the edges.  The simple fact is that this planet is ROUND and not the center of the solar system.

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Flat Earth General / Re: Map Making

« on: August 03, 2021, 10:28:09 PM »

If the earth is flat, then a map depicting it on a flat page ought to be easy and, unlike flat maps of a Round Earth, without distortion at the edges.  A map of the FE would be like a floor plan and every other map of the FE would look very much like it, differing only in scale and detail.  You wouldn't need the higher mathematics used to calculate projections of a round planet onto a flat page.

But that is not the case with planet Earth; there are scores of formulae of projections for a world map, and hundreds of projection formulae for maps of individual continents, countries and regions.

The proof of a flat planet requires a map of that planet in which all the distances, between any two places, are accurate.  Yet the FES cannot conjure up such a map.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Rothschilds evil beginnings

« on: August 01, 2021, 01:07:07 PM »

That story is completely wrong.  The family took its last name (when last names were required by a new law) from the house in which they then lived, which was marked with a red shield.  No murder, no Illuminati (which were Bavarian, not Frankfurt), no Masons (which, like the Illuminati, did not accept Jews).  The beginnings of the dynasty had nothing to do with centralized banking, which was three generations and a continent away.

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Flat Earth General / Re: Q, Antarctica, and FE

« on: August 01, 2021, 01:01:50 PM »

It's not too difficult to visit Antarctica, there are ocean liners that offer cruises circumnavigating the South Pole.  Every so often the ship will let people ashore to annoy the penguins.  Thousands of people from around the world have taken these cruises -- and so far no talk, and no photos, of sightings of any sort of troops, armed or otherwise.  No German regiments, no reptile overlords, no constructed barriers.

You could go on one of these cruises and see for yourself.  And circumnavigating Antarctica shows that it's coastline is a LOT smaller than that FE map of the "ice wall" would require.

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Flat Earth General / Re: The FE map

« on: August 01, 2021, 12:49:41 PM »

Even if the flt earth is on an infinite plain, the "known parts" of the earth - the continents that appear in conventional maps - could be mapped up to the boundaries of the known earth.  And it would seem to me that any (or every) cartographer would be interested in working up a true map of the flat planet.  And the true maps of the flat planet would all look the same; a flat floor plan on a flat page without any fancy math to project from a sphere.

Now, why hasn't the FE movement come up with a true map of the flat planet?  That old azimuthal equidistant map with the North Pole at dead center certainly isn't a true map. 

The FE movement loses credibility by its inability to produce a true map of the flat earth.

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Flat Earth General / Re: Are round earthers simply examples of the Dunning Kruger effect, or just wrong?

« on: July 08, 2021, 07:55:25 PM »

Rather than Dunning-Kruger, the main incentive for FE is the feeling that they have secret insight into an important fact of which the rest of humanity is ignorant.  Pretty much the same as the JFK assassination junkies or the Sept 11th theorists -- they 'know' something that other people, even educated and highly placed people, don't.  And sometimes the FE fixation is abetted by other suspicions - for example, there's a book in print that tries to argue for FE by claiming that Round Earth propaganda is an evil Jewish conspiracy.

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Flat Earth General / Re: The FE map

« on: July 08, 2021, 07:45:30 PM »

The problem, such as it is, is that Flat Earthers don't have any proof or evidence of the configuration of the flat planet.  That huge disk with the South Pole spread around the edge is clearly not accurate, neither is the sliced up map with deep zigzag edging.

IF the Earth is flat then the map would be as easy as a floor plan to draw and the only difference from copy to copy would be the size ratio, which wouldn't require higher mathematics.  But the Earth isn't flat so there are more than 200 diffferent projections for trying to represent a sphere (or part of one) on a flat page.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Question for Round Earthers: Why are you here?

« on: January 15, 2019, 01:25:21 PM »

We're here because teasing and ridiculing Flat Earthers is more socially acceptable than making fun of cripples and retardates.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: I googled "globe projection map" and clicked images

« on: January 15, 2019, 01:23:11 PM »

That's a very good question, and one can add "How come every country on earth endorses the Round Earth if it isn't true?  Even in wartime, enemy countries don't repudiate the geography of a Round Earth."

The usual FE story is that NASA is one big swindle, getting millions by false pretenses.  But NASA didn't exist until 1958; Who was making money off the roundness concept before then, that governments have endorsed a Round Earth since before the Crusades?

And in all this time no Flat Earther, not a single one, has located The Edge of the flat planet, which ought to be found in any direction if one goes far enough.

Logically  the only explanation is Round Earth true, Flat Earth false.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Is there a problem with our current maps

« on: December 31, 2018, 11:17:21 PM »

IF the earth were flat, then a world map on an equally flat paper would involve no more mathematics than a simple ratio (e.g., one inch equals one thousand miles) - and every world map would look the same even if they were larger or smaller.  If the earth were flat then a world map would be little more than a floor plan drawn to a reduced scale.  The math required would be extremely simple.

But because the earth is round, flat world maps involve very complicated math, depending on the projection chosen.  There are well over a hundred different choices of map projection - some appropriate for world maps and some appropriate only for maps no larger than a state or province because of the distortions. 

One way of demonstrating that the earth is not flat is that the actual distances between distant cities, altho apparently measurable on flat maps, turn out to be very different from the actual distance covered by airplanes or ships making the actual trip. 

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Flat Earth General / Re: The great wall of Antartic

« on: December 31, 2018, 11:04:38 PM »

No doubts about the Antarctic (except maybe from those who cannot spell it), every year ocean liners offer cruises that completely circumnavigate the Antarctic .... even letting passengers go ashore every now and then to annoy the penguins.  The trip involves mileage very roughly comparable to circumnavigating Australia, the important thing is that it proves that Antarctica is a round continent - not something stretched out on the rim of the flat planet.  Eliminating Antarctica as The Edge of the flat earth raises the question Where is The Edge?   It's not Antarctica and every other place on earth has been explored, flown over, mapped, aerial photographed, etc.  and nobody has yet spotted The Edge.  There can be no flat planet without The Edge (even if the flat surface went on for an infinity, there'd be an equivalent boundary when known geography ended and terra incognita began).  I think people would be eager to find The Edge and yet no one has.  Evidently all the Flat Earth people are restricted to ground transportation; everyone who has flown, ballooned, or even ridden the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building is a believer in the Round Earth.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Proofs for the Flat Earth Model?

« on: December 22, 2018, 08:10:44 AM »

The biggest, most persuasive proof for the Flat Earth model -- indeed, the one bit of evidence that all Round Earthers would insist upon -- is locating The Edge.

The Edge is simply the dropping off end of the flat planet; the corner where the downward sides start, the point where the flat surface ceases.  If you are among those who believe the flat planet somehow goes on an infinite plane, then The Edge would be the limit of known geography beyond which everything is terra incognita.  Either way it would be something not on the conventional maps of the world, and it ought  to be in every direction if you go far enough.

Then, of course, having found The Edge, mankind could explore it.  That exploration might encourage new industries, new science, and the discoveries of new resources.  Maybe, beyond The Edge, there are plants and animals that human have not yet seen, maybe even creatures comparable to humans with their own culture and sciences.

Let's face it, if the earth were flat then there'd be an Edge, and, if there is no Edge then it follows that the earth is not flat.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Polaris, a.k.a. the North Star

« on: November 21, 2018, 08:40:06 AM »

Flinders Range is in Australia.
Yes, if the earth were flat it would seem logical that you could see Polaris.  But since the earth is round, you'd have to be north of the equator to see it.
By the same token, folks in the US and British Isles cannot see the Southern Cross.

I would bet that more than half the people on this website are here to jeer at the Flatearthers, and less than half are True Believers.

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Flat Earth General / Re: A proposal to find the true map

« on: November 05, 2018, 04:53:33 AM »

I would only point out that the airline distances or timings might not be as direct and straightforward as you imagine.  When a straightforward route takes a plane over a lot of water or over hazardous territory (such as mountains or enemy countries), the airline route tends to detour to minimize the risk or facilitate emergency landings.

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Flat Earth Q&A / Re: What's below?

« on: October 28, 2018, 07:37:43 PM »

I think the question is, ultimately what is supporting the flat planet?  If the flat surface is resting on rocks, or a pillar, or a stack of turtles, or floating on water, then what are the rocks/turtles/water/etc resting on?  What's beneath everything? 

If, on the other hand, the flat earth is resting on nothing, just floating or flying through space with an exposed underside, like a frisbee, there are all sorts of questions - what's on the underside - is it livable with its own plants and animals (maybe very different from what we have on this side) and maybe even some sort of people?  Howcome we haven't tried to find them or they find us? 

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Flat Earth Q&A / Re: Ice wall

« on: October 28, 2018, 07:30:02 PM »

Is the ice wall continuous all-around Antarctica?  If so, how are the penguins able to swim and then get back on the shore?

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Flat Earth General / Re: Moon Hoax Theory dead - killed by rabbit!

« on: September 29, 2018, 07:43:50 AM »

Evidently one of the foundations for the Moon Landing Hoax conspiracy theory is that the photos attributed to the astronauts failed to show stars in the sky.
This is easily explained.

Keep in mind that the lunar surface is fairly beige or sandy colored -- that is to say, much lighter colored than if it were covered with grass -- and that the sun beats down on that surface with no clouds or atmosphere to moderate it -- in other words, very strong and bright sunlight on a light colored moonscape.  Using ordinary brownie-type cameras would have resulted in only useless photos completely washed out by the intense sunlight.  It was necessary, in those circumstances, to use filters and film that would tone down the strength of the sunlight, much like sunglasses, in order to get usable photos of the moon's surface.  However the same sunglasses effect would dim out the stars in the sky. 

Arguably the astronauts could have pointed a brownie-type camera (without filters) toward the sky and gotten lots of stars, but such photos had already been taken by satellites and automated spacecraft that didn't land on the moon, and the mission at hand was devoted to discoveries on the moon's surface so that particular photo-op was ignored.

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Star Trails prove the flat earth?

« on: September 09, 2018, 11:04:24 PM »

Here's a question about star trails:

When you are somewhere in the Arctic Circle (near the North Pole), the stars move around the north pole in counter-clockwise direction.  But when you are in the vicinity of the South Pole, the stars move around the south pole in the clockwise direction.  This seems possible only if the earth is round.

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Flat Earth General / Re: Solve this proof

« on: September 08, 2018, 12:25:00 PM »

Digging is not much of "a round earth proof" -- the flat earth might be as flat as a pancake, that doesn't mean it's as thin as one.

The flat earth might be very thick, especially if the flat earth rests on something rather than have another surface underneath, like a coin or a frisbee.