The thread starter pretty much summed up my own questions regarding FE.
I, too, read the FAQ and found it wanting. To say the least. The FAQ is structured in the usual
Q. <question>
A. <presumably answer>
style. There are a lot of Qs and As. BUT, and here comes the trip wire leading to fruitless
flamewars:
The As do not really contain satisfying "answers" (and it is the word "answer" which the As stand for, right?)
One-liners are not really suitable for answering questions regarding the hows and whys of the whole matter.
But since the discussion once more went just down the tube instead of shedding some
light on the subject, I goto start and ask again:
Why do you think the earth is flat?
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You said: because it looks this way up close.
Is that so? Yes, maybe, if I look down at my feet I could not argue much with you.
Imagine you are on a boat on the open sea. If earth would be flat how come you cannot see the shore, or, the ice wall?
There should be nothing between you and the next mountain except the large flat surface of the water.
How come everything that moves away from your point of view "disappears" some miles in the distance?
And why does it look like as if those things disappear bottom-up?
There are attempts in this forum to come up with an explanation for this along the lines:
- light curvature due to atmospheric effects
- cohesion of the water surface because water is a polar subetance
These are nothing but presuptions in an attempt to explain observations. While it COULD be, that you are right
all claims you make on this subject come without scientific support, work, papers, experiments and
such. I won't use the word "proof" here

Why do you thing there is a conspiracy to make all of us believe that earth is round?
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I know there is an A to this Q in the FAQ. But ... really, could you give us some more than the
link to a list of assumptions, which really do a poor job backing up this conspiracy theory?
You know, there is like, one guy (Dioptimus Drime) who wrote down his thoughts about the hows and whys of this
conspicary. This is by far not enough. And I don't want to read the book you mentioned.
I am pretty sure you could rip the most revealing parts from it and summarize your findings here (in the FAQ)
without infringing somones copyright?
So the FAQ left me wondering about the why. This cannot be all you've got on this one.
Numbers.
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In some fields you are surprisingly generous with information and numbers. You state that the moon's (and sun's)
diameter is 32 miles.
The "The Conclusive Categorical Conspiracy Compendium" has a lot to say about the exact amount of people needed
to keep the conspiracy running, but cuts out the parts where it is supposed to explain where the numbers came from.
Statistics? Field research? Unbelievably dense and complete insight of the author in the world's economy and politics?
And then some more numbers. Unexplained.
How do you know all this?
And I would pretty much appreciate an answer explaining the "how". Not just "someone important came up with
these overwhelmingly plausible research results"
It should be possible to publish your sources, experiment setups, formulas and such to back it all up.
And by "sources" I do not mean references to texts full of claims and assumptions.
If all is true:
Earth flat. Evil government prospering on mankinds misconception of earth's roundness. No way of looking behind the
scenes because the Secret Service, NASA, all mighty and influential agencies of the world control everything, everyone, everytime.
They even control and censor every picture ever published, in print or the net, of a seemingly round earth.
If this is all true, how do YOU know?
Best regards,
FSM