I think people are missing the point of the "government conspiracy". The flat earth theory only says there is a conspiracy because if the earth is flat, then the governments must be lying when they say it isn't. Either that or the governments are misinformed by the people doing their research.
Thank you Penguin for bringing that up.
As for me being a FE-Believer; I have not said I believe either way. My name is symbolic. In Goethe's, and similarly Marlowe's, stories of Faust, Mephistopheles was literally the devil's advocate. As my namesake goes, I also play the role of the devil's advocate. I rarely get involved in debates because frankly I'm not as "learned" in the sciences as people like Erasmus are and feel that I could not clearly argue my beliefs either way. What I like to do is get people to ask "Why not" much more than "Why". It makes for more interesting debates when the other party starts trying to see why it couldn't be this and finds that perhaps it could.
Now as for the conspiracy, I do like to venture a few ideas for it
. The whole point of a conspiracy is the mystery behind it. Penguin added some valid insight that sometimes I take for granted when posting about this topic. The conspiracy's motives are not nearly as important as the existance of the conspiracy itself. But many, such as even me sometimes, believe that it must be justified with some sort of logic or reason for it to exist properly, lest it be used bluntly to explain things when it of itself isn't really explained (An example would be when there was an influx of hypothesis based on "Dark Matter". They only "worked" if Dark Matter worked in such a way. Since we don't really know what all it can do, well, it was thrown in to fill holes in their propositions).
As far as basing my beliefs on things, I try to stay open minded about everything. I'm one of the more neutral posters on here (if I post!) and only appear to defend the FE because there are more attacks on the FE than the RE. As I've said before, the shape of Earth is meaningless to me. We live in the human world which simply co-exists on Earth. The shape of the human world is much more intriguing to me. Nonetheless, I do like (well sometimes) the thought that is provoked with some questions.
However I must ask many of you new people (this is not necessarily directed at anyone in specific) to start using the "search" feature on this forum. If you can't find what you're looking for on the FAQ, try the search forum. I know there has been tons of discussion on the conspiracy (I've contributed to a few) and many other topics which have been reappearing as of late.
And deadlock, I appreciate your overall composure in your post.