The Flat Earth Society
Flat Earth Discussion Boards => Flat Earth Community => Topic started by: Cosmic Enigma on July 31, 2017, 12:56:13 AM
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Ive recently been giving some ear time to the viability of the “flat earth” theory. The recorded information from the FE community on YouTube I have to admit is very convincing and compelling and therefore worth a closer look. You guys may really be on to something.
But since Im not inclined to immediately jump down the rabbit hole on anything without further investigation, there are a few things about the FE theory (as a whole) that I need resolved before I can take the leap from curiosity to being fully convinced.
This is what I understand so far. Tell me if I have this correct....or not.
#1; regarding the FE model; Our world is a 3 tiered arrangement in which we live on an expanse of earth that is laid out in a single flat plane and enclosed inside an impenetrable dome (of some substance I have yet to get a reasonable or adequate answer as to what its made of, but according to current FE sources, its thick and semi-solid or semi-liquid, and cannot be penetrated from either the inside out or the outside in. Plus other info having to do with the FE model. (but not all)
And.....#2,
The FE movement also claims that the governmental entities around the world including our own, have known this is the world we live in all along but have deliberately chosen not to disclose this information to the people. (For what purpose or to what end they would do this has not been reasonably answered),
and #3; the US government developed the aerospace agency NASA to help the UN and individual governments perpetuate their deception with false propaganda about the world and universe we live in, to assure we continue to believe the lie that we been told to believe; such as that we live in a really big universe of cosmic bodies, living on a globe revolving around a big ball of hot gas undergoing a nuclear reaction, etc etc. (like I said, the purpose for this deception or to what this deception is supposed to achieve or do for the NWO agenda has not been adequately addressed by the FE movement leaders).
And lastly #4...
The claim that Everything that NASA has told us, or tells us, or has showed us regarding the universe and our surrounding environment has been lies and deceptions...such as space travel, moon landings, the ISS, the deployment of satellites, other planets, etc etc.
But with all the info that I have acquired there is still a few things that I dont completely understand, and I wont be fully convinced until I do.
IF what the FE movement claims is really true and they want the world to know the “truth”, then Im ready to believe the truth.
But I want to communicate with a real person who is adequately enlightened themselves, not some bonehead just guessing at things, pulling the answers out of the air or simply parroting what others have told them, not really understanding themselves. Im tired of attempting to get answers from those that seem to believe, but dont really understand any more than I do. I need a knowledgeable person.
I dont want to waste anybodies time, or mine, by including my questions at this time if no knowledgeable person on the subject is interested in addressing them or chooses not to even respond to the call for help to begin with.
So...is there someone out there willing or able to enlighten me further? If so, then I will reply with what I need a more in-depth explanation about. A big thank you to anyone responding.
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Hi Cosmic Enigma.
I wanted to reply but I probably know as much as you do,
The wiki on here is a good place to start.
I can tell you a couple of things though, firstly, not every FEer believes in a dome.
(I believe in a dome, but I am a Christian and would be in the minority on this site)
The "why are they bothering to hide all this stuff" question can depend on how you view the world.
I see it as a cosmic drama of sorts, wickedness in high places, satan being the father of lies.
Others may see it as a class thing by the ruling elite, you are not worthy to know, now get back to work.
There are knowledgeable FEers on this site, and even some knowledgeable Roundies, who don't mind playing the devils advocate, before they pull out their guns and shoot it full of holes, expect both kinds of replies.
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There's a few possible responses to this question that I'm aware of.
One is that elite politicians and scientists initially believed the world was round just as almost all of us do today, based on false interpretations of observations they've been making since Aristotle's day, and were shocked to discover it was flat (and domed, if you're a flat earther who believes in a dome, I suppose round earthers could believe in a dome too, but anyway) when they attempted space travel.
They couldn't tell the public, because mainstream politics and science would lose all credibility ('if they're wrong about this supposedly most cardinal of scientific facts, that the earth is round and not domed, than they must be wrong about nearly everything'), and so they were forced to perpetuate the lie.
Another is money, NASA receives trillions upon trillions of dollars in tax, and most of that money actually goes into making the fat cats even fatter.
If the flat earth isn't domed, or even if it is domed, but it's an infinite plane, there could be life, even sentient life unknown to mainstream science and all sorts of things beyond the ice wall they're hiding from us, so as not to rock the boat, disturb and disrupt our consciousness.
There may be technologies, resources and things they wish to monopolize, so as to further widen the already growing gulf that exists between us and them in terms knowledge, power and wealth.
If you're a creationist, round earth theory could be part of Satan's plot to eliminate God from man's consciousness.
Perhaps round earth and all the rest of it is more akin to a religious belief than it is science, just as round earthers accuse flat earthers of being unscientific and flat earth theory as fundamentally faith based.
Maybe round earth pseudoscientists will continue believing it in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
Round earth theory could even be one belief, albeit a pivotal one, in an occult belief system of sorts, devised, developed or at least maintained by the 'illuminati', which is competing with Christianity and other religions and cosmologies for dominance.
The more esoteric or supernatural side, if it has one, of this belief system might be concealed from the gen pop, and may be revealed when the fruit is ripe sort of speak.
We may live a spiritual, magical world, a magic that is being monopolized by the elite by getting us to think in purely materialistic and mechanistic ways (we live on one billiard ball earth, whirling around and bouncing off other billiard balls at random, instead of the truth, which may be that we're a divine incarnation of Ishvara, Brahman or something to that effect).
They could be keeping round earth and accompanying cosmology (big bang, infinite space, other planets and so on) because of what believing these things does to our consciousness and behavior, perhaps believing in round earth cosmology along with evolution does something to us, makes us easier to manage for their purposes: money, power, that sort of thing.
Anyhow, I'm not actually a flat earther, and most of this stuff is just my own thinking, flat earthers rarely address the conspiracy side of things for some reason(s), or no reason, I just like expanding and exploring my conception of what's possible.
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Perhaps the plane is both infinite, and domed, and the elite have been charged by the Gods or sentient organisms from other parts of the plane with keeping man confined within it, as we're insufficiently morally and spiritually evolved to be let loose at this time, I know that's a pretty wild, wacky thought *laughs.
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The OP's suppositions really don't represent our views at all. It seems to be a mishmash of YouTube nonsense. Read the wiki on the relevant topics, that's all I can really say.
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If you're a creationist, round earth theory could be part of Satan's plot to eliminate God from man's consciousness.
That's me ;D
This was an excellent summation from someone who doesn't believe in FET.
Smokified should take down some notes.
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The OP's suppositions really don't represent our views at all. It seems to be a mishmash of YouTube nonsense. Read the wiki on the relevant topics, that's all I can really say.
When you say "our views", who are you referring to?
I am referring to the classic view as espoused in the wiki. The context might have helped you figure that out but it's okay, I recognize that you're not that bright. Just don't expect me to constantly be here to hold your hand.
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If you're a creationist, round earth theory could be part of Satan's plot to eliminate God from man's consciousness.
That's me ;D
This was an excellent summation from someone who doesn't believe in FET.
Smokified should take down some notes.
Explain how a round earth and "eliminating god" are even remotely correlated.
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The OP's suppositions really don't represent our views at all. It seems to be a mishmash of YouTube nonsense. Read the wiki on the relevant topics, that's all I can really say.
When you say "our views", who are you referring to?
I am referring to the classic view as espoused in the wiki. The context might have helped you figure that out but it's okay, I recognize that you're not that bright. Just don't expect me to constantly be here to hold your hand.
Clearly you put too much weight in your opinion of yourself. Did you see how you had to remove the actual context of my comment just to make yours?
Well, I removed the attack part of your response, for the sake of decorum. Aside from that I clearly answered your question, even in the full context you intended as far as I can see. There is indeed a diverse array of opinions regarding FE, as can be said about just about any worthy endeavor honestly, but there's really only one endorsed by this website, and that is the one in the wiki. Again I made it abundantly clear that this was the view I was referring to even before you asked so I'm going to take a cue from an old colleague and recommend you visit a website called rif.org. Proper reading comprehension is essential in our modern information-based society so I would sincerely suggest you take my recommendation seriously.
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You are wasting your own time specifically trying to find false information to prove something that isn't. The Earth is not flat. Period.
Since you decided to come back spamming even more than before, I am giving you a week vacation and removing your non-contributory posts.
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If you're a creationist, round earth theory could be part of Satan's plot to eliminate God from man's consciousness.
That's me ;D
This was an excellent summation from someone who doesn't believe in FET.
Smokified should take down some notes.
Yea I try to understand other peoples worldview, even ones very different to my own, even ones I have no intention of adopting.
I find other points of view radically different to my own or to the mainstream very interesting.
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There's a very good reason most flat-earthers don't address the conspiracy very much: It's that it makes no sense.
How on earth (flat or round) could such a conspiracy possibly work? There are so many problems with the mechanics of it.
1. It requires perfect collusion from every space agency. Public or Private, they all have to be in cahoots on this, and for no clear reason. (I have seen some answers to this in this thread, and I'm going to pretend for the moment that I find them satisfactory so that we can move on to the other points.)
2. How do they know everybody they need to silence? It seems like it would be very easy for any plane pilot, balloon hobbiest, sailor and countless others to see the vast wall of ice that keeps the world in place, or recognizes some other point of proof for FET. Yet they're all silent. How do the conspirators know who has seen the truth? How do they communicate with them to negotiate their silence? They can't be killing them all, because there are just way too many people who claim to circumnavigate the globe and live to tell the tale, so those people all have to have been bribed somehow.
3. How much money does the conspiracy cost? I mean, let's just think of some basic logistics here. They have to somehow monitor the entire planet, personally reach out to anybody that sees the truth, and then somehow silence them. Even assuming they aren't having to pay these people off, how much money does it cost to run the vast infrastructure that protects the secret?
We're talking huge agencies with thousands of employees at minimum; maintaining the veil has to be their primary means of employment, and they have to do it all in total secrecy. Do banks not notice these sums of money? The IRS? Every politician in government? Every watchdog group that keeps a tight eye on national budgets?
4. What is the motive for the conspiracy? Like, if the whole of the scientific community and every world leader came out tomorrow and said, "You know what? The Earth is actually flat. We're sorry we've lied for so long, but you need to know the truth."
Then what? Kinda nothing. I mean, people would be mad and ask lots of questions, but the one question I don't see being answered anywhere is: "Why keep it a secret?" We didn't invent it to compete with the Russians, because the idea of a round earth pre-dates the space program by literal centuries, if not a millennium. Where did the need to lie about this first spring up? Who would give two craps if the world were actually flat enough to attempt to lie about it for hundreds and hundreds of years, spanning multiple generations and literally every planet on earth? What is so frightening about this knowledge to make it worth concealing?
Here's the thing. Any FET believer can say whatever they want about the logistics of sunlight, how GPS really works, or any other physical phenomenon and easily file it away under "optical illusions" or other such limiting option. But motives are actually harder to pin down, and they don't want to acknowledge that the equation would really look like this:
Here are the two possibilities on either side of the equation:
Throughout fifteen-thousand years and billions and billions of people, a vast conspiracy has emerged and holds sway that the world is round even though it's really flat. This conspiracy is limitlessly expensive to perpetuate, inexplicable in terms of its reach, and the only reason it's able to perpetuate is because almost all people are mindless sheep.
OR
A collection of hotheads who are contrarian, crazy, or not that bright have found one another and deny one of the most fundamental facts about the planet on which they live.
Occam's Razor tells me that the second choice is more likely simply because it is the simplest of the two options, but even stripping that away, let's look at the basic pessimism of FET.
To be a true FET believer, you have to assume that you are smarter than literally 99.9 percent of the population. That you alone have stripped away the veil and revealed the truth. It's not just wrong, it's supremely arrogant.
If you are an FET person, that's question you have to ask yourself: "Why am *I* so smart?" "What makes *ME* so much more special than the other 7 billion people on this flat earth?"
Go on. What's your answer?
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If you're a creationist, round earth theory could be part of Satan's plot to eliminate God from man's consciousness.
That's me ;D
This was an excellent summation from someone who doesn't believe in FET.
Smokified should take down some notes.
Explain how a round earth and "eliminating god" are even remotely correlated.
I'm not saying they're necessarily related, but some Christians believe the bible claims the earth is flat, based on their interpretation of it, and anything that undermines the veracity of the bible or aspects of it, undermines creationism, in their minds.
That being said, Catholics have always believed in a round world, and have found it to be perfectly compatible with the bible.
However, round earth paves the way for other aspects of the standard model, such as heliocentrism and later on acentrism, the big bang, the formulation of star systems, galaxies and all the rest of it, a universe which's basically null and void, empty and lifeless.
Some of these doctrines are incompatible with biblical creationism, while others make creationism itself, biblical or non-biblical, harder to believe, as well as leaving less room for an active God, divine intervention.
That being said, if some atheists and agnostics were to develop flat earth in a naturalistic direction, than flat earth theory, or some flat earth theories, could also take on non-biblical or anti-creationist doctrines.
I suppose round earth could in a round, about way undermine traditional morality and absolutes.
On a flat plane, there's an absolute up/down...like right/wrong, where as on a round world, up/down are relative, which might pave the way for other forms of relativism in man's thinking, such as heliocentrism and later on acentrism, relativity in physics, relativity in the social sciences, existentialism, postmodernism, indeed the last several centuries of intellectual, social and moral decay can perhaps be pinned on round earth *laughs.
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Who says most scientists have to be in on it?
Most people, including scientists, are arguably gullible sheep/lemmings who will happily march single file off a bridge or into a gas chamber.
Humans have believed many lies before en masse, they believe many lies now, and they will believe many lies in the future, that much is certain.
We can argue over the likelihood of round earth being another one of those lies, but it's not impossible.
You don't need every scientist to be in on it, only a handful of shadowy scientific elites in collusion with the financial and political elites, who're more obviously corrupt, would have to be in the know, the rest can be duped, mislead.
I'm not even saying it's likely, if anything I'd say it's not, but not every policeman has to be consciously corrupt, in order for the police department, the institution itself to be systematically corrupt.
People just follow orders, do as their told, interpret the data the way they've been told to...or lose your prestige, your career, your life.
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Do not underestimate the will to conform.
Most people are terrified of standing up and standing out, of alienation, isolation, of obscurity, poverty, including scientists, perhaps especially scientists, who necessarily spend much-most of their lives conforming in one way or another, economically, educationally, socially.
The mavericks, the Nicola Teslas of the world, the Karl Jungs, the real movers and shakers, creative visionaries are few and far in between, and many-most of them may be on board with the agenda if there is one.
Lots of people have 150+ iQs, even if they only makeup 1% of the population, that's still millions of people, so why'ren't many-most of them innovating in big ways?
Because most people are dull, if not intellectually than personality wise.
Many people rarely have or express their divergent thoughts and opinions, cause there's always a few spineless kiss asses around who never even dreamt of having or expressing any to shame them.
I would rather encourage people to think for themselves, and stand up for what they believe in, even if I disagree with them, even if I think they're, flat, out wrong, I mean how wrong could they be when our civilization is already so wrong, with all our supposed advanced science and technology, never have we been more out of sync and tune with nature than now.
It is better to stand up for what you believe and be wrong, than to shrink from controversy.
Controversy is how a society evolves, and we cannot wait for the system to fix itself, real change always comes from outside the system from individuals or smaller, marginalized, competing systems.
Why is it socially permissible to question everyone in society from bankers, to bureaucrats, from media, to clergy, but not scientists?
This is not a scientocracy, it's a democracy/republic, principally at least, no individual or institution ought to be beyond internal, and external scrutiny...which's not to say all criticism is equal or should be believed, of course, duh!
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I’m sorry but Spheri’ is right.
To paint a picture of scientists, and those that believe in the roundness of the earth as mindless followers, shows, not only that you know little of the history, or the practice of science but you have the requisite narcissism to be a fully fledge conspiracy nut, you can see beyond the veil but the rest of us are “sheeple” (Galileo, Turring, Sakharov?) too scared to raise our hands, please!
This shadowy elite that leads us by the nose through history, would have to run back before the (supposed) birth of Christ, stretching through the rest of history across pretty much all nations. For what reason? To undermine the teachings of someone who hadn’t been born yet, that’s some forward thinking shadowy elite.
Or just maybe, science discovers stuff that leads us to challenge myths, and the myth-mongers don’t like that.
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Do not underestimate the will to conform.
Most people are terrified of standing up and standing out, of alienation, isolation, of obscurity, poverty, including scientists, perhaps especially scientists, who necessarily spend much-most of their lives conforming in one way or another, economically, educationally, socially.
Okay. So why aren't you such a person? What makes you so special that you've seen through this one lie to the truth? Are you one of those great visionaries you write about in the next section? A Tesla? A Jung? Is your IQ 150+ (By the way, I'm of the opinion that only true conformists rely on IQ as an indicator of anything. The test was invented only to gauge below average intelligence, not a measure of those with supposedly more, but that's a whole other discussion.)
The mavericks, the Nicola Teslas of the world, the Karl Jungs, the real movers and shakers, creative visionaries are few and far in between, and many-most of them may be on board with the agenda if there is one.
Lots of people have 150+ iQs, even if they only makeup 1% of the population, that's still millions of people, so why'ren't many-most of them innovating in big ways?
Because most people are dull, if not intellectually than personality wise.
That last sentence is really alarming, because that's the kind of thing a sociopath would say. Who are you to sit in judgement of 99% of the world? I may not find sports or cars particularly interesting, but I'm not going to turn around and pat myself on the back because I'm superior and evolved that I don't find such "dull" things to be a source of enjoyment.
One of the great intellectual "mavericks", Socrates, told us that true knowledge was in knowing that we knew nothing. I'm inclined to agree with him as the more I learn, the more I grow skeptical of certainty, particularly in the absence of evidence as in FET's case.
Many people rarely have or express their divergent thoughts and opinions, cause there's always a few spineless kiss asses around who never even dreamt of having or expressing any to shame them.
I actually can't parse that sentence. I get that you're saying people are afraid to express themselves, and that it has something to do with kiss-asses, but I'm not sure who the "who" you're referring to after that is. The people? The kiss asses? They never express themselves because they fear being shamed by someone? I'm just lost.
I would rather encourage people to think for themselves, and stand up for what they believe in, even if I disagree with them, even if I think they're, flat, out wrong, I mean how wrong could they be when our civilization is already so wrong, with all our supposed advanced science and technology, never have we been more out of sync and tune with nature than now.
So here's the problem with that. I respect free thought, but I don't believe any thought deserves to live totally unchallenged. Thoughts, like people, need to have their own strength and be able to stand on their own. If you can only support them out of a vague idea that they're exciting and could be true because of a vast and shadowy conspiracy, they aren't worth your support to begin with.
Did you know you can simultaneously be free-thinking, yet agree with a majority of people about an issue? Free thought is about coming to your own conclusions and not just trusting what a majority of the people have to say. I'd like to think I do that by coming here, reading arguments in favor of this unusual idea, and challenging them. Blindly trusting in FET because it's "innovative" or "different" is worse sheep-thinking than a manifesto of "baas" written on wool.
As for nature vs. civilization, that's a whole big discussion we can't hope to tackle here. I will say that we discard natural things that seem to make us suffer as a whole (murder or crapping on the ground) while embracing natural things that give us satisfaction (appreciating nature itself, eating, etc...) but I would never paint "natural" with the broad brush of "correct" to live my life.
It is better to stand up for what you believe and be wrong, than to shrink from controversy.
And cue Godwin's law in 5...4...3...2.....
I'll just shortcut it by saying that standing up for what you believe when it is objectively wrong isn't admirable in the slightest, it's foolish. Some beliefs have no definitive proof one way or the other of course, and knock yourself out with your beliefs there, sure.
But FET ain't one of 'em. It's just wrong, and demonstrably so.
Controversy is how a society evolves, and we cannot wait for the system to fix itself, real change always comes from outside the system from individuals or smaller, marginalized, competing systems.
Oh man, have I got a list for this.
1. No it isn't. VALID ideas create controversy. CONTROVERSY itself is not inherently valuable.
2. What system? The system where we know the earth is round and are able to plan GPS, airplane travel, and SPACE FLIGHT accordingly? What do we gain from suddenly embracing the seemingly unprovable precept that the earth is flat? Do any of those things work better? What the ever-loving hell actually changes on a systemic level?
3. Ah, but the system creates and molds those individuals who change things. Were it not for the systems that shaped them, they would not exist to attempt to exert change. It's gibberish nonsense to try and hold people up as somehow existing outside the societies they come from, even if they are great mavericks within their lives.
Why is it socially permissible to question everyone in society from bankers, to bureaucrats, from media, to clergy, but not scientists?
This is not a scientocracy, it's a democracy/republic, principally at least, no individual or institution ought to be beyond internal, and external scrutiny...which's not to say all criticism is equal or should be believed, of course, duh!
Question scientists all you want; scientists themselves encourage this because that's a valid part of the scientific method.
But don't question the science itself when you can't come up with reasonable challenges to it.
I could tell you that our shadows are made of cheese, and that you shouldn't listen to sheep, self-servicing scientists who insist that it's just the result of blocked photons.
Then you'd say, "Well what proof do you have?"
And I'd say, "It doesn't make sense that shadows are blocked light. How could you see something that was simply the absence of something else? That's silly. Cheese makes way more sense."
Then you'd say, "Why cheese? How do you know our shadows aren't tiny leftover dinosaurs?"
And I'd say, "Well, cheese is just an aproximation. I'm just saying the pervasive so-called science on the matter is far from settled, and I think it's really important that instead we find the truth."
Then you'd say, "This is getting very frustrating. There are so many good and reasonable reasons not to believe what you say, ranging from the fact that our shadows do not smell like cheese and cannot be eaten, and that we can't pick them up like cheese."
And I'd say, "That's just light refracting around the cheese so you can't actually gauge where it is to grab it. That doesn't mean our shadows aren't cheese though."
That's FET at the end of the day. You can make any theory sound plausible so long as you don't need to prove anything concrete, can refute all existing proof as mere optical phenomena, and are steadfast in your belief no matter what comes along.
If we formed all theories the way that FET was formed and questioned all science along the same lines then there would be no science, we'd just be making wild guesses at things all the time, with no clue how to put together new technology, adapt our thinking accurately, or otherwise even interpret the world around us at a basic level, because all things would be seen as equally suspect and unprovable.
But sure, tell me again about how all this free-thinking and non-conformity and controversy is helping things. I'd love to know.
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Do not underestimate the will to conform.
Most people are terrified of standing up and standing out, of alienation, isolation, of obscurity, poverty, including scientists, perhaps especially scientists, who necessarily spend much-most of their lives conforming in one way or another, economically, educationally, socially.
Okay. So why aren't you such a person? What makes you so special that you've seen through this one lie to the truth? Are you one of those great visionaries you write about in the next section? A Tesla? A Jung? Is your IQ 150+ (By the way, I'm of the opinion that only true conformists rely on IQ as an indicator of anything. The test was invented only to gauge below average intelligence, not a measure of those with supposedly more, but that's a whole other discussion.)
The mavericks, the Nicola Teslas of the world, the Karl Jungs, the real movers and shakers, creative visionaries are few and far in between, and many-most of them may be on board with the agenda if there is one.
Lots of people have 150+ iQs, even if they only makeup 1% of the population, that's still millions of people, so why'ren't many-most of them innovating in big ways?
Because most people are dull, if not intellectually than personality wise.
That last sentence is really alarming, because that's the kind of thing a sociopath would say. Who are you to sit in judgement of 99% of the world? I may not find sports or cars particularly interesting, but I'm not going to turn around and pat myself on the back because I'm superior and evolved that I don't find such "dull" things to be a source of enjoyment.
One of the great intellectual "mavericks", Socrates, told us that true knowledge was in knowing that we knew nothing. I'm inclined to agree with him as the more I learn, the more I grow skeptical of certainty, particularly in the absence of evidence as in FET's case.
Many people rarely have or express their divergent thoughts and opinions, cause there's always a few spineless kiss asses around who never even dreamt of having or expressing any to shame them.
I actually can't parse that sentence. I get that you're saying people are afraid to express themselves, and that it has something to do with kiss-asses, but I'm not sure who the "who" you're referring to after that is. The people? The kiss asses? They never express themselves because they fear being shamed by someone? I'm just lost.
I would rather encourage people to think for themselves, and stand up for what they believe in, even if I disagree with them, even if I think they're, flat, out wrong, I mean how wrong could they be when our civilization is already so wrong, with all our supposed advanced science and technology, never have we been more out of sync and tune with nature than now.
So here's the problem with that. I respect free thought, but I don't believe any thought deserves to live totally unchallenged. Thoughts, like people, need to have their own strength and be able to stand on their own. If you can only support them out of a vague idea that they're exciting and could be true because of a vast and shadowy conspiracy, they aren't worth your support to begin with.
Did you know you can simultaneously be free-thinking, yet agree with a majority of people about an issue? Free thought is about coming to your own conclusions and not just trusting what a majority of the people have to say. I'd like to think I do that by coming here, reading arguments in favor of this unusual idea, and challenging them. Blindly trusting in FET because it's "innovative" or "different" is worse sheep-thinking than a manifesto of "baas" written on wool.
As for nature vs. civilization, that's a whole big discussion we can't hope to tackle here. I will say that we discard natural things that seem to make us suffer as a whole (murder or crapping on the ground) while embracing natural things that give us satisfaction (appreciating nature itself, eating, etc...) but I would never paint "natural" with the broad brush of "correct" to live my life.
It is better to stand up for what you believe and be wrong, than to shrink from controversy.
And cue Godwin's law in 5...4...3...2.....
I'll just shortcut it by saying that standing up for what you believe when it is objectively wrong isn't admirable in the slightest, it's foolish. Some beliefs have no definitive proof one way or the other of course, and knock yourself out with your beliefs there, sure.
But FET ain't one of 'em. It's just wrong, and demonstrably so.
Controversy is how a society evolves, and we cannot wait for the system to fix itself, real change always comes from outside the system from individuals or smaller, marginalized, competing systems.
Oh man, have I got a list for this.
1. No it isn't. VALID ideas create controversy. CONTROVERSY itself is not inherently valuable.
2. What system? The system where we know the earth is round and are able to plan GPS, airplane travel, and SPACE FLIGHT accordingly? What do we gain from suddenly embracing the seemingly unprovable precept that the earth is flat? Do any of those things work better? What the ever-loving hell actually changes on a systemic level?
3. Ah, but the system creates and molds those individuals who change things. Were it not for the systems that shaped them, they would not exist to attempt to exert change. It's gibberish nonsense to try and hold people up as somehow existing outside the societies they come from, even if they are great mavericks within their lives.
Why is it socially permissible to question everyone in society from bankers, to bureaucrats, from media, to clergy, but not scientists?
This is not a scientocracy, it's a democracy/republic, principally at least, no individual or institution ought to be beyond internal, and external scrutiny...which's not to say all criticism is equal or should be believed, of course, duh!
Question scientists all you want; scientists themselves encourage this because that's a valid part of the scientific method.
But don't question the science itself when you can't come up with reasonable challenges to it.
I could tell you that our shadows are made of cheese, and that you shouldn't listen to sheep, self-servicing scientists who insist that it's just the result of blocked photons.
Then you'd say, "Well what proof do you have?"
And I'd say, "It doesn't make sense that shadows are blocked light. How could you see something that was simply the absence of something else? That's silly. Cheese makes way more sense."
Then you'd say, "Why cheese? How do you know our shadows aren't tiny leftover dinosaurs?"
And I'd say, "Well, cheese is just an aproximation. I'm just saying the pervasive so-called science on the matter is far from settled, and I think it's really important that instead we find the truth."
Then you'd say, "This is getting very frustrating. There are so many good and reasonable reasons not to believe what you say, ranging from the fact that our shadows do not smell like cheese and cannot be eaten, and that we can't pick them up like cheese."
And I'd say, "That's just light refracting around the cheese so you can't actually gauge where it is to grab it. That doesn't mean our shadows aren't cheese though."
That's FET at the end of the day. You can make any theory sound plausible so long as you don't need to prove anything concrete, can refute all existing proof as mere optical phenomena, and are steadfast in your belief no matter what comes along.
If we formed all theories the way that FET was formed and questioned all science along the same lines then there would be no science, we'd just be making wild guesses at things all the time, with no clue how to put together new technology, adapt our thinking accurately, or otherwise even interpret the world around us at a basic level, because all things would be seen as equally suspect and unprovable.
But sure, tell me again about how all this free-thinking and non-conformity and controversy is helping things. I'd love to know.
I'm sorry, was this suppose to be about me and my views?
Because it looks more like some caricature of me/my views you managed to conjure out of the aether, somehow.
My suggestion to you is: listen more, ask questions more.
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I’m sorry but Spheri’ is right.
To paint a picture of scientists, and those that believe in the roundness of the earth as mindless followers, shows, not only that you know little of the history, or the practice of science but you have the requisite narcissism to be a fully fledge conspiracy nut, you can see beyond the veil but the rest of us are “sheeple” (Galileo, Turring, Sakharov?) too scared to raise our hands, please!
This shadowy elite that leads us by the nose through history, would have to run back before the (supposed) birth of Christ, stretching through the rest of history across pretty much all nations. For what reason? To undermine the teachings of someone who hadn’t been born yet, that’s some forward thinking shadowy elite.
Or just maybe, science discovers stuff that leads us to challenge myths, and the myth-mongers don’t like that.
And who do you rely on for your history of science, but more scientists who're pro-science?
Why not look into say the philosophy of science instead, gloominaries such as Thomas Kuhn (who was also a physicist) and Paul Feyerabend, something that challenges science and its history?
You're not a narcissist just because you're a conspiracy or flat earth theorist.
You're not a narcissist just because you believe most people are gullible, easily lead and mislead by the intellectual and political elite.
Millions of people have a more conspiratorial view of history, so you're not that special just because you do.
I never said I'm incapable of being mislead, I never claimed to have all the answers, I don't, not by a long shot.
A flat earth theorist probably isn't claiming he or his community of alternative researchers and theorists have all the answers either, just that they, through some combination of dedication, diligence, luck, some intellect, and perhaps most importantly: the courage to challenge the intellectual authorities of our day, have uncovered lies about our earth and the heavens, and a body of science beginning with Samuel Rowbotham and zeteticism that has been, in their minds, unjustly marginalized by the greater scientific community.
All intellectual institutions make myths, mainstream science has admitted to myth making thousands of times, it has been corrected by individuals working both from within, on the fringes and occasionally outside academia altogether, and people continue to challenge mainstream science everyday to greater or lesser extents, and while many of these individuals may be all or mostly wrong, the scientific community needs to open itself up to criticism (again not saying all criticism is equally worth considering) in order to make genuine progress, and so do we.
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I should repeat I'm not a flat earther, but I'm open to the possibility, I have a more conspiratorial view of history than say most flat earth critics here have, nor am I a Christian, I'm an agnostic.
I'm trying to make a broader point here about daring to challenge intellectual authorities, of course not all challenge is equal, but I argue there is nobility in challenging authority even if it turns out to be foolhardy, at the end of the day we must all decide what is and isn't foolhardy for ourselves, based not exclusively on what the dominant institution says, but also on what outsiders say, as well as our own thoughts, and even our gut to some extent, not everything can be reasoned out in a linear, sequential fashion.
As for Christians, regardless of how foolhardy they may or may not be, I don't wish to get into that here, it's an enormous subject, there are billions of them, we all have to deal with that reality, for them in particular perhaps, if they really delve deeply into what their bible says, it shouldn't be such a stretch to conclude that Lucifer, if such an entity exists, might be manipulating science in all sorts of ways so as to discredit the creator.
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I'll make one more point and then I'm done for the night.
Sphereicult asked: where is the flat earth technology, round earth theory has given us this, that, got us to space, which flat earthers and others dispute, and so on.
But how much earthbound technology is really dependent on round earth, I suspect very little of it, I've heard round earthers say long bridges, canals, tunnels and their ilk have to be built on round earth principles, and honestly I've yet to look into this sufficiently to formulate an opinion.
Round earth and the standard model have been mainstream for a long time, the former for millennia, the latter has been a work in progress for the previous several centuries, so naturally many technologies have sprung up around them, just as many technologies sprung up around the Ptolemaic model and the physics, chemistry and medicine of its time.
Even a half baked or incomplete model of the cosmos, physics, chemistry and medicine, will often still allow you to derive some technologies from it, or in spite of it if it's really bad, and as complete as a model is, there's always more work to do.
Sometimes two models differ only in their explanation of phenomenon, not in the phenomena they believe in and deal with themselves, and so one will work just as good as the other.
Perhaps the quantity of technologies has increased lately, and perhaps this is due in part to round earth and the standard model, perhaps other things as well, say ideologies like humanism, capitalism and consumerism, which value productivity and material, technological and other form so called progress, perhaps these ideologies are equally or more to praise, or blame than science.
Some of our inventions have come about in spite of mainstream science, like the Wright brothers did away with the science of their day and just did their own experiments in order to fly, and government/mainstream science is slowly incorporating practices that've been around in the alternative medical community in the west for decades, such as Chiropractry, Acupuncture, Naturopathy and Osteopathy.
Quantitatively technology has increased, but qualitatively?
Qualitatively thanks to modern science and tech, so many unintended consequences have come about, that perhaps it'd've been best had we never invented many of them.
How smart can modern science be, if it's made such a mess of things in so many regards, it seems to me awfully stupid in many respects, perhaps we should be listening more to Shaman instead, the society built around their cosmology, medicine and ways of thinking sustained humanity and life on earth for, if the science can be trusted on this: tens of thousands of years, where as our civilization seems totally unsustainable, and may be a mere blip, before a great fall from which we, indeed all life on earth, may never recover.
If flat earth ever becomes mainstream, technologies will be based on it, rest assured.
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I'm sorry, was this suppose to be about me and my views?
Because it looks more like some caricature of me/my views you managed to conjure out of the aether, somehow.
My suggestion to you is: listen more, ask questions more.
You *must* be joking. I didn't just make up a bunch of stuff, I quoted you, and responded to what you had written, line-by-line.
If you want questions, here's some: Why not defend or at the very least, clarify anything you said? Can you tell me how I'm understanding you wrong? Why not answer any of the questions I put forth?
I'll repeat one of those now: What puts you ahead of the vast majority of the planet when it comes to correctly identifying the shape of the Earth?
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Ah! And some actual response! Genuinely, thank you for taking the time to address some of what I said. Let's get into it, this is fun!
I'll make one more point and then I'm done for the night.
Sphereicult asked: where is the flat earth technology, round earth theory has given us this, that, got us to space, which flat earthers and others dispute, and so on.
But how much earthbound technology is really dependent on round earth, I suspect very little of it, I've heard round earthers say long bridges, canals, tunnels and their ilk have to be built on round earth principles, and honestly I've yet to look into this sufficiently to formulate an opinion.
Kind of a lot actually.
There's GPS for an obvious starter. If GPS systems were designed with a flat earth in mind, when I asked my phone how to go from say, Australia to North Africa, it would give me two options: To cross the middle of the arctic or go the long way around the outer perimeter of the disk of the world. One of these options adds a massive climate obstacle in the middle of my travels, and the other adds literally tens of thousands of miles. Of course, if the world were a globe, it would just tell me to go east instead of north to get there, and because the earth is round, that would only require me to travel roughly the distance of the united states, a six hour flight, 10,000 km. Now if you want to make such a journey, you can either assume the GPS is lying to you as presented (with a "Globular" assumption in "Global Positioning") and take one of the two harrowing routes flat earth presents to you...or you can do it the easy way, because the science works, the plane flight times line up (six hours instead of 18) One example of many.
How about space flight? Without a globular earth, launch times wouldn't matter; the moon is always going to be in roughly the same position on the disk, and any direction the rocket launches from will still be pointed in a vaguely moonward direction. Only because the earth is round, if Space X or NASA chose to fire a rocket when the facing of the earth was away from moon, it would launch and literally never even pass the same plane as the moon, only get forever farther away.
How about all computing technology? Data storage is still based on systems that rely on electro-magnetism. Without magnetic poles, and therefore magnetic polarity, a flat earth couldn't support predictable electrons that flowed where they were supposed to, especially if magnetic "north" is really just the center of the planet; depending on where you were in relation to that center electrons would behave in radically different ways around magnets and therefore be totally unreliable as consistent data.
There are others, but you left more to respond to.
Round earth and the standard model have been mainstream for a long time, the former for millennia, the latter has been a work in progress for the last several centuries, so naturally many technologies have sprung up around them, just as many technologies sprung up around the Ptolemaic model and the physics, chemistry and medicine of its time.
Ah, that's a very interesting point, but I'd counter that sometimes we come to the correct technologies in *spite* of an existing model, not because of it. For example, long before we understood why it worked, celestial astronomy was still fairly accurate from the standpoint that even though stargazers did not realize it was we that were moving and not the stars, they could still chart the movement.
GPS however, is not an example of a technology working in spite of a flat earth that is the "real" truth; in fact it simply wouldn't work at all if the earth were flat, and we can verify that it works because it gets us places we want to go with impressive accuracy.
It's important not to confuse the two categories of invention. Another example would be "The Greeks believed things contained fire, and you coaxed fire out of them by holding fire next to them." That's not true, but you can still light things on fire in spite of that mistaken belief. However, you could not, based on that mistaken belief, design a super-long burning log. For that, you'd need to truly understand the nature of combustion and work FROM that understanding around to your invention, the Miracle Log.
Even a half baked or incomplete model of the cosmos, physics, chemistry and medicine, will often still allow you to derive some technologies from it, or in spite of it if it's really bad.
See my point above. Yes I agree this happens, but it doesn't preclude the advantage of having correct information in designing such advances, only works in spite the misunderstanding.
And here's the thing, when we DO get a grip on how a thing really works, that's when inventions with real purpose take OFF. For centuries we believed in anything from the Four Humors version of medicine to the Miasma theory of disease. When we finally started applying the scientific method to medicine, and keeping an ever-growing storage of proven medical knowledge, our capacity to improve and save and prolong life took OFF, and mostly just in the last hundred years or so. We went from no surgeries being more than a fifty-fifty chance of survival to having literally hundreds of different kinds that accomplish specific, achievable things with mortality rates in the one percent range. That's nuts when you stop and think about it.
Now, in the same spirit as Flat Earth, would you tell doctors to dispense with their sheep-like scientist approved methedology and to start treating alternate theories with equal validity because we can never really be sure? I would hope not, that would get a lot of people killed.
And I will back off and say that there is no science for which I believe we have perfect knowledge, that's not the point, but we do get to weight the theories that have payed off thus far much more heavily than the ones lobbied for without any track record to speak of. FET has zero notches in its favor. Man has gained nothing, can use nothing, profits in no way from trying to pretend the earth is flat, and he would have much to lose. The Four Humors by contrast, as wrong a theory as it was, at least in very rare cases might actually help alleviate someone's Edema or help to purge a bacterial infection if it was localized. That's a couple of notches versus the literally thousands modern science-based medicine has in its favor, but that's still more than FET, which again, has none.
Sometimes two models differ only in their explanation of phenomenon, not in the phenomena themselves, and so one will work just as good as the other.
Sure, I think that lines up with astronomy example above. It WORKED as a way to track star positions, and believing the earth was moving rather than the stars wouldn't have changed the results they were working with at that level.
But I would challenge you to find two belief systems with real-life consequences that are truly exactly equal in all ways. The "moving stars" theory of astronomy might have worked for making star-charts and tracking seasons, but until you accept the "moving earth" theory, you can't do bigger better things, like navigate more accurately, or gauge temperature in relation to the earth's distance from the sun. I can think of no case in which believing the wrong model doesn't eventually cost you something in technology or understanding. But I could be wrong about that, if you have an example I'm absolutely willing to listen.
Perhaps the quantity of technologies has increased as of late, and perhaps this is due in part to round earth and the standard model, perhaps other things as well, say ideologies like humanism, capitalism, consumerism and materialism, which value productivity and technological and other form so progress, perhaps these ideologies are equally or more to praise, or blame than science.
Oof, that's definitely a bigger discussion than we can have here, really. I guess my short answer is that these phillosophies certainly might help technology to proliferate and develop at a greater rate, but you could take away the phillosophy and the potential for the technology would still exist, wheras if you took away the technology and just left the ideology you wouldn't arrive at the same advances by some different means. There's kind of only one path. Call it Moore's law if you like.
Some of our inventions have come about in spite of mainstream science, like the Wright brothers did away with the science of their day and just did their own experiments in order to fly.
I'm not certain mainstream science had said anything about human flight being impossible. Remember that prior to the airplane people were already using hot-air balloons. But I guess, supposing it had, that doesn't really justify the value of bad ideas like FET, only alternative ones that people haven't considered yet. As FET is pretty old, and has failed the scrutiny of a lot of testing, unlike flight, I don't think the two are especially comparable.
Quantitatively technology has increased, but qualitatively?
Yes. Both. We save lives through medical science breakthroughs year-by-year. We now live in a world of digital immortality so advanced that no human knowledge need ever be totally forgotten until the universe itself grows cold. We communicate in a sort of modified telepathy, instantly beaming our thoughts person-to-person around the globe as we see fit. We can make objects from an almost molecular level. We can walk on the moon. I just... what qualities are you looking for technology to have exactly?
And I need you to stop and consider something: If the defense of FET relies on the idea that all science and technological advancement is bad in order to support it, maybe it isn't something worth supporting. That's just odd on the face of it.
Qualitatively thanks to modern science and tech, so many unintended consequences have come about, that perhaps it'd've been best had we never invented them.
So let me get this straight. We split the atom, and while it gave us the potential for limitless energy, it also unleashed the horrors of the atomic bomb and nuclear waste, therefore we should believe untrue things in the hope that it will slow technology down?
I'm even fine if you want to take the stance that technology is a net bad; there's certainly a powerful argument to be made there, but at no point does that argument get anywhere near "Technology is bad, therefore we should believe our shadows to be made of cheese to stop science from harming us further." Huh?
How smart can modern science be, if it's made such a mess of things in so many regard, it seems to me awfully stupid in many respects, perhaps we should be listening to Shaman instead, the society around their cosmology and medicine and ways of thinking sustained humanity and life on earth for, if the science can be trusted on this, tens of thousands of years, where as our civilization seems completely unsustainable, and may be a mere blip, before a great fall from which we, indeed all life on earth may never recover.
Well again, I'm not going to bother trying to argue that all technology is good. If you want to start a society devoted to truly weighing the consequences of scientific advancement, and getting people to really reign in our leaps and bounds before AI or Fusion technology kill us all, knock yourself out, there's wisdom in that.
But you aren't going to make anything better by saying "Technology is a net bad...Also the earth is flat! I have no evidence of the latter point and it doesn't really relate to the first, but it's important that you all agree it's a possibility!"
if flat earth ever becomes mainstream, technologies will be based on it.
And here's the crux of the problem in the FET perspective. It's not like there were a bunch of equally valid ideas about the shape of the earth floating around, and some opportunistic fucks said, "It's round! Everybody agree with us! We'll kill those who don't!" and then round earth "became mainstream". The way it "became mainstream" is that it was theorized, and then tested time and time and time again and proven true.
1. We tested it by circumnavigating the globe.
2. We tested it by launching into space and looking back at the earth.
3. We tested it by making maps and globes that relied on it and they WORKED.
4. We tested it by basic astronomical observations, like you can't see the North Star and The Southern Cross at the same time.
5. We tested it by having someone at night call someone on the opposite side of the planet and go, "Is it day there? Yup? Okay, guess it's round then.
6. We tested it with magnetism.
There are countless other tests, proofs, and pieces of evidence that point over and over and over again to the earth being round. Flat earth has yet to produce a single confirming experiment in over ten thousand years of people believing it could be, and over sixty years of this specific organization. With modern technology, the scientific method, and lots of people, that's an eternity to have no results alone.
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I'm sorry, was this suppose to be about me and my views?
Because it looks more like some caricature of me/my views you managed to conjure out of the aether, somehow.
My suggestion to you is: listen more, ask questions more.
You *must* be joking. I didn't just make up a bunch of stuff, I quoted you, and responded to what you had written, line-by-line.
If you want questions, here's some: Why not defend or at the very least, clarify anything you said? Can you tell me how I'm understanding you wrong? Why not answer any of the questions I put forth?
I'll repeat one of those now: What puts you ahead of the vast majority of the planet when it comes to correctly identifying the shape of the Earth?
You seem to have partly misinterpreted or exaggerated everything you quoted in your responses to it, and I'm not sure if I have the time/energy to correct them all, it's so overwhelming.
Perhaps I will correct one or two of them later today or some other time if I'm feeling up to the task.
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@Spheri
I think your latest round of responses are more on target this time.
I may respond to them point by point later but for now I'll just remind everyone: I'm not a flat earther.
However flat earth is less likely to be false in my mind than in it is in your mind.
We should listen to alternative ideas more, for the reasons I've given, because no individual, institution or model can completely corner truth, and what we regard as truth can be so ephemeral.
Even if flat earth theory is false, if we were to adopt it, the world mightn't be worse off, we'd still be able to invent many techs, perhaps it would be better to be ignorant or even deluded about some aspects of nature, that we let nature keep some of her secrets, and not open Pandora's box sort of speak all at once the way we have been, we may not like or be able to handle what's inside.
There's something about thinking we live on a round world, whirling around the sun, whirling around the center of our galaxy by chance that does something to man's mind: agitates it, makes it restless.
Perhaps it would be better for man to believe he lives on a flat plane inside a cushy, cozy dome presided over by a loving deity, maybe then he wouldn't be in such a rush to uproot and overturn everything.
*Laughs I say this with my tongue half planted in its cheek, but in all seriousness, our civilization has made such a mess of things, that I think it's time we open ourselves up more to alternative models, not only in cosmology and physics, but in medicine, politics, everything, or another mass extinction event may ensue.
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You're not a narcissist just because you're a conspiracy or flat earth theorist
Nope, but there is a direct correlation between people with narcissistic personality and conspiracy theory, and the entirety of your post, screams it. Your scorn of the mainstream as mindless automatons, whilst affiliating yourself with the heroes of free thought, this whole “nobility in challenging authority” versus the drones that are too scared to, priceless! I bet you wear purple.
You challenge us to tread the paths less trod, because you “know” we couldn’t have, and still come to the conclusions we have.
Science, is subject to humanities frailties and faults as any other, but in my personal dealings with scientists, I have found some, to be the most innovative and daring of people. Some of the most ground-breaking of discoveries were made against the tide of perceived wisdom. Evolution, Plate tectonics, all struggled against the status Quo, as did Luis Alvarez with his theory of mass extinction due to meteor impact. Junior doctor, Barry Marshall was so sure the medical establishment was wrong about the cause of stomach ulcers that he swallowed the bacteria he believed were to blame, then cured himself of the Ulcers using antibiotics and still had to fight for years for it to be accepted.
The reason these are now part of the furniture of modern science is because they are right, whereas FE has had 100yrs to come up with proof and has demonstrably failed to do so.
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You're not a narcissist just because you're a conspiracy or flat earth theorist
Nope, but there is a direct correlation between people with narcissistic personality and conspiracy theory, and the entirety of your post, screams it. Your scorn of the mainstream as mindless automatons, whilst affiliating yourself with the heroes of free thought, this whole “nobility in challenging authority” versus the drones that are too scared to, priceless! I bet you wear purple.
You challenge us to tread the paths less trod, because you “know” we couldn’t have, and still come to the conclusions we have.
Science, is subject to humanities frailties and faults as any other, but in my personal dealings with scientists, I have found some, to be the most innovative and daring of people. Some of the most ground-breaking of discoveries were made against the tide of perceived wisdom. Evolution, Plate tectonics, all struggled against the status Quo, as did Luis Alvarez with his theory of mass extinction due to meteor impact. Junior doctor, Barry Marshall was so sure the medical establishment was wrong about the cause of stomach ulcers that he swallowed the bacteria he believed were to blame, then cured himself of the Ulcers using antibiotics and still had to fight for years for it to be accepted.
The reason these are now part of the furniture of modern science is because they are right, whereas FE has had 100yrs to come up with proof and has demonstrably failed to do so.
So I'm a narcissist and you bet I wear purple?
Says the person with an avatar that looks like a witch or warlock from Harry Potter or LOTR *laughs.
I assure you my attire is very drab, I wouldn't standout in a crowd, fashion is the least of my worries.
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@Spheri
I think your latest round of responses are more on target this time.
I may respond to them point by point later but for now I'll just remind everyone: I'm not a flat earther.
However flat earth is less likely to be false in my mind than in it is in your mind.
We should listen to alternative ideas more, for the reasons I've given, because no individual, institution or model can completely corner truth, and what we regard as truth can be so ephemeral.
Even if flat earth theory is false, if we were to adopt it, the world mightn't be worse off, we'd still be able to invent many techs, perhaps it would be better to be ignorant or even deluded about some aspects of nature, that we let nature keep some of her secrets, and not open Pandora's box sort of speak all at once the way we have been, we may not like or be able to handle what's inside.
There's something about thinking we live on a round world, whirling around the sun, whirling around the center of our galaxy by chance that does something to man's mind: agitates it, makes it restless.
Perhaps it would be better for man to believe he lives on a flat plane inside a cushy, cozy dome presided over by a loving deity, maybe then he wouldn't be in such a rush to uproot and overturn everything.
*Laughs I say this with my tongue half planted in its cheek, but in all seriousness, our civilization has made such a mess of things, that I think it's time we open ourselves up more to alternative models, not only in cosmology and physics, but in medicine, politics, everything, or another mass extinction event may ensue.
You know what? I can appreciate wanting to invest at least a vague sense of faith in a flat earth when you lay it out like that.
It may surprise you to learn that I'm no militant atheist, I just don't think God's existence or lack therof depends on the shape of the world one way or another. God should be bigger than that, bigger than our sense of what the world is, and frankly, bigger than anything our limited human minds are capable of understanding. I have no problem with that.
Where I still break with you is the confusing position on what the earth is VS. scientific progress.
There is a valid argument that maybe science should be stopped or slowed. I don't agree with it, but I can at least acknowledge that every technology we discover has a positive side (fireworks) and a negative side (guns).
That being said, the answer to harm brought about via technology is NOT to stick our heads in the sand and wish for a dome or a flat earth or another answer that makes us happier even though it is empirically false. We have to acknowledge that technology, push for technology to be used responsibly (and adapted slowly), and do what we can to mitigate the harm.
At the end of the day, a flat earth does none of these things. And yes, I know you've distanced yourself from FET types, but to me that's a little like a libertarian who agrees with 90 percent of the republican agenda stepping back and saying, "well, yes, but I'm cool with weed too so I'm not the same as THEM!." Sure, you're willing to not go whole-hog in favor of FET, but you're still taking the time to vaguely contradict RET, which is not especially different in a world that accepts RET 99 percent of the time.
Maybe it's time for you to pull back a little? Consider what you think the most fundamental and important things there are to you about the universe, physical reality, and everything else? Please don't read that as patronizing, I genuinely think you might not be exactly sure what you want out of any of this and it's worth it for you to consider beyond vague statements about conformity or sheeple. What matters to you?