I used to believe everything that society told me to believe. To be honest, I was pretty much a closed-minded bigot, and I scoffed at everyone who didn't agree with me about things I accepted to be true without evidence. I had only the vaguest knowledge of the Flat Earth Society, and it seemed like just about the silliest thing in the world to me at the time.
Then eventually I found this website. I didn't know what to make of it. I joined the forum and made a post in which I asked why the members believed what they did. I ultimately didn't get much from that, but I got better results by reading the forums, the FAQs, and even some of the FE literature. I realized I'd taken a lot of things for granted; it really opened my eyes.
I realized there was no proof the world was round. I became skeptical. The NASA photos could easily have been faked. The whole concept of gravity makes little scientific sense, but we just accept it because we have never questioned it. I always had some doubts about the nature of gravity, and also special relativity which seemed too far-fetched to believe. If supposed professional scientists could overlook questions like that, who says they couldn't make other mistakes? How have they proved the world is round? In no way have they done so.
The only "proof" we have comes from organizations such as NASA that stand to make a profit off keeping the secret. They get ENORMOUS amounts of money--just to fly things into space, they say. But why bother, when they can pocket the money and save lots of expenses by making up all the stories of what they find out there.
And then there is the fact that bodies of water have been shown to have no curving--at all. I wondered about this; why did RE'ers (my fellow RE'ers back then) never address this? FET addresses the perceived flaws in its ideas; RET does not. It is simply ignored by the scientific community when it doesn't seem to fit. For the longest time I ignored this and assumed the scientists knew what they were doing. I took a lot on faith; almost religiously. I gave up on religion long ago, and eventually I realized I needed to give up my faith in mainstream science. It has only its own interest in mind; see the Global Warming nonsense.
For every perceived flaw, FET has an answer. RE'ers are just so biased by their prejudices that they feel the need to call FE'ers names instead of addressing the issues. It's a travesty--they feel threatened when they cannot back up their beliefs. This, too, I eventually realized. We need to be more open-minded. We need to question our beliefs. I have questioned RET and I have questioned FET. FET holds up. RET does not.
I'm happy to join this community of open-minded individuals.
Well and *sigh*, here we go again: the story about how "RE'ers are sheep blindly following what the incompetent scientists and evil NASA are making us believe". I've been told the same one by Parsifal for instance, and other (real or advocate-of-the-devil- ) FE'ers and frankly I find it to be nothing more than a weak argument.
What makes you so sure that I (or RE'ers in general) never questioned the knowledge that was presented to me when I was studying at the university, or when I was (and am) reading books on geography and cosmology (= two of my most favourite topics next to history), or when I was taking the obligatory physics- and geography- and chemistry- and mathematics-classes back in highschool, or...?
What makes you so sure that I (or RE'ers in general) never ask myself questions about what I see whenever I look up to the sky at night and marvel at the beauty and mistery of our universe?
For instance: I am fully aware of the ancient theories about what Earth and the universe look like, one of which is the flat plane with "a dome shaped" universe above it (it didn't move upwards at 9.8m/s2 according to them, as of course the concept of gravitation wasn't known yet back then). And I must grant it to the FE'ers: to the naked eye it certainly looks exactly like that.
So the idea has crossed my mind indeed and I can understand why ancient civilizations (with the exception of some of their "scolars") believed this worldview to be true, as they only had their very own eyes to study what they saw, without any technology at their disposal.
And do you know what I do when I'm asking myself questions about the veracity of that theorie or when I want to know more about Earth and its place in the cosmos (
and that's where the bolded part of your post comes into play)? I go out to an observatorium (of which I have visited several already here in Belgium, FAR away from evil NASA) to have a look for myself, and believe me:
What "they" (= the scientists) tell you in books about our solar system for instance, can easily be observed to be true through telescopes and by taking a look at all the measurements done by radio-telescopes (or whatever it is they use to study all the radiation coming from the universe; I'm no astrophysicist after all, only a history major / historian).
That is of course, if you're willing to
trust those people, which I am. I hold no master grade in (astro-)physics for instance, so I have to trust those that do and listen to them when they're explaining their subject / field of research to me.
On top of that, over the past years I have watched numerous documentaries about "Space", or "Earth", or "The Sun", or "Black Holes", or "Our Galaxie", or "Stars", or... and to make things complete I have also been buying and reading several scientific books on geography and cosmology ever since I was a young teenager.
Now, at the observatorium and in those documentaries and books there is so much evidence to be found for "the widely accepted view on the nature of our planet and the universe", that it becomse virtually impossible to hold on to the image of "a flat plane with a dome shaped universe".
Unless of course if you insist to be a stubborn sceptical, shouting that science is wrong and has no proof whatsoever to back up all its claims; or if you want be a philosophical purist claiming that nothing can ever be known for certain and that everything always has to be questioned, no matter how much evidence there is in favour of a theory.
Bottom line: back in highschool and at university I have been TAUGHT to ask myself questions about the world that I live in and I have been TAUGHT to go and search for answers (on my own AND in the educational system). I was even allowed to question the theories of my history professors at university, as long as I had evidence to back up my claim.
And that's the main problem with "Flat Earth Theory": it has no credible evidence to back up its claims (and that certainly goes for all the FE-literature in Tom Bishop's signature, the FAQ and the FE-Wiki), "Round Earth Theory" has => following logical reasoning "RE" is most likely to be true, "FE" is not and nothing on this forum so far has been able to convince me of the contrary.
So if you want to be sceptical about something, be sceptical about FE. It has the least amount of evidence to back up its claims, only a collection of unproven hypothesis.
Regards,
P.S.: English isn't my native language. Apologies for any grammar or spelling mistakes I might have made.