The Flat Earth Society
Flat Earth Discussion Boards => Flat Earth Debate => Topic started by: Ramuh on August 23, 2014, 02:23:10 AM
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First, I must start this by saying I recognize that some of the points in this are very "hot" and will probably be ignored. That said, I could not believe (though am not too surprised given the range of things people believe) that this actually existed. Yet here I am. I've read a large amount of material and am ready to lay down my observations in the holes that I see. I'm a scientist, and I see lots of holes.
I also realize that I am so late in the game that this has become a way of life for most Flat-Earthers and their opinions are unlikely to change no matter how much irrefutable evidence is shown. That said, debate on or ignore as you will.
And, please don't dodge the questions by forum rule technicalities. I've see so many posts where some admin says "this is not the Q/A forum. Go post there." And then the person posts there and the question is ignored anyway.
Ships appear to sink as they recede past the horizon
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Ships%20appear%20to%20sink%20as%20they%20recede%20past%20the%20horizon (http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Ships%20appear%20to%20sink%20as%20they%20recede%20past%20the%20horizon)
This doesn't hold. Under flat or round Earth, the Earth must be about 8000 miles wide. Under FET, the Sun is about 3000 miles away. Even under this theory for why things appear to sink as they get farther away, we can still see the Sun. That means, given a tall enough building on a high enough piece of landscape, it should be visible from about 3000 miles away. Why are mountain ranges not visible from 3000 miles away?
A plane flying at 40,000 feet (as they are wont to do), should see Earth end to end. They don't. This is not explained anywhere. No one has any picture of Earth laid flat end to end. Plenty of people have flown high above the Earth and no such evidence exists. It is also said that humans cannot see forever/long distances. I disagree. I can see the Sun 93 million miles away because the light is traveling to me. My eyes are not going to the Sun. As long as light exists and is in your field of vision, you can see it no matter how far away it is. It won't be clear as it would be up close, of course, but that is the limitation, not distance. Take a telescope and look for the Whirlpool galaxy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlpool_Galaxy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlpool_Galaxy)), 23 million light-years away.
Universal Acceleration
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Gravity (http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Gravity)
This appears plausible on the surface but there's a problem. I had a whole thing typed up and realized you guys argued against it entirely so I'll simplify the whole thing. It's argued that the Earth can accelerate forever and not pass the speed of light.
If you accept the Bible (I don't), Earth is about 5000 years old. c is roughly 300 million meters/sec. Gravitational acceleration is 9.82 meters/sec/sec. 5000 years is 2,628,000,000 seconds. Every second, Earth moves 9.82 meters per second faster. In 2 seconds, Earth is moving 19.64 meters/sec. Assuming Earth was moving at 0 meters/sec when it popped into existence, in 2.5 billion seconds, Earth would be going 788,400 trillion meters/sec. I'm afraid that's well past c. Or, the Earth's gravity is getting weaker over time, to the point where "gravity" stops and things no longer fall to the ground. I haven't yet experienced that. Other than that, someone needs to explain to me. c is constant. It does not change. How, in 2.5 billion seconds (false), is Earth not moving at 25.8 billion meters/sec? How have we not left the Moon and the Sun in the dust? We're moving at 860,000 light years/sec. I don't want to do the math but we've left the Milky Way. This does not make sense.
The Lunar Eclipse
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=The%20Lunar%20Eclipse (http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=The%20Lunar%20Eclipse)
The Shadow Object? I'm reminded of the movie The Fifth Element. There is no other object orbiting the Sun. We would have seen it. We can spot objects next to ridiculously bright stars. This object would have been brought into a tidally-locked orbit being so small and the Sun so big. That would have roasted one side of it, shrinking it over time, and eventually it would sink into the Sun due to gravity and burn up. (You guys said yourselves that the Sun has a gravitational pull.)
The Sun
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=The+Sun (http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=The+Sun)
The Sun is 32 miles wide, exerts gravity, and is 3000 miles from the Earth. Ok. This has big holes. You guys are trying to argue against the laws of physics and thermodynamics and it's going to end in tears.
Gravity is a function of density. It is plausible that the Sun, being 3000 miles from us, is at a certain density where it does not tidally lock the Earth, which would cause a heat pump effect and turn us into Venus. Stars create light because they're hot because they're dense. At a certain density, hydrogen atoms begin to collide. This is a fusion reaction. The heat also pushes the object apart, keeping it from collapsing in on itself. Enough mass (usually gas clouds) must accumulate in an area for a fusion reaction to start, producing a star. Since you guys won't take anything in science, I can't use the fact that the smallest star found is slightly smaller than Jupiter (http://www.space.com/21420-smallest-star-size-red-dwarf.html (http://www.space.com/21420-smallest-star-size-red-dwarf.html)) -- size wise, but not density (thus the Sun cannot possibly be only 32 miles wide; it would never combust). A fusion reaction produces thousands of degrees of heat. At 3000 miles away, that would burn away at Earth's atmosphere and begin the transition to Venus.
It is not plausible that the sun is only 32 miles wide because it would not be dense enough -- and if it were, it would form a black hole at that size, not combust as a star -- and it cannot only be 3000 miles away because the intense heat from the fusion reaction would burn Earth. The coldest star is 6-15 times more dense than Jupiter (Jupiter is 1/10th the size of the Sun on the planet I live on) and is 206 degrees F. It is cold enough where it might have an atmosphere and water clouds. Thus, if the Sun were 32 miles wide, it would not burn. It would not be the Sun. Or else it would fry us like bacon.
As a bonus, at 32 miles wide with the required density to have fusion, it would exert ridiculous gravity and at 3000 miles, it would pull us in and burn Earth up. Solar flares/coronal mass ejections would be much more intense and screw up any electronics orbiting Earth. Speaking of which, the Sun would need to be moving at 860,000 light years/second as well to hit us with solar flares.
Satellites
How does your DirecTV, Sirius XM, GPS, etc. work? If Earth has no gravity, what are those satellites orbiting around? Or are they just floating there?
Occam's Razor
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Occams%20Razor (http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Occams%20Razor)
I do not believe in God. I know for a fact that the Earth is billions of years old, the universe is fricken huge, the Sun is 93 million miles away, is large, hot, and we are rotating around it. Earth produces a gravitational pull because of its density, as does the Sun, keeping us in its orbit. The Moon is small relative to Earth, keeping it in a tidally locked orbit with Earth. The Sun moving across the sky is not because the Sun is a floating lighthouse (I'm not even hitting that point because it is so stupid*) but because we are rotating on an axis, floating across the universe.
Tell me, what's more simple: all of the increasingly implausible explanations you guys come up with to support your idea of Earth being flat, or the idea that the pictures from NASA are real, there is no world-wide conspiracy among every space agency on this Earth and millions of amateur observers, and Earth really is round? The business using vanishing point to explain the horizon is particularly ludicrous. Earth being round simplifies the hell out of it.
The idea that NASA can't send stuff to land on Mars is laughable (3rd paragraph). I'm not a rocket scientist but I don't presume that the things I don't understand are not possible. I don't fully understand how your computer works at the electrical level and how TSMC and Intel work on process nodes to create transistors 20 nanometers big. But you can see the results in front of your face.
Spherical Objects in Space
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Space_sensations/Why_are_things_in_space_the_shape_that_they_are (http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Space_sensations/Why_are_things_in_space_the_shape_that_they_are)
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/questions/question/2583/ (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/questions/question/2583/)
http://www.universetoday.com/26782/why-is-the-earth-round/ (http://www.universetoday.com/26782/why-is-the-earth-round/)
(Fuck it: https://www.google.com/search?q=are+all+objects+in+space+round (https://www.google.com/search?q=are+all+objects+in+space+round))
Earth is round because objects exert Gravity. If the Sun is only 32 miles wide, as already explained it either cannot combust as a star, or it would form a black hole as a super-small, super-dense object. At 8000 miles wide, the Earth would definitely exert more gravity than the Sun (and we'll ignore the fact that Earth would pull on the Sun and eventually burn up as the non-burning Sun gets closer). Thus, the Earth must be round and could not maintain a flat shape. Gravity pulls on an object, an equal force in a radius. As an object gets large, the force of gravity overcomes the structural integrity of the object itself and shapes a rock into a sphere.
Nothing in space is flat. Everything exerts gravity. The justification for this exception to the rule is saying that the Earth does not exert gravity, and the reason for that is essentially: "because I said so." This does not make sense. The Earth would be denser than the Sun and if the Sun exerts gravity, then Earth must as well. More to the point, you guys say that the Moon exerts gravity. The Earth must as well because it has more mass.
And then there's this:
Q. If the planets are round, why isn't the earth?
A. The earth is not a planet.
This is a non-sequitor. It does not make any sense whatsoever. What is the Earth? What is your definition of a planet? Everything massive enough in space forms into a round shape eventually, heavier objects more quickly. The definition of a planet states: "a celestial body moving in an elliptical orbit around a star." It has been argued that Pluto is not a planet (http://www.universetoday.com/13573/why-pluto-is-no-longer-a-planet/: (http://www.universetoday.com/13573/why-pluto-is-no-longer-a-planet/:) it may be in a belt of asteroids or other celestial objects, or is too small), yet it is round. And therefore, even if you reject that the Earth is not a planet, explain to me why Pluto is round, when it is it not a planet. (Yes, I'm arguing this on a technicality.)
What is the Moon if it is not round? Is it a disc? Is the Sun round? I've argued that under these assumptions, the Earth is bigger than the Sun, and bigger than the Moon. If the Earth is bigger than both, and both are round, then the Earth is round as well.
And then there's this:
Q: How is it that the Earth does not have a gravitational pull, but stars and the moon do?
A: This argument is a non-sequitur. You might as well ask, "How is it that snakes do not have legs, but dogs and cats do?" Snakes are not dogs or cats. The Earth is not a star or the moon. It does not follow that each must have exactly the properties of the others, and no more.
This answer is so illogical that I do not have the words to describe it other than to curse under my breath. The question is perfectly valid and the answer works under a false assumption, which carries the weight of the entire idea of a Flat Earth with it. If that question falls, so does the entire ideology. And it does. Gravity affects anything with mass. You have a gravitational pull on the chair you're sitting on, but you don't have enough mass to cause that chair to rise up with you when you stand. If you say that the Earth does not have gravity, then you must explain that. However, it cannot be explained. Thus, the Earth has gravity. Then, the Earth must be round. Then, the whole argument falls apart.
Planes Flying Around the Earth
It's been said that, when a plane is said to have flown around the Earth, they are simply flying in a circle around the north pole. I find it hard to believe that no one has actually tried to fly around the Earth, adjusting their trajectory to keep going in one direction. You could conceivably map your trajectory with GPS to get to the equator, then fall off the Earth by trying to fly following the equator as far as you can go. Except, no one's fallen off the Earth by traveling the equator. I think it would be all over the news. There cannot be any ice around the equator because it's hot from end to end. We know this from satellite imagery (rainforests), temperature readings, and anecdotal evidence traveling the equator.
Speaking of news...
Fox News
This is my last bit of evidence. No one at Fox News thinks the Earth is flat. Therefore, it must certainly be true because they will believe the craziest shit.
Conclusion
Just as someone religious might believe in a God to understand the things that don't make immediate sense, so have those things become knowable because now they are simple. Unfortunately, in my experience people tend towards religion to find simple answers because with limited knowledge or powers of reasoning, something complicated might seem impossible.
I don't understand black holes. No one does, not yet. Only a few hundred years ago, no one understood what a semi-conductor was yet now you probably have in your pocket a device faster than machines that filled up an entire building.
As in tune as I am with modern technology by trade, I am sometimes still amazed at the things we can do, and I understand so little of it. I do not understand how scientists have managed to splice genes, creating bioluminescent mice (http://www.forbes.com/2001/07/26/0726gfp.html (http://www.forbes.com/2001/07/26/0726gfp.html)). That does not mean it doesn't work. The picture is proof enough. And we have cars now that can drive themselves. I can tell you how that works. Do you know?
I look to the stars and don't see God. I see the universe and all the things it creates that I couldn't imagine: black holes, quasars, and other fantastic objects, some so hot and bright that they are millions of times denser than this rock we live on. It opens my eyes and makes me try to imagine harder so that I can exercise my mind to better humanity by understanding nature through observation.
There is a difference between taking what you see at face value and willful ignorance.
* For the love of God, someone tell me the reasons why the Sun's light is limited to a certain spot in front of it and not the entire thing. At thousands of degrees, anything near the Sun's surface would simply become more fuel for the reactions powering its existence.
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Good post, I liked the Fox bit...however you might want to divide it up into different posts - threads tend to turn messy very quickly here even with just one subject matter.
By the way, we could keep accelerating indefinitely without hitting c. We would still be hurtling through the galaxy at a hair's breadth off c (and in fact would have left the galaxy long ago) and the energy usage for the acceleration would be approaching infinity. Not to mention that there isn't even anything universal about the acceleration - the acceleration due to gravity changes all over the planet. So, deeply silly, but not for the reasons you state.
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Just for the record, c is roughly 300 million meters/sec and g is 9.82 meters/sec/sec (approximately).
Details matter.
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Ramuh, I know you put a lot of time into your post. However, you bring up way to many points to have a meaningful debate. Please make a separate thread for each point, otherwise, we will not be able to have a debate that stays on topic. Would you like to pick one of your points to debate in this thread?
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It is useless to debate with a FE.
I am of the opinion that the opinion that most of the rest of the world regards this website as one big hoax and one big joke is absolutely correct. I am also of the opinion that this website is just an act. But that seems to the main attraction. Persons just keep coming back to see .....What next ? ::)
Flat Earth Theory ? It's not even a theory !
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Ramuh, I know you put a lot of time into your post. However, you bring up way to many points to have a meaningful debate. Please make a separate thread for each point, otherwise, we will not be able to have a debate that stays on topic. Would you like to pick one of your points to debate in this thread?
I'm not splitting it up. Debate the points or not. There are way too many reasons you guys give for derailing topics and it has to stop if you guys want to be taken seriously. I was okay with this all as a whole but then I saw the behavior of mods ignoring posts for inane reasons, some as questionable as the FET itself, and it really soured my opinion.
Maybe if most threads turn messy you guys can try turning a new leaf and see if this thread can be different and stay on course without devolving into a flame war.
Debate the Sun, if you must. Or, pick a topic and put it in bold at the top of your post so it's clear if everyone picks a different piece.
I'm only here as long as this thread stays alive so if you want me to leave, just stop replying. Then, I'm just going to consider your answer as "we don't have one" and conclude that you believe this simply because the Bible somewhere says the Earth is flat (if someone could point out the passage) and you will find any reason to justify it, no matter how nonsensical.
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Just for the record, c is roughly 300 million meters/sec and g is 9.82 meters/sec/sec (approximately).
Details matter.
Thanks. Corrected the numbers. Apparently I was wrong about the approximate speed.
Forgot to update the units but this website goes so slow for me to care about adding the extra /sec right now.
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So it looks like the FE type mind can only deal with one simple task at a time.
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So it looks like the FE type mind can only deal with one simple task at a time.
No.
I expected this. There is no debate to this other than to say "we were wrong." Religion makes complicated things seem simple and provides a more understandable overview of life. Things that make no sense are explained, such as events in one life, like the death of a family member being "part of God's plan." Humans have a strong need for things to fit into a pattern and so the comfort provided by religion's simplified world view is very appealing.
Our brain is a collection of extremely efficient pattern recognition systems (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/187612-ibm-cracks-open-a-new-era-of-computing-with-brain-like-chip-4096-cores-1-million-neurons-5-4-billion-transistors (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/187612-ibm-cracks-open-a-new-era-of-computing-with-brain-like-chip-4096-cores-1-million-neurons-5-4-billion-transistors)) and you have a tendency to try to fit things into a bucket. Often in nature things don't fit so nicely into one bucket, but many. Religion allows them to fit into one bucket, but this simplified view of life is neither complete nor correct, and leads to false assumptions (NASA's pictures are faked) and ultimately false conclusions (gravity doesn't exist).
What I would rather debate, other than using this debate forum as it is intended, which will not work -- you will not get anyone here to say they are wrong: FET people have it too ingrained to change their ways, and admitting their belief is wrong would shatter their world view, dealing a tremendous blow to the psyche (hence the need to come up with more and more ridiculous justifications) -- is how someone got to this point, believing that the Earth is flat, in the first place. Were their parents FET people, did someone manage to bring them deep into a Jesus-based religion and convince them of it, or something else?
If we could also clear something up. The term "theory" does not apply to the "Flat Earth Theory." The overwhelming majority of the scientific community does not agree that the Earth is flat, thus, by definition, the term "theory" does not apply (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory)). If you're going to use science, use the terms correctly. But then again, this is just pseudo-science. Refer to yourself as a "Flat Earther". "I believe in a Flat Earth" not "I believe in the Flat Earth Theory."
For what it's worth, I'd also like to add one more thing. See the newly-added Spherical Objects in Space section in the original post.
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Thanks for a great opening post Ramuh. Every point a cogent one.
But—as you predicted—the flat earthers will inevitably find some way to stall and/or ignore addressing your questions.
In this case, it's a moderator, jroa (who else LOL) who in part posted "However, you bring up way to many points to have a meaningful debate".
This sort of obfuscation is par for the course on these forums, and is usually used whenever a flat earther is backed into a non-defensible position by empirical scientific evidence. In this case, jroa is hoping that you won't be bothered posting several threads in order to cover all these interconnected questions. You'll notice how he didn't even attempt to address one single question of yours, but preferred to waste everybody's time by posting a silly preemptive derailment of your thread.
jroa is a past master of thread derailments on these forums, but will no doubt plead his innocence and accuse me of "picking" on him—as he's done in the past LOL.
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Thanks for a great opening post Ramuh. Every point a cogent one.
But—as you predicted—the flat earthers will inevitably find some way to stall and/or ignore addressing your questions.
In this case, it's a moderator, jroa (who else LOL) who in part posted "However, you bring up way to many points to have a meaningful debate".
This sort of obfuscation is par for the course on these forums, and is usually used whenever a flat earther is backed into a non-defensible position by empirical scientific evidence. In this case, jroa is hoping that you won't be bothered posting several threads in order to cover all these interconnected questions. You'll notice how he didn't even attempt to address one single question of yours, but preferred to waste everybody's time by posting a silly preemptive derailment of your thread.
jroa is a past master of thread derailments on these forums, but will no doubt plead his innocence and accuse me of "picking" on him—as he's done in the past LOL.
Feel free to split up the post yourself, ausGeoff, but I'm pretty much done here. I may pop in once in a while but I'll completely disappear before long. If no one's going to take my post seriously and argue it on its merits without derailment and dodging then I can't take any Flat Earther seriously and will just bin them with other fringe believers.
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Feel free to split up the post yourself, ausGeoff, but I'm pretty much done here. I may pop in once in a while but I'll completely disappear before long. If no one's going to take my post seriously and argue it on its merits without derailment and dodging then I can't take any Flat Earther seriously and will just bin them with other fringe believers.
I've found—as a fellow round earther—that very few, if any, flat earthers are able to mount any sort of practical justifications for their bizarre cosmological theories. I've tried numerous time over the past few months to engage a few of them in some sort of scientifically-orientated debate, but the thread usually drowns under a tsunami of pseudo-scientific bullshit.
And if the flat earthers' pseudo-science lets them down—which it inevitably does—then they simply resort to the time-honoured practice of ad hominem attacks. Then, after an escalating series of increasingly disparaging insults directed at round earthers, the end result is the flat earthers declaring some sort of pyrrhic victory.
I'm currently considering giving this site a miss too. Back in the day, I was naïve enough to think I could at the least engage in some sort of meaningful debate here. Alas, such was not to be.