The earth is flat and we never went to the moon

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DFT_Dave

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Okay.

I keep forgeting about the "Devil's advocate" aspect of your position.


Okay, I can live with that. Except that I wasn't kidding, he's got 200 reasons that are all wrong. What I posted with just the first nine reasons I literally could do with every single reason he gives. If you can think of a specific one or two that you feel are a lot less flimsy than the rest, by all means, point them out and I'll address them directly.

Resting in Him,
Clete

Yes, I question everything that has been presented for flat earth, but questioning everything about the globe earth is more fun. David vs Goliath gets more attention then David vs Tom, right?

But at the same time I see flaws in the global construct. I haven't completely lost my edge, nothing like a good debate to get my grove back.

--Dave
 

Sherman

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From this silly video (Sorry Dave! I cannot keep from ridiculing it. It's is mind-numbing stupidity.)

1. The horizon always looks perfectly flat, 360 degrees around an observer, regardless of altitude.

FALSE: An observer above 35000 ft with a near cloudless field of view of 60 degrees or greater would be able to detect the curvature of the Earth. Further, since a sphere curves in all directions, the curvature of the earth can be detected even at sea level.

View attachment 25134
Distance of visibility d (vertical axis, in km), as a function of the elevation h of the observer above the sea level (horizontal axis, in m).

From just 3 m above the surface, you can see the horizon 6.2 km apart. If you are 30 m high, then you can see up to 20 km far away. This is one of the reasons why the ancient cultures knew that the Earth was curved, not flat. They just needed good eyes.

For further info go HERE.

2. The horizon always rises to the eye level of the observer as altitude is gained. If the Earth was a globe, the horizon would remain fixed and the observer would have to look down to see the horizon.

FALSE: Again from the site linked too above...

View attachment 25135
Angle of the horizon below the flat-Earth horizon (gamma, in degrees, on the vertical axis of this plot) as a function of the observer's elevation h above the surface (meters). Note that the apparent angular size of the Sun or the Moon is around 0.5 degrees.

So, at an altitude of only 290 m above the sea level you can already see 60 km far and the horizon will be lower than normal by the same angular size of the sun (half a degree). While normally we are no capable of feeling this small lowering of the horizon, there is a cheap telescopic device called levelmeter that allows you to point in the direction perpendicular to gravity, revealing how lowered is the horizon when you are only a few meters high.

3. (Paraphrasing) Since water seeks and finds consistently flat and level surface conditions, the Earth cannot be a globe that is spinning and wobbling around in space.
FALSE: This one has been answered at some length already in my previous posts. It's frankly too stupid to warrant my time but suffice it to say that liquids conform to the shape of their container with it's unbound surface, absent other forces acting upon it, will be perpendicular to the center of mass acting upon it. The surface of the oceans, therefore, are not "perfectly" flat (neglecting the waves which are caused primarily by wind and tidal forces), instead, the surface, at any point is tangentially perpendicular to the center of Earth's gravity. Carry on a tangential plane in three dimensions far enough and you get a sphere. See the above answers for proof that such curvature exists.

Ordinarily three strikes and your out but this fool, Eric Dubay has 200 swings at the bat in this video and they are all false. 200 strikes in a row.

Don't believe me?! Let's continue!....

4. (Paraphrasing) If the Earth was a sphere, water would have to ascend in order to flow toward the equator. The Mississippi River, for example, would have to ascend 11 miles on its journey towards the Gulf of Mexico.

:bang:

FALSE:

When acted upon, water flows in the direction of least resistance - period.

In this case we are talking about gravity acting on water. Water only flows down hill because the center of gravity is below the hill. On a sphere, the center of gravity is always below the surface regardless of which latitude the water is located at or which latitude the water is flowing toward.

5. "Proof" five is nothing at all but a repeat of "proof" 4, albeit slightly more detailed.

FALSE: River's flow up hill for short distances all the time. It isn't weird or even a mystery. Water only flows down hill as a rule of thumb. Water flows in the direction of least resistance. This is why you can point your garden hose up into the air and when the water comes out it doesn't just instantly fall straight down to the ground. The path of least resistance is up for a short while until its momentum in that direction is overcome by other forces such as gravity and friction.

6. This proof claims that large bodies of standing water do not have the 8 inch per mile curvature that one would expect on a globe that is 25000 miles in circumference.

FALSE: Once again, from the site linked too above...

View attachment 25136
A distant boat seen from 6 m (left) and from 22 m (right) above the sea surface. This boat was about 30 km apart. My pictures, taken with a 30x optical zoom camera.

The missing part of the boat in the left is just hidden by the quasi-spherical shape of the Earth. In fact, if you would know the size of the boat and its distance, we could infer the radius of the Earth.


Okay, that now six strikes in a row. That's two outs. Let's go ahead and finish out the inning....

7. (Paraphrasing) Survayers, engineers and architects are never required to factor the curvature of the Earth into their projects. Bridges, canals, etc are run for miles without any allowance for curvature.

FALSE: The Verrazano–Narrows Bridge in New York, for example, has two towers which are 1 5⁄8 inches farther apart at their tops than at their bases. The Humber Bridge in England the difference is 1.3 inches. This is engineered into the bridge specifically because of the curvature of the Earth and for no other reason. (This information took me about 45 seconds to find, by the way.)

Up to this point, I've been writing all these rebuttals myself but, while looking into number eight, I found a site that has already done the work for me. I'll allow "rubixwolfwright" to pitch the last two strikes...

The following is from Rebuttals and Refutations...

8. The Suez Canal connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea is 100 miles long without any locks making the water an uninterrupted continuation of the two seas. When constructed, the Earth’s supposed curvature was not taken into account, it was dug along a horizontal datum line 26 feet below sea-level, passing through several lakes from one sea to the other, with the datum line and water’s surface running perfectly parallel over the 100 miles.

FALSE: In surveying, the datum isn’t an actual “line” and there is nothing physically marking it. In this case, the datum is 26 feet below sea level and sea level is in the shape of the geoid. So, if you know the elevation of all points along your path, all you have to do is dig down however high above sea level it is and then dig 26 feet further so the water will always be 26 feet deep. This would work whether the Earth is flat or round.

9. Engineer, W. Winckler was published in the Earth Review regarding the Earth’s supposed curvature, stating, “As an engineer of many years standing, I saw that this absurd allowance is only permitted in school books. No engineer would dream of allowing anything of the kind. I have projected many miles of railways and many more of canals and the allowance has not even been thought of, much less allowed for. This allowance for curvature means this - that it is 8” for the first mile of a canal, and increasing at the ratio by the square of the distance in miles; thus a small navigable canal for boats, say 30 miles long, will have, by the above rule an allowance for curvature of 600 feet. Think of that and then please credit engineers as not being quite such fools. Nothing of the sort is allowed. We no more think of allowing 600 feet for a line of 30 miles of railway or canal, than of wasting our time trying to square the circle”

False:Firstly, I can neither find W. Winckler (I found a G.W. Winckler who worked as a railway engineer, but I only found him briefly in a court case in Canada regarding the employment of aliens which I assume refers to foreigners) nor any publication called the Earth Review anywhere and I only find it mentioned in flat Earth posts which never seem to include a works cited or reference section so there is no date of publication either. Another important piece of information that is missing is under what context he was published. Was the quote from a larger article? Did he write in in some sort of letter to the editor? The tone of his writing leads me to believe it is the latter in which case the actual validity of the statement is not supported by the fact that it was published. That is just speculation on my part so take it with a grain of salt, but it is a distinct possibility which should be considered if in fact the Earth Review is even a legitimate publication.

Now on to the quote itself, I’m not sure exactly what he means when he says they don’t allow for 600 feet in 30 miles. Particularly with railways, you have a certain landscape that you are working with and you build according to it, the radius of the Earth is large enough that on the surface, we can basically treat the ground as flat. I mean, just think about that number that always seems to come up: 8 inches in the first mile. That means that the ground drops by about the size of my hand over a whole mile which equals 63,360 inches! That is absolutely insignificant and that curvature stays relatively the same along the whole track if you disregard the landscape and the imperfect shape of the Earth. It wouldn’t affect the necessary length of track either since that is measured along the desired path so if the distance between 2 cities is 20 miles and you go straight along the surface without changing altitude, you will need 20 miles of track whether you are on a flat or round Earth since the 20 miles is measured relative to the surface. So I honestly do not know what he is talking about.


To bring this to a close, these first nine strikes continue for 200 straight strikes in a row. That would be enough strikes to have 66 consecutive perfectly pitched innings in baseball (with two extra strikes left over for good measure).

HOW DO YOU WRITE A BOOK WITH TWO HUNDRED REASONS FOR ANYTHING AND GET ALL TWO HUNDRED REASONS WRONG!

There are two ways this can happen.

1. Stupidity.
2. Intentional deception.

Dave, you're right about one thing. You definitely should be worried about being deceived.

Resting in Him,
Clete

Three back to back strike outs!
 

Clete

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If I blow in his face it means my breath is moving and he is stationary in relation/relative to it.
Unless you're breathing something other than the air in the car, this objection doesn't make sense.

You breath in air from the car and direct a higher pressure body of air in the direction of your brother which in turn moves your bother's hair. You made wind with your mouth, the Earth makes it with convection currents (amoung other things). The mechanism is irrelavant, the principle is identical.

If the the wind moves over the face of the earth it means the air/atmosphere is moving and the earth is stationary in relation/relative to it.
Which contradicts that the atmosphere/air moves with the moving earth.
It's both. The atmosphere, as a whole, moves along with the Earth the same way the oceans do (both are part of the Earth). Also, just as there are currents in the ocean, there are currents in the atmosphere. These currents are what we call wind.

Clete
 

Clete

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Yes, I question everything that has been presented for flat earth, but questioning everything about the globe earth is more fun. David vs Goliath gets more attention then David vs Tom, right?

But at the same time I see flaws in the global construct. I haven't completely lost my edge, nothing like a good debate to get my grove back.

--Dave

Okay, so hit me with what you consider to be the biggest flaw in the global construct.
 

DFT_Dave

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So you've been deliberately deceptive and wasting everyone's time.

No, I think there is a chance that Flat stationary earth may be correct, or that, as some think, the earth is a globe but it is the center of the universe and the sun and everything revolves around it.

And don't laugh, since Trump got elected I figure anything is possible now!

Heliocentrism vs Geocentrism

--Dave
 

DFT_Dave

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Unless you're breathing something other than the air in the car, this objection doesn't make sense.

You breath in air from the car and direct a higher pressure body of air in the direction of your brother which in turn moves your bother's hair. You made wind with your mouth, the Earth makes it with convection currents (amoung other things). The mechanism is irrelavant, the principle is identical.


It's both. The atmosphere, as a whole, moves along with the Earth the same way the oceans do (both are part of the Earth). Also, just as there are currents in the ocean, there are currents in the atmosphere. These currents are what we call wind.

Clete

You're changing the argument about air, from what is moving and not moving to how it moves, which is irrelevant. When I blow into my brothers face it is the air that moves and his face does not. The wind, as an aspect of the atmosphere, moves over the face of an earth that is not moving.

We can feel and see ocean and air currents, the spinning earth and atmosphere we cannot feel or see. The argument that gravity is an answer as to why we can't is not "air tight".

The argument that all the particles of the earth and all the particles of the atmosphere as a whole move in one direction while at the same time particles of the atmosphere move in different directions as wind is an obvious contradiction

How can there be movement of the atmosphere if gravity is holding all the particles in place as it must if it moves it as a whole???

"It's both. The atmosphere, as a whole, moves along with the Earth the same way the oceans do (both are part of the Earth). Also, just as there are currents in the ocean, there are currents in the atmosphere. These currents are what we call wind."

Every particle of atmosphere cannot both be moved as a whole, in place by gravity, and at the same time move from place to place. If gravity were holding every particle in place, as it would have too in order to move it as a whole, there would be no wind, or movement of any kind on this so called planet.

--Dave
 

DFT_Dave

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Okay, so hit me with what you consider to be the biggest flaw in the global construct.

I look for the foundational presupposition of any theory to see if it makes sense.

In evolution Darwin presupposes that nature can do what man does, make selections in producing "hybrid" offspring. His premise is that mindless nature is equivalent to men with minds, but natural selection is a self contradiction that says mindless nature has a mind. The theory of a "timeless creator" is also a self contradiction which is why we are open theists.

As you can see, at this point, I think the theory of gravity is also a self contradiction.

There is no one biggest flaw, but I think a self contradictory theory is a major flaw but not the only one.

--Dave
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
You "can" see and feel the movement of a river.

You "cannot" see or feel the movement of the atmosphere.


sure could up here a couple days ago - we had sustained winds of 90 km/hr


In order to believe in a spinning ball flying through space we have to set aside our senses, close our eyes and use our imagination.

--Dave

Like Helen Keller with rainbows? :plain:

i don't think helen keller had to close her eyes :idunno:
 

john w

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All empirical evidence supports a stationary earth. In order to believe in a spinning ball flying through space we have to set aside our senses, close our eyes and use our imagination.

--Dave
That is the same "argument" the Christ rejecting world, atheists, many scientists................................... employ to dismiss the resurrection.

Well done, Lamont Dave.
 

DFT_Dave

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That is the same "argument" the Christ rejecting world, atheists, many scientists................................... employ to dismiss the resurrection.

Well done, Lamont Dave.

Wow, I'm impressed that you have attempted an intelligent comparison.

Now let's see if you can grasp the mistake you've made.

The resurrection is evidence of a supernatural event. We are not arguing supernatural events so your comparison is irrelevant.

--Dave
 

DFT_Dave

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That is the same "argument" the Christ rejecting world, atheists, many scientists................................... employ to dismiss the resurrection.

Well done, Lamont Dave.

Also, Christ offered empirical evidence (handle, feel, and see) of his resurrection to his disciples, esp. Thomas.

But, thanks for the effort, it was better than your usual nonsense.

--Dave
 

john w

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Wow, I'm impressed that you have attempted an intelligent comparison.[/QUOTE

Wow! I'm impressed with that never before heard stumping cliche!That's it? You should also be impressed that I've given you the honor of being on the same stage with me.

So there.


Now let's see if you can grasp the mistake you've made.

Thanks for slowing it down for me, Ellie Mae. I've been busy showin' my Uncle Jed my "gazinta's."


The resurrection is evidence of a supernatural event. We are not arguing supernatural events so your comparison is irrelevant.

--Dave

Nope-quite irrelevant, Lamont.

Athesists, Christ rejecting world..............In order to believe in person rising from the dead, we have to set aside our senses, close our eyes and use our imagination.In order to believe in God, we have to set aside our senses, close our eyes and use our imagination.

Sophistry, on your part.

Dave: God is a supernatural event, you see, and, well, that is why I cannot answer an atheist, when he/she challenges me on the bible, God..........


Well done, Dave. Do members of the boc a favor-do not "witness" to the lost, as we will lose more souls.Leave the heavy lifting to others.

Dig? Good.
 

john w

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Also, Christ offered empirical evidence (handle, feel, and see) of his resurrection to his disciples, esp. Thomas.

But, thanks for the effort, it was better than your usual nonsense.

--Dave

Deception, changing the goal posts, your "argument"....That is slick....Real slick.....

Empirical evidence, you quip?
An atheist to you:..............In order to believe in person rising from the dead, we have to set aside our senses, close our eyes and use our imagination.In order to believe in God, we have to set aside our senses, close our eyes and use our imagination. You handled, felt, and saw, the resurrection? You handled, felt, and saw, God?

You've seen electricity? You've felt, saw, handled love, pain, hate.....? Science can say NADA re. these-you have to have a soul, to receive them.They cannot be measured by science.


Take your seat-sophistry.


Again-Nope-quite irrelevant, Lamont.

Atheists, Christ rejecting world..............In order to believe in person rising from the dead, we have to set aside our senses, close our eyes and use our imagination.In order to believe in God, we have to set aside our senses, close our eyes and use our imagination.

Sophistry, on your part.

Dave: God is a supernatural event, you see, and, well, that is why I cannot answer an atheist, when he/she challenges me on the bible, God..........
 

Clete

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You're changing the argument about air, from what is moving and not moving to how it moves, which is irrelevant. When I blow into my brothers face it is the air that moves and his face does not. The wind, as an aspect of the atmosphere, moves over the face of an earth that is not moving.
Nope. The analogy is perfect - perfect. Read it again.

We can feel and see ocean and air currents, the spinning earth and atmosphere we cannot feel or see.
Yes, we can.

When you drive your car and you see a sign go by, is the sign moving or is the car and you in it?

It's precisely the same with the Earth. You see the Sun go by but it is the Earth that is moving.

The only reason you can feel you car move is because it's motion is not constant. Both the speed and direction of your car changes all the time and the changes are large percentages of the overall movement of the car and are thus easily detectable. The Earth motion is very consistent. By comparison, the Earth's motion is totally consistent. Whatever minor changes occur do so so gradualy and at such a tiny percentage of its over all motion that the changes are indetectable by our human senses.

The argument that gravity is an answer as to why we can't is not "air tight".
No one has made such an argument. Gravity is only the mechanism that holds us to the Earth. If there were another mechanism the effect would feel the same to us.

The argument that all the particles of the earth and all the particles of the atmosphere as a whole move in one direction while at the same time particles of the atmosphere move in different directions as wind is an obvious contradiction
No it isn't Dave.

Go get a bottle of water and swirl it around and around until its just spinning away inside the bottle. Then walk across the room with it. The water will move all at once with the bottle while still maintaining the currents you've indused. No contradiction.

Once again, speaking of motion is only meaningful relative to other objects. An object can very easily be in motion relative to one thing while stationary relative to something else. While driving your car, you are moving relative to the road but stationary relative to the car. Just as you can breath in and out in you car, moving the air around inside the car even though the whole air mass inside your car is moving along with the car.

How can there be movement of the atmosphere if gravity is holding all the particles in place as it must if it moves it as a whole???
Same way the plastic walls of your water bottle holds the water in while allowing for currents to occur inside the bottle.

Every particle of atmosphere cannot both be moved as a whole, in place by gravity, and at the same time move from place to place. If gravity were holding every particle in place, as it would have too in order to move it as a whole, there would be no wind, or movement of any kind on this so called planet.

--Dave
Amazing how you can shake and/or stir a Martini and then walk the drink across the bar!

Guess what holds the gin in the glass and keeps it from flying all over the room...

GRAVITY!

Resting in Him,
Clete
 

Clete

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I look for the foundational presupposition of any theory to see if it makes sense.

In evolution Darwin presupposes that nature can do what man does, make selections in producing "hybrid" offspring. His premise is that mindless nature is equivalent to men with minds, but natural selection is a self-contradiction that says mindless nature has a mind. The theory of a "timeless creator" is also a self-contradiction which is why we are open theists.
I don't disagree with the point you are making here but just to be precise, it isn't natural selection that is the contradiction, it's evolution.

Natural selection happens all the time. In fact, you can induce natural selection to occure rather easily. This is where we get antibiotic resistant bacteria for example. Or short dandilions in your yard because you regularly mow the flowers off of all the tall ones. Conditions in nature can just as easily cause one group of a population to prosper more than another. It happens constantly and all over the place.

What never ever happens is evolution which is altogether a differnt thing.

As you can see, at this point, I think the theory of gravity is also a self contradiction.
Well, like I said, what isn't repeatable isn't science. You can do all the very same experiments and make all the exact same observations and measurments that Newton made and see it for yourself. They really aren't that complicated. It was a huge undertaking for Newton because he lived so long ago but with today's technology, it would be rather simple and inexpensive to recreate his experiments. Chances are there are people who have already done so and published it on YouTube.

There is no one biggest flaw, but I think a self contradictory theory is a major flaw but not the only one.
I agree! A self-contradiction is proof of at least partial falsehood. What aspect(s) of Newton's theory of gravity do you find to be self-contradictory?

Resting in Him,
Clete
 
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