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Flat Earth Debate / Re: An RE'r threw this argument at me... What do I say?

« on: January 29, 2014, 02:59:41 AM »

There must be something I can say to him to disprove his RE theory. What do you guys think?

Nope.  There's nothing you can say to "disprove" his RE theory.  And the simple reason is because the earth IS round (or an oblate spheroid).

And to be pedantic for a moment, there's no such thing as a round earth "theory".  It's a fact that the earth is round—just as it's a fact that a water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms.  There's no "theory" about water.

But what are your arguments? We're here to debate whether the earth is round or not, just saying "it is round hurdur" without bringing any arguments to the table is not debating.

What is your proof that the earth is round?

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Flat Earth Debate / Re: An RE'r threw this argument at me... What do I say?

« on: January 27, 2014, 04:26:06 AM »

So a friend of mine said this to me, and I had no idea how to reply.
"If I got in an aeroplane in Amsterdam, and flew to the left (west) all the time, how do you explain that after hours of flying you end up in Amsterdam again? How can you explain that with a flat earth?"

There must be something I can say to him to disprove his RE theory. What do you guys think?

This is a pretty common topic around here and the FE response is typical but not too difficult to offer. Jroa is usually the first to respond to this type of question. He'll first prod with some questions to help the RE'r realize that nobody flys directly west in this manner. Jroa is aware that flights are usually done via a great circle which is a trajectory that changes over the course of a trip. This distinction is known by both FE'rs and RE'rs but RE'rs whom have not given this much thought might not be aware of this and it's a good tactic to take advantage of this fact and make your opponent look like a dimwit. Once they understand that commercial flights don't take this route then you can offer the monopole model of a FE and specify that on it, nearly the same routes are taken with the major difference being that on the monopole projection, this is a straight line route. It is a straight arc on a globe as well but more often that not great circle routes are shown on a flat projection which makes the routes appear curved.

There really isn't anywhere else for the conversation to go after that. It doesn't prove that the earth is round or flat.

I agree. Someone will always be able to draw a map to fit your requirements, and nobody actually tracks the path of a plane apart for pilots, which gives ample space for FEers to call fraud.

Also, shouldn't this be in discussion? Debate is for debating between RE and FE, not for FE to discuss.

I thought debate was the right place, the situation was me debating an REer. I'm quite new as well, so I'm still getting used to this format; I guess I'll post such questions in discussion from here on out.

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Flat Earth Debate / An RE'r threw this argument at me... What do I say?

« on: January 27, 2014, 02:39:09 AM »

So a friend of mine said this to me, and I had no idea how to reply.
"If I got in an aeroplane in Amsterdam, and flew to the left (west) all the time, how do you explain that after hours of flying you end up in Amsterdam again? How can you explain that with a flat earth?"

There must be something I can say to him to disprove his RE theory. What do you guys think?