Flat Earth.... flame free, please.

Freodin

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SeventyOne said:
Yes, I have. I've done what I've said, and there is no curve.
Sorry if I have missed it: just what was it you "have done"?

It's cute you thing Eratosthenes was proof of anything. Not even Neil Degrasse Tyson believes that (see video), or actually anyone who thinks about it clearly for a few minutes. It's primary flaw is quite obvious.
Erathosthenes didn't set out to prove the earth was round. He accepted that as a given, as well as the "far away" sun, based on other calculations and experiments done previously by other people.

What he did try to establish was the circumference of this round earth... and he did that to a degree of exactness that all other different experiments have more or less confirmed.

What your cute little video tries to claim - and fails - is that because Erathostenes didn't use a third measurement to verify his "round earth" hypothesis, his experiment is invalid. The problem with this - the "primary flaw" - is that this experiment is very easy to repeat, especially with our modern means of communication.

And the results are incompatible with a flat earth with a close sun.
 

SkyWriting

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Sorry if I have missed it: just what was it you "have done"?


Erathosthenes didn't set out to prove the earth was round. He accepted that as a given, as well as the "far away" sun, based on other calculations and experiments done previously by other people.

What he did try to establish was the circumference of this round earth... and he did that to a degree of exactness that all other different experiments have more or less confirmed.

What your cute little video tries to claim - and fails - is that because Erathostenes didn't use a third measurement to verify his "round earth" hypothesis, his experiment is invalid. The problem with this - the "primary flaw" - is that this experiment is very easy to repeat, especially with our modern means of communication.

And the results are incompatible with a flat earth with a close sun.

It's nearly perfectly flat. But not quite.
Your straight ruler likely has more curve than the earth.
 
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Freodin

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It's nearly perfectly flat. But not quite.
Your straight ruler likely has more curve than the earth.
Scale. Something that a lot of flat earthers could profit from understanding.
 
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SkyWriting

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Scale. Something that a lot of flat earthers could profit from understanding.
Everyone experiences a flat earth. Some don't leave the county where they were born.
 
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Halbhh

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It's nearly perfectly flat. But not quite.
Your straight ruler likely has more curve than the earth.
:) heh heh. I remember saying once something like "looking out my window and it looks flat to me". lol
 
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SeventyOne

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Sorry if I have missed it: just what was it you "have done"?

I explained it already.

Erathosthenes didn't set out to prove the earth was round. He accepted that as a given, as well as the "far away" sun, based on other calculations and experiments done previously by other people.

This was his primary flaw, and yours. Look, I can't make you understand the flaw, but when you talk about the assumptions in both models, the results are the same. Truth is, even with a third well (or sticks, depending on which version one wants to believe) the results would still be the same.

Again, have you ever measured the curve for yourself? That's all I want to know. Do you know it for a fact, or are you taking it as faith upon the words of others?


Do you really think people can refrain from flaming on this topic? All evidence so far has been to the contrary. It seems there's nothing more maddening to some than realizing that some refuse to think the way they do or accept the same assumptions as they do or even dare to question the same things they were told they must believe.

That stuff is evident in the recent events with Steph Curry and his comment about the moon landings being faked. People went out of their way to make sure to let him know he's not allowed to question it or think independently about it. It was a nice little case study in the knee-jerk reactions received by flat-earthers. Ironically, it's that kind of stuff that fueled my investigation into FE in the first place. When I'm told I must not question something, my initial response is 'why', and then I know at that point, I have to question it. hopefully this thing with Curry, and to a larger extent FE, some will see they are being coerced into not questioning something for themselves, then seek to find out why. That's the primary recipe for creating a flat-earther, starting with someone able to think for themselves.
 
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Halbhh

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Everyone experiences a flat earth. Some don't leave the county where they were born.
Interestingly we also have in modern centuries the normal life expeirence that most everything seems to work in everyday life in a causal way, predictably. If a tire goes flat, we usually find a nail in it, or a leaking valve. Everything we typically experience in our normal everyday living seems to be all deterministic. (In a way, this view is like, sort of a twin brother to, the flat Earth theorizing).

O
ur 'common sense' tells us (our experience makes us believe) that reality is deterministic so that we then can easily imagine all things are fully deterministic, so that the Universe is a 'clockwork Universe' where the future is locked, fixed, in full determinism, and only one future is possible, already set ahead of time. People use their life expeirence feeling as their guide to interpreting things. Since in physics the macro world is largely deterministic, then they are mostly right most of the time, so much of the time that they will hardly ever (perhaps never) learn better. How much of a chance do I have trying to tell the average person that physics may not be fully deterministic (it can be only partially for instance, that is, probabalistically to the extent it mostly is much of the time). Would I ever be able to help someone that believes strongly in a clockwork Universe find out it's more interesting and complex than that? Perhaps not.
 
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Speedwell

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I explained it already.



This was his primary flaw, and yours. Look, I can't make you understand the flaw, but when you talk about the assumptions in both models, the results are the same. Truth is, even with a third well (or sticks, depending on which version one wants to believe) the results would still be the same.

Again, have you ever measured the curve for yourself? That's all I want to know. Do you know it for a fact, or are you taking it as faith upon the words of others?


Do you really think people can refrain from flaming on this topic? All evidence so far has been to the contrary. It seems there's nothing more maddening to some than realizing that some refuse to think the way they do or accept the same assumptions as they do or even dare to question the same things they were told they must believe.

That stuff is evident in the recent events with Steph Curry and his comment about the moon landings being faked. People went out of their way to make sure to let him know he's not allowed to question it or think independently about it. It was a nice little case study in the knee-jerk reactions received by flat-earthers. Ironically, it's that kind of stuff that fueled my investigation into FE in the first place. When I'm told I must not question something, my initial response is 'why', and then I know at that point, I have to question it. hopefully this thing with Curry, and to a larger extent FE, some will see they are being coerced into not questioning something for themselves, then seek to find out why. That's the primary recipe for creating a flat-earther, starting with someone able to think for themselves.
Erathosthenes' experiment is a simple one. It can be (and has been) replicated by elementary school children as a science project. Nowadays it can be replicated at many locations around the world simultaneously, synchronized by cell phone. The Earth is round, not flat. Get over it.
 
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Lazarus Short

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:) heh heh. I remember saying once something like "looking out my window and it looks flat to me". lol

You must live in Kansas. You see, some experts studied the topography of the State of Kansas and came up with a coefficient of flatness. They then found that Kansas had a lower coefficient than a pancake. That's Science.

But seriously, if the Earth is flat, would the horizon not be further away? Waaaaaay further??
 
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Freodin

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I explained it already.



This was his primary flaw, and yours. Look, I can't make you understand the flaw, but when you talk about the assumptions in both models, the results are the same. Truth is, even with a third well (or sticks, depending on which version one wants to believe) the results would still be the same.
That's the problem that the Flat Earthers just cannot accept: as soon as you do this experiment with three or more points, it cannot work on a flat earth with a close sun anymore.

Erathostenes uses just simple geometry. Even if we take into account all the physical effects that might influence our measurements, we can still get results within a reasonable margin of error.
But if you use the same methods, the same geometry in reverse... start with the assumption of a flat earth and a close sun... you can use it to figure out the position and distance of this sun. And guess what... it no longer works with more than two points of measurement.

Again, have you ever measured the curve for yourself? That's all I want to know. Do you know it for a fact, or are you taking it as faith upon the words of others?
Yes, I did.

Do you really think people can refrain from flaming on this topic? All evidence so far has been to the contrary. It seems there's nothing more maddening to some than realizing that some refuse to think the way they do or accept the same assumptions as they do or even dare to question the same things they were told they must believe.

That stuff is evident in the recent events with Steph Curry and his comment about the moon landings being faked. People went out of their way to make sure to let him know he's not allowed to question it or think independently about it. It was a nice little case study in the knee-jerk reactions received by flat-earthers. Ironically, it's that kind of stuff that fueled my investigation into FE in the first place. When I'm told I must not question something, my initial response is 'why', and then I know at that point, I have to question it. hopefully this thing with Curry, and to a larger extent FE, some will see they are being coerced into not questioning something for themselves, then seek to find out why. That's the primary recipe for creating a flat-earther, starting with someone able to think for themselves.
What I have seen, again and again, over and over, is "Flat Earthers" starting to "think for themselves", and demonstrate that they simply do not understand the model they are criticising. Then, when they are presented with explanations, they cry "fake!".
That might be the main problem with the whole "insulting" and "flaming". Modern Flat Earthism isn't a competing model. It is a conspiracy theory. It's basis is not experimentation, understanding and "knowledge". It is slandering the opponent.
 
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Halbhh

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You must live in Kansas. You see, some experts studied the topography of the State of Kansas and came up with a coefficient of flatness. They then found that Kansas had a lower coefficient than a pancake. That's Science.

But seriously, if the Earth is flat, would the horizon not be further away? Waaaaaay further??
There's a fun science fiction (fantasy) book I read in my youth by Larry Niven, Ringworld, in which the constructed habitable world is a huge ring about the diameter of Earth's orbit, and the horizon, which is obscured by just normal haze and distance fades out, and then visually up out of it rises the ring, visible through the less thick angle of vision upward through the atmosphere. Niven does a good job with wording to make it imaginable.
 
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Handmaid for Jesus

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Why debate the shape of the Earth? How does that improve your lifestyle? It does not change anything about where you live, how you travel,or the air you breathe.If it is round, ok. If it is flat, ok.
 
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Freodin

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There's a fun science fiction (fantasy) book I read in my youth by Larry Niven, Ringworld, in which the constructed habitable world is a huge ring about the diameter of Earth's orbit, and the horizon, which is obscured by just normal haze and distance fades out, and then visually up out of it rises the ring, visible through the less thick angle of vision upward through the atmosphere. Niven does a good job with wording to make it imaginable.
Must have been decades since I read that. But that is the beauty of "science fiction".

Yes, you can make up stuff as you need it... that's the fiction. But you should have the "science" to be able to explain the stuff you made up.

We could, without ever having been on one, explain how things like "horizons" work on such a Ringworld. We could back it up with our common scientific knowledge and understanding. That's why such a scenario is so compelling. Because it is consistent.

The "Flat Earth" explanations aren't. One of the famous modern "Flat Earth" assertions is that "The horizon always rises to eye level. This proves a Flat Earth."

The problem isn't just that it can be experimentially shown that it simply doesn't... no, the real problem is that it shouldn't even do that on the Flat Earth.

But Flat Earthers do not understand this, and thus they aren't bothered that their own positions are contradicting each other.
 
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Freodin

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Why debate the shape of the Earth? How does that improve your lifestyle? It does not change anything about where you live, how you travel,or the air you breathe.If it is round, ok. If it is flat, ok.
That is fundamentally a very good point.
A lot of things in our daily life would not change. But still... a lot of things would change. Just one of the things you mentioned: how you travel.
Finding your way over larger distances is fundamentally different on a globe than on a flat earth. Navigation has for centuries been based on the globe model. A lot of our modern navigation and communication systems work on the globe model, and are incompatible with a flat earth.

And that leads us to the second part of the problem how the question about the "shape of the Earth" influences our lifes: interaction.

The "Globers" do not have to think about the shape of the Earth much. The model works, extremely well. The Flat Earthers cannot accept that. They are driven to point out "flaws" in the globe model (which are usually based on lack of understanding), and when they are confronted with the globe model still working, and still having explanations for all of their objections... they cannot accept that.

So there must be a huge global conspiracy, a huge lie, that is forced upon humanity by evil powers, in order to... well, I don't have a clue what these evil powers try to achive with telling humans the earth is a globe.
But that's the gist. Flat Earthers don't argue against a false model... they fight heroically against evil powers.

I guess you can imagine what the results are when you have deal with someone who thinks that people who accept the earth is a globe are not just mistaken, but nefariously propagating a lie.
 
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Jimmy D

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If I may repeat my question to our flat earth brethren......

The UN map is not a Mercator projection, it's an azimuthal equidistant projection map (as seen below).

Is that what you think is a flat earth map?



244430_a1b4e551a99630251e99a7a9e8d0f90d.png


Distance from Sydney to Buenos Aries - 11,794 km

Distance from Sydney to Toronto - 15,558 km

Something's not right here. :scratch: On a flat Earth as depicted above the measurements are the wrong way round.
How can that be so?
 
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SkyWriting

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Interestingly we also have in modern centuries the normal life expeirence that most everything seems to work in everyday life in a causal way, predictably. If a tire goes flat, we usually find a nail in it, or a leaking valve. Everything we typically experience in our normal everyday living seems to be all deterministic. (In a way, this view is like, sort of a twin brother to, the flat Earth theorizing).

O
ur 'common sense' tells us (our experience makes us believe) that reality is deterministic so that we then can easily imagine all things are fully deterministic, so that the Universe is a 'clockwork Universe' where the future is locked, fixed, in full determinism, and only one future is possible, already set ahead of time. People use their life expeirence feeling as their guide to interpreting things. Since in physics the macro world is largely deterministic, then they are mostly right most of the time, so much of the time that they will hardly ever (perhaps never) learn better. How much of a chance do I have trying to tell the average person that physics may not be fully deterministic (it can be only partially for instance, that is, probabalistically to the extent it mostly is much of the time). Would I ever be able to help someone that believes strongly in a clockwork Universe find out it's more interesting and complex than that? Perhaps not.

It's infinitely complex and planned.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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I explained it already.
...
Again, have you ever measured the curve for yourself? That's all I want to know. Do you know it for a fact, or are you taking it as faith upon the words of others?
The problem with trying to take a direct ground curve measurement over just a few miles is that the Earth's surface is uneven - there are plenty of places where measuring the ground curvature over a few miles will extrapolate Earth's surface as the inside of a hollow sphere. A few miles in ~25,000 is not sufficient.
 
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