More Flat

[Rick Otto]

 

[Citizen of the Kingdom]

So .... this is correct?

 

[Rick Otto]

Not sure about that.
I am pretty sure the alleged curvature is not visible and that simple observation over long distances disproves the math of curvature. I have personally seenm Indiana Dunes State Park (about 20 miles), and I have seen the St. Louis Arch (500ft) from 50 miles south of there, in Festus, MO., as I stood on a hill next to the Mississippi River. That would not be possible if the earth was curved.

I thought the gentleman in the video was pretty clear.

 

[Citizen of the Kingdom]

I would like to see the view from Indiana Dunes State Park and the St. Louis Arch. Sorry didn't watch the whole video. Most of it tho

 

[Rick Otto]

I would like to see the view from Indiana Dunes State Park and the St. Louis Arch. Sorry didn't watch the whole video. Most of it tho

What area do you live in?

 

[Ken Behrens]

Not sure about that.
I am pretty sure the alleged curvature is not visible and that simple observation over long distances disproves the math of curvature. I have personally seenm Indiana Dunes State Park (about 20 miles), and I have seen the St. Louis Arch (500ft) from 50 miles south of there, in Festus, MO., as I stood on a hill next to the Mississippi River. That would not be possible if the earth was curved.

I thought the gentleman in the video was pretty clear.

I have gone so far with others in such discussion sites, as to have them print the pictures to prove their statement. On inspection, it was clear that they saw the upper levels of whatever they were looking at, and the math was still validated.

Curvature is proven every day by GPS navigation systems in the ocean and air, when right triangles fail to satisfy the Pythagorean theorem. All computerized navigation assumes the curvature, and allows for it. If the earth were flat, every plane and ship would get lost, every day, all the time.

 

[JackRT]

Modern or ancient, every culture operates within a certain cosmology or understanding of the universe. This cosmology sets the context of how a people understand their world and their place in it. With very few exceptions our modern day cosmology is shaped by the scientific discoveries of the past 500 years. Some of these discoveries have greatly upset religious understandings and it sometimes takes centuries to reconcile the differences. However, since we live in a culture that has been greatly shaped by the bible and Christian beliefs, it is worthwhile to ask about biblical cosmology.


The biblical understanding of the universe is much the same as that of the surrounding cultures in the ancient Middle East at the time when it was written. Unfortunately, nowhere does the bible attempt to present a comprehensive cosmology, so we are forced to rely upon individual passages and to attempt to understand them in the light of their culture and their history. To begin with, biblical cosmology can be characterized as a three-tiered universe. This strange phrase needs some explanation to make the concept clearer.


First, the surface of the earth is circular and flat except for geographical features like hills and valleys. This of course was the belief of the Sumerians. To these people it was theoretically possible to go high enough to see the entire earth, or to envision a tree tall enough that it could be seen from everywhere on the earth's surface, or even to build a tower to reach the sky. The sky was thought of as a solid bowl, called the firmament, that was upended over the circular earth to enclose a volume in the shape of a hemisphere. I should add that there are some bible verses that speak of the four corners of the earth. This was the view of the Babylonians. This would make the firmament look more like a tent than a bowl. The lights of the sky (sun, moon, planets and stars) were inside the firmament and were very much smaller than we presently understand. In fact they were very much smaller than the earth itself. The mechanism by which these celestial objects moved about is not really explained. The noncanonical Book of Enoch (mentioned in the bible as authoritive and part of the canon of Ethiopian Christians) speaks of gates in the east and west for the sun and the moon to enter and leave. Enoch also suggests that their movements are caused by winds.


What I have just described is the middle tier of the three. Above the firmament are waters. This region is described as heaven, the abode of God and the angels. There were also gates in the firmament to permit water to enter as rain. Below the earth are also waters. This region is described as sheol or hell. There were also gates in the earth to permit water to spring up from below. This three level universe is variously described as either hung on nothing or supported by pillars. Storehouses are also envisioned in heaven for the snow and hail.


How should a of Christian today react to this biblical cosmology? The vast majority of what might be described as 'mainline' Christians are actually quite comfortable with this seeming dichotomy. They recognize that the bible is the product of a relatively unsophisticated people with an entirely pre-scientific understanding of nature, who used poetic or metaphorical language to convey their spiritual understandings. On the other hand there is the minority point of view of those Christians who regard the bible to be inerrant and to be understood literally. This group has been forced into extreme apologetic efforts in order to reconcile the bible with modern scientific understandings.


Speaking personally, I find these apologetic attempts to be rather inventive and very strained. I believe that if the scripture writers and early target audience were to read these apologetics, they would find them extremely puzzling and entirely foreign. This is not to say that they were not intelligent people or not keen observers of nature but rather that that they lacked the intellectual basis to form scientific hypotheses and even the instrumentation to gather accurate data --- all that came about some 2,000 years later.


Isaiah 11:12And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH. (KJV)

Revelation 7:1And after these things I saw four angels standing on FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree. (KJV)

Job 38:13 That it might take hold of the ENDS OF THE EARTH, that the wicked might be shaken out of it? (KJV)

Jeremiah 16:19 O LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ENDS OF THE EARTH, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit. (KJV)

Daniel 4:11 The tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the ENDS OF ALL THE EARTH: (KJV)

Matthew 4:8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; (KJV)

Psalm 104:5 "He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved."(NIV)

Psalm 93:1"The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed in majesty and is armed with strength. The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved." (NIV)

Psalm 96:10 "Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns." The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity." (NIV)

Ecclesiastes 1:5 "The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises." (NIV)

Isaiah 40:22 "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in." (NIV)


Job 9:6 He shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble. (NIV)


Job 26:11 The pillars of the heavens quake, aghast at his rebuke. (NIV)


Job 38:22 "Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail," (NIV)


Amos 9:6 The One who builds His upper chambers in the heavens and has founded His VAULTED DOME over the earth, He who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the face of the earth, The LORD is His name. (NASB)


The biblical flat earth cosmology persisted into New Testament times. However by the mid second century Christianity had largely lost its Jewish roots and understandings and had become a gentile Greek speaking movement. Of course the Greeks knew that the earth was a sphere thanks to Eratosthenes who actually was able to calculate the circumference around 240 BC. This knowledge gradually percolated into Jewish and Christian thought especially after Ptolemy introduced his cosmology in the mid second century. The earth became the center of the universe with the moon and then the sun and then the planets, with complicated epicycles, and then the “fixed” stars all in orbit around it. This was the cosmology accepted by Christianity until the revolution of Copernicus, Kepler. Galileo and Newton. This was resisted by Christianity largely on the basis that the earth was not the center of God’s creation. In a relatively short time even this scientific insight was not only accepted but accepted to the extent that the biblical cosmology of a flat earth was rejected. The flat earth was not only rejected but ridiculous arguments were even invented to suggest that the bible was not even suggesting a flat earth at all. Such, all too often, is the way some Christians react to new understandings and insights.


Even having said all this, the belief in a flat earth persisted for a very long time, even in educated circles, as is evidenced in this comment by Ferdinand Magellan, the first person to circumnavigate the globe: “The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.” It took time but the modern cosmology took root in society at large, so much so that some Christians even return to the bible and attempt to reinterpret it in such a way as to “prove” that it was speaking of a spherical earth orbiting the sun all along.

 

[Citizen of the Kingdom]

What area do you live in?

Southwestern Canada. The Mississippi's aways off. I have heard that the stars are in a dome shape tho. More things to put on the backburner as neither fact nor fiction but jus one of those hmn things that one sees darkly at first.

 

[Rick Otto]

I have gone so far with others in such discussion sites, as to have them print the pictures to prove their statement. On inspection, it was clear that they saw the upper levels of whatever they were looking at, and the math was still validated.

Curvature is proven every day by GPS navigation systems in the ocean and air, when right triangles fail to satisfy the Pythagorean theorem. All computerized navigation assumes the curvature, and allows for it. If the earth were flat, every plane and ship would get lost, every day, all the time.

Thanks for your civil input.
Have you any comment on the curvature problem in my being able to see upriver 50 miles?
It seems patently absurd that I would be able to see that far if the horizon was falling at... I think the formulae is something per mile squared.
Here's a sight that may help:
https://dizzib.github.io/earth/curve-calc/?d0=50&h0=500&unit=imperial

According to that calculator, I should've only been able to see the top 50 of 500ft, but that would've only been one tenth of it, and I was seeing way more than half of it. I would guess 4/5 of it was gleaming in the sunlight.
Wikipedia:
"For an observer standing on the ground with h = 1.70 metres (5 ft 7 in), the horizon is at a distance of 4.7 kilometres (2.9 miles)"

I'm 6ft, so call it 3 miles.
So at 3 miles, the curve starts having for me, the effect of beginning to obscure retreating objects, right?
So a 6ft guy 6 miles away, should be completely below my line of sight, right?

Since the effect geometrically increases with distance, you can guesstimate that 50 miles is inexplicable with a globe model.

 

[Rick Otto]

Southwestern Canada. The Mississippi's aways off. I have heard that the stars are in a dome shape tho. More things to put on the backburner as neither fact nor fiction but jus one of those hmn things that one sees darkly at first.

Yeah. Some people can't intellectually relax enough to spitball theorize for a minute.
This I observe: most ufo stuff is God denying or God diluting to some extent, usually by making Jesus an alien hybrid.
OK. No problem there with the globe model. Infinite space and gajillions of critters.
But Flat Earthers tend to be gung ho Jesus whatever Christology, and so regard all ETs generally bad, not counting angels.

There's this guy/group on YouTube named Dante Santori with a channel (DS AHK) that has a few hundred videos that create an overall narrative where angels on his low end of their evolutionary spectrum incarnate and reincarnated as humans to live and work among us along with "good hybrids" to fight bad guys.
It's VERY entertaining. Incredibly good production team... but he never addresses flat earth controversy.
Neither does David Wilcock with his fun stuff on divine cosmos.com - also globe and alien dependant.
The one idea I've heard that may resolve a whole bunch of paradox is that we are living in a "holodeck" reality.
A revisit of the Star Trek episode where a holodeck projection of Prof. Moriarity figures out how to escape the holodeck may be in order.

 

[Citizen of the Kingdom]

hmn I reconcile it with the gap theory. Places like Atlantis had prepaid flights to the galaxy lined up so as to avoid the upheaval of the chaos of void. Hence alienclothed demons from the preAdamic age.
When my kids were little and watching the paranormal on tv I'd ask them if they were studying demon activity

 

[Rick Otto]

I have heard there are several breakaway groups.
But humanoids are not alone, I think.

 

[Shemjaza]

The behaviour of daylight with the Sun illuminating Russia and Australia, but not America has not been explained by flat Earth ideas.

In addition the falsification of claims about flights in the Southern Hemisphere isn't helpful.

 

[Ken Behrens]

Thanks for your civil input.
Have you any comment on the curvature problem in my being able to see upriver 50 miles?
It seems patently absurd that I would be able to see that far if the horizon was falling at... I think the formulae is something per mile squared.
Here's a sight that may help:
https://dizzib.github.io/earth/curve-calc/?d0=50&h0=500&unit=imperial

According to that calculator, I should've only been able to see the top 50 of 500ft, but that would've only been one tenth of it, and I was seeing way more than half of it. I would guess 4/5 of it was gleaming in the sunlight.
Wikipedia:
"For an observer standing on the ground with h = 1.70 metres (5 ft 7 in), the horizon is at a distance of 4.7 kilometres (2.9 miles)"

I'm 6ft, so call it 3 miles.
So at 3 miles, the curve starts having for me, the effect of beginning to obscure retreating objects, right?
So a 6ft guy 6 miles away, should be completely below my line of sight, right?

Since the effect geometrically increases with distance, you can guesstimate that 50 miles is inexplicable with a globe model.

Not necessarily. We need to allow for local topography. The earth is spherical with a lot of bumps. What you were looking at could have been uphill from you. The analysis needs to be done over water, which does not have such bumps. It was the same with pictures provided in another discussion I was in some years ago. When distance above sea level was allowed for, nothing amiss was noted.

 

[Rick Otto]

The behaviour of daylight with the Sun illuminating Russia and Australia, but not America has not been explained by flat Earth ideas.

In addition the falsification of claims about flights in the Southern Hemisphere isn't helpful.

Daylight not receding uniformly and bright spots on clouds don help globe theory.
Besides, I have personally seen the Chicago skyline from Indiana Dunes State Park, and the St. Louis Arch from Festus, MO. (50 miles Gone

 

[Rick Otto]

Not necessarily. We need to allow for local topography. The earth is spherical with a lot of bumps. What you were looking at could have been uphill from you. The analysis needs to be done over water, which does not have such bumps. It was the same with pictures provided in another discussion I was in some years ago. When distance above sea level was allowed for, nothing amiss was noted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Level_experiment

 

[squirrel123]

I think it's telling that I have been looking, and failed to discover anyone from the Southern Hemisphere who believes the earth is flat.

You see, there are pesky little details that are part of our daily lives - like intercontinental flights in the Southern Hemisphere. Like the fact that when you point a camera south at night and leave the shutter open for a long time, it looks exactly like it would if you stood did the same in the Northern hemisphere, pointing North. And like the fact that we can observe the actual distances, and the distortion in the flat-earth map becomes undeniable.

But don't let me stop you. These threads, and the attempts to explain away reality is usually extremely entertaining...

 

[Rick Otto]

I think it's telling that I have been looking, and failed to discover anyone from the Southern Hemisphere who believes the earth is flat.

You see, there are pesky little details that are part of our daily lives - like intercontinental flights in the Southern Hemisphere. Like the fact that when you point a camera south at night and leave the shutter open for a long time, it looks exactly like it would if you stood did the same in the Northern hemisphere, pointing North. And like the fact that we can observe the actual distances, and the distortion in the flat-earth map becomes undeniable.

But don't let me stop you. These threads, and the attempts to explain away reality is usually extremely entertaining...

Exactly. Of course we wouldn't let you, or anyone one of "your ilk" stop us.
And flat reality has pesky little details that won't go away too, and you've avoided those magnificently, thank you very much.
But don't let me stop you from sheepdogging your theory here,bro. You have every right to condescend and mock without actually engaging the controversy now, don't you.

 

[Rick Otto]

The behaviour of daylight with the Sun illuminating Russia and Australia, but not America has not been explained by flat Earth ideas.

In addition the falsification of claims about flights in the Southern Hemisphere isn't helpful.

The lack of an unphotoshopped picture of earth isn't helpful, and globe theorists leave the results of this experiment that disproves curvature unexplained:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Pieczenik

 

[squirrel123]

Exactly. Of course we wouldn't let you, or anyone one of "your ilk" stop us.
And flat reality has pesky little details that won't go away too, and you've avoided those magnificently, thank you very much.
But don't let me stop you from sheepdogging your theory here,bro. You have every right to condescend and mock without actually engaging the controversy now, don't you.

I've engaged plenty before, without achieving anything. Without even getting rational answers for questions such as
Given the flat earth model:
- How are intercontinental flights in the Southern Hemisphere possible?
- Why does the sizes of countries and distances between coasts cities on the flat earth model not match reality?
- Why do stars still move in a circle when I look at the sky towards the South at night?
- Why is it possible for me to book a tourist trip to Antarctica if Antarctica is only a wall?
- If the moon is a light source, why does the craters on its surface cast shadows? And why do the direction / size of these shadows differ, not only according to where they are on the moon, but also according to the phase of the moon? (I have pictures showing this, TAKEN BY ME - so you can't call them Photoshop without directly calling me a liar, and I will look for them and post them, if requested. In the mean time, have some fun here)

(Edit - I fully expect people to deny that there are any shadows, though. Just like when someone pointed out a ship's hull to me in a photo that was not visible at all... )

And that is based only on fact that I and other people in the Southern hemisphere can personally observe. I won't even go into the more scientific questions, because I can't deal with the ignorance about gravity, perspective, optics, etc that is so prevalent among flat-earthers - I have neither the time nor the energy.

I will go back to lurking (and condescending ) until the questions above have been answered.