...it's with how it's applied. What seems to happen is this...
Well-put criticisms. It expresses problems I too have with the Zetetic method, but have never put into words. I think it's important enough to make more concise and less inflammatory. Here's a quick attempt:
The Zetetic method in a nutshell seems to be:
- Some phenomenon is observed.
- Some explanation is devised
- A second phenomenon is observed - that does not fit with the explanation for the first phenomenon
- An additional explanation is added to explain the second phenomenon that layers onto - but does not change - the first explanation.
- ...and so the cycle continues...
- Because everything that's "decided" stays "decided" forever - if someone goes to the moon and takes a photograph of the Earth and demonstrated that it's round - instead of using this observation to make new explanations - you simply call him (and an awful lot of other people) a liar.
So the original observations of what seemed to Rowbotham to be a perfectly flat area of water, resulted in the explanation that the earth must be flat. But when it is subsequently realized that this is incompatible with the fact that sunrise and sunset happens at different times in different places, instead of saying "Hmmm - perhaps there is something wrong with our first explanation for the water surface?" - the Zetetics instead say that the sun must be a small orb that casts a circular patch of light onto the flat earth.
When it's then realised that this is incompatible with the idea of sunrises and sunsets - then instead of going back to the idea that the sun is a small orb - the Zetetics then add another layer of "explanation" - that light from the sun curves down towards the surface in order to create the illusion of a sunset.
Then, when it's understood that this explanation would cause other optical phenomenon, another explanation (which, incidentally isn't covered by the "Bishop Equation/Constant") requires that only very bright light sources are subject to this behavior.
...and so on and so forth.
The result is a very 'wobbly' pile of largely incoherent explanations that get more and more dubious.
What is most dishonest about the way that the Zetetic method is applied here is that whenever there is an observation that doesn't fit your wobbly pile of incoherent and inconsistent theories - you call that person a liar, stupid, brainwashed, and/or part of an improbably massive conspiracy.
This is the nastiest and most intellectually dishonest part of the method. NASA pull off an incredible feat of engineering and get to the point where it's possible to take a photograph of the Earth from the Moon - and when your pile of "explanations" can no longer bear the weight of evidence - you simply say "It's all lies and conspiracies". When more observations are made by the Russians, then the Chinese, then the Indians - you call them liars too.
The FET explanation is highly inconsistent (and mutually exclusive) among FE believers, and explains away many major observable phenomenon, with shockingly casual hand-wavy explanations or branded phrases - like "Celestial Gears" or "Firmament" (as if those magic words somehow should settle the matter). It requires constantly varying, ad-hoc explanation on top of ad-hoc explanation. (What causes moon phases? What causes tides?)
The RET requires the least amount of self-contradictory, ad-hoc hypotheses; the fewest hand-wavy magical explanations; the least reliance on a perfect and massive global conspiracy involving millions of people; is the most self-consistent; is better supported by multiple converging lines of evidence; and is the only theory that has been open to change and improvement with new and better evidence. (E.g. geocentric to heliocentric based on better telescopes and more rigorous observations of planetary motion.)
FE'ers rely heavily on an ancient text written in inscrutable language and amounts to a long series of unsupported, unreferenced assertions and laughably childish logical "connections" - many of which are blatantly false or betray an astonishingly primitive understanding of basic geometry and logic, prima facie.
Robotham couldn't even get the concepts of "perspective" right - a horrible mangling of which he based much of his wobbly pile of ad-hoc explanations on. He used the concept of converging lines of perspective, in illustrations involving "side" views" (i.e. projecting first-person perspective lines onto side elevations), to explain how ships somehow disappear bottom-first over the horizon on a flat Earth. (In a completely incoherent explanation that no FE'er has been able to rationally deconstruct or explain rationally in a different way.) Here's the thing - perspective lines are only relevant from a "first-person" perspective, and have nothing necessarily to do with a "horizon" - perspective lines can converge at any point in space (imagine drawing a first-person view of a cube oriented randomly in space). You can't project perspective lines onto a side elevation, and claim to be making a rational argument.
The FEers in this forum, themselves, are literally looking for a "messiah" for their self-professed "cult" (
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=2386.0). Which is exactly what the Flat Earth hypothesis is - a cult. And like all cults, they have factions and splinters which believe wildly diverging, mutually exclusive things.
In the end, FE theory comes down to not defending their own hypothesis, but attacking strawmen arguments they concoct on behalf of RE theory. (E.g. that famous "satellite photo" [they allege] that shows North America as covering too much of the globe for even their own RE theory.)
Being a "Free Thinker" is not simply being iconoclastic. It means being willing to change your mind when newer and better evidence comes in.