I am looking for arguments for the Earth being flat, counterarguments to these, counter-counter arguments, and so on, in a discussion that stays focused in the debate and doesn't troll. I have found some writings arguing that Earth is flat, but I haven't found any resources giving counter arguments to these. If there aren't any such debates, I might be willing to start one.
You will find it difficult to find.
The common FE tactic is to bail or change subject when refuted.
Please feel free to start a debate and see if you can be different.
Presumably there's no reasonable argument for flat earth and thus the debate wouldn't be reasonable, but I think there still could be a debate, and I'm interested to see what it would look like.
In order to have a proper debate both sides need to be of roughly equal standing.
You can't really have a debate where one side has mountains of evidence of facts and rational argument, while the other side has "it looks flat" and deceit.
http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm.
Is it really? Or is it more a pile of nonsense/lies?
Nope. After looking at it it isn't a pile of lies. It is a joke website.
EDIT: It appears to be a joke website set up by a kid during high school.
Here is part of it's mission statement describing Earth:
On the comparatively smooth topside, Europe sat in the middle of the circle, with the other continents scattered about the fringes, and parts of Africa hanging over the edge. The oceans lapped against the sides of the Earth, and in places ran over, creating currents that would pull over the edge ships that ventured too far out to sea
So no, no real arguments for a FE, just satire, pointing out the stupidity of some of the FEer "arguments".
But lets see what they have anyway, well, on there "Why a Flat Earth?" page they list 5 "arguments", not one, and several have subsections.
So this is already approaching on gish gallop and setting up for a typical FE debate where they jump around between "arguments" bringing up the same old refuted crap never admitting they are wrong.
But lets look at each of them:
1 - AetherIt appeals only to Michelson Morley and claims that it shows Earth is stationary, and claims that light needs a medium to propagate. Light is a collection of photons. It needs no medium to travel, unless you want to appeal to the "media" of string theory/wavefunctions and so on.
But more importantly, there wasn't just a single experiment like this. There are a multitude. The main ones are stellar aberration (which links to Airy's failure), MM and Sagnac.
You also need to realise that there were 2 ideas about the propagation of light in classical physics (before all the QM and wave-particle duality). This is because in some cases light acted as a wave, but in others it acted as a particle.
So, there was the aether model, in which light propagated in this medium and thus all speeds would be relative to the medium. But there was also the ballistic model, where light would act as particles and follow Newtonian relativity where the velocity of a photon would be c+v where v is the velocity of the emitter.
MM showed that if there was an aether, it was stationary w.r.t. But was consistent with the ballistic model.
Stellar aberration showed that if there was an aether, it was moving w.r.t. Earth. (Airy's failure attempted to determine which, but was a fundamentally flawed experiment and was unable to tell.)
Saganc showed that light did not act ballistically, and that Earth was rotating, w.r.t this aether.
Notice the contradiction here?
The ballistic model does not work, and the aether model requires the aether to be moving and stationary w.r.t. Earth, so it is also impossible and disproved.
So both models of light fail. The only consistent model we have is that of relativity, where light is the same speed for all observers in inertial reference frames. The results of all three are consistent with this model. But it is unable to say if Earth is moving or everything else is. All it is capable of saying is that Earth is rotating.
2 - MovementHere they claim Earth can't keep moving through space. How do they do this? By appealing to the non-existent aether.
Remember, even if Aether did exist, it was meant to be a medium with 0 viscosity. That is it would be incapable of exerting a force due to friction.
Also note that this is just a much (if not more) a "problem" regardless of what model you use.
With reality, you have Earth moving through space. With other models, you have the sun, the stars, the planets and so on all moving through space, at MUCH GREATER SPEEDS (unless you have Earth rotating).
So this argument is just pure crap. It relies upon a substance which does not exist and makes it harder for a FE.
It then moves on to centrifugal forces.
Those same "forces" are acting on everything on Earth at once. There is no external wall pushing Earth to make it follow a curved path. It is merely the sun's gravity. As such, we follow a roughly circular orbit rather than falling straight into the sun.
Due to the nature of gravity, things on both sides of Earth, that near the sun and that away from the sun, experience a tidal force resulting in them weighing slightly less, in part responsible for the king tides.
Or to put it the other way around, Earth would move in a straight line through space, but the sun's gravity pulls Earth (and everything on it) towards it, resulting in it all following a curved path.
So once again, pure crap.
3 - Holding things to a curved surfaceI am somewhat tempted to not bother reading and just say gravity, but I'll be nice.
It appeals to gravity, but then completely ignores how it works.
Gravity is a force (real or apparent, I don't care) attracting every mass to every other mass.
There isn't some magic universal down which objects are pulled towards. Instead, it is Earth's gravity pulling people to the centre of mass of the object.
That means at both poles (and everywhere else) you are pulled towards Earth, and thus stay on.
Setting objects on Earth will be nothing like setting grains of rice on a beach ball.
Firstly, the beach ball is sitting on Earth. Earth is not sitting on the sun or any other object of considerable mass which creates a very strong gravitational field. Secondly, the Earth weighs far more than a beach ball (and is vastly more dense) and thus will have a much greater gravitational attraction that the beach ball.
If you want to try this experiment, you need to do so in free fall outside the roche limit. That is the limit where the self-gravity of an object is stronger than the tidal forces on it due to other objects.
Another option would be to use an analog for gravity, such as magnetism. Get a nice round magnet, and then see if iron filings stick to it, or if they fall off.
And while I appealed to magnetism, at that is the easiest force to use, gravity is not the same as magnetism. Magnetism relies upon dipoles and thus has poles which need to reorient. Gravity does not. Gravity uses point "charges". There is no requirement for realignment (and even if there was, no requirement that it takes a long time). It has also been shown to be real through numerous experiments and to act as a force that is proportional to the product of masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them squared. Several masses can also act from different directions at once.
4 - "Down" isn't the same everywhereNo. They wouldn't.
They would both be affected by Earth's gravity the same.
They would both be pulled towards the centre of Earth.
Using their pictures, the direction of Earth's gravitational field at the north pole is -y, towards the centre of Earth.
The direction of Earth's gravitation field at the south pole is +y, towards the centre of Earth.
As such, if you take something from the NP to the SP, it will simply follow Earth's gravitational field (or try to until it is stopped by something it can't go through, like the ground), so instead of going towards -y it will go towards +y, and thus down to Earth, not up.
5 - FluidsThe atmosphere is not simply contained by a large dome. If that was the case, the pressure would be equal everywhere. It would not vary based upon height as all the evidence shows. So the FEers reason for "why" doesn't actually work. Instead they need to appeal to something else as well to explain the pressure gradient and from there, they no longer need the dome as you eventually reach a point where the pressure is insignificant. Instead, they just need a side wall.
This is primarily based upon the previous BS. Water and air are held to Earth by gravity. There is no need for any realignment, and regardless of where the water or air is, gravity will pull it towards the centre of Earth.
Yes, the moon has no atmosphere. That is because it's gravity is too weak to hold onto any kind of decent atmosphere.
Look at other planets like Jupiter or Saturn or Uranus. They have loads of atmosphere. They are almost entirely composed of gas. The same is true for the sun.
That is because they are massive enough to hold onto a lot of gas.
It then claims there are issues with thermodynamics but doesn't provide any.
So where was the argument that supports the FE?
If these were presented as real arguments instead of as satire, it would just be a load of nonsense and lies mixed with a few cherry picked facts to support their BS.
If you wish to try a debate based upon these arguments, feel free to pick one to debate.