@all
Thank you for your responses! I owe you all responses in kind - that will be forthcoming - but I thought this response to the OP ought come first.
@james38
I just need some way to categorize people!
You really don't, and you reduce/dehumanize them attempting to do so. If you MUST put the people into stifling little boxes, at least try your best to make them fit.
I propose GEP (globe earth proponent) and GED/GES (globe earth denier / globe earth skeptic) or perhaps REP and RED/RES.
We should all humbly admit our own bias
It is harder than simply "admitting", sadly. First you must make the implicit explicit, then evaluate it objectively (ALSO no small feat), THEN you have the chance to possibly "humbly admit" your recognized (the tricky bit) bias.
We should earnestly and diligently try to find our own biases and help each other to point out the ones we inevitably miss! There is no shame in recogizing our subjective nature and great harm in denying it. We ought to be able to point out/criticize one anothers biases and offer thanks for the service.
Speaking of common ground, we all need to back up our claims.
And just like that, a long meandering tangential thread returns to its central topic! The burden of proof falls on the claimant. We all need to defend, explain, and support our positions - however citing published journal articles (nor any other particular source) is not required to do that.
I never avoid supplying sources / validation for obfuscation. If I know of a good source that can help explain more adequately than the detail I include - I am most happy to include it. In any case, strong independent research skills are vital and required in this subject (in truth, they are vital for all subjects and shamefully neglected by most)
There are many approaches to think about the shape of the Earth.
Endless, yes. But that's only in THINKING about the shape of the earth. Actually determining it only has the one way - rigorous and repeated measurement (of the world, not the sky or any other damned thing that is NOT the world)!
It's counter-productive for anyone to call someone else's approach a red herring.
Not when it is! When the line of thinking/inquiry IS in fact red herring - letting others know is extremely productive - if only in saving time from being wasted.
it looks like possibly 10-20% of Americans might believe the moon landings were faked.
I suspect it is somewhere around 30. In england and other "friendly" european nations, the percentage is higher - around or above 50.
The Conspiracy: Thomas Baron Statistically speaking, coincidences are inevitable. That's why a single coincidence is not strong evidence.
The longer you live the better you will likely learn/internalize that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. In any case, the thomas baron "incident" is not a sole example demonstrating "fishy" things surrounding apollo.
There are statistical methods to answer whether a pattern of events is coincidental or meaningful.
Your bias rears its ugly head. There are methods to ESTIMATE - not answer nor determine.
In any case, statistically or otherwise, there is no reason to conclude the thomas baron incident is "merely coincidence". You can argue that it is merely suspicious, and not "proof" of anything in particular - but when the independent oversight's family is murdered and all copies of the exhaustive and recently completed scathingly critical report mysteriously vanish - it is hardly a wild leap to conclude/deduce/speculate that something is very rotten in denmark.
The Conspiracy: Mars RatBut you do not know it is a rat.
Sure, in the same way that you do not KNOW that it is a picture from mars.
It is plain to see, however - which is why this is, perhaps, the quintessential example. There is maybe no better worshack/litmus for the "space madness" than this picture.
Any child or otherwise unindoctrinated/unconditioned/uninfluenced person will tell you it is a rat in that photo. "Double blind", that is a rat. I agree that does not certainly make it a rat, but this highlights the problems with pictures as evidence more than anything else.
ONLY the "educated"/conditioned interpret the photo in an unnatural/corrupted manner - required as a dogma of their faith. No dissent, discussion, or further investigation is permissible. It's a rock... It simply has to be... Otherwise - "houston, we have a problem".
When rocks look like other things, they still look like rocks. Paradoilla is defensible in the case of the picture of the lizard (due to its natural camouflage to blend in with rocks), but not with the rat.
Societal Opression If I've only learned one thing here, it's that we as a society have not been welcoming enough to FET.
One of the first things we learn as young children is the lie that our primitive ancestors thought the world was flat and were afraid to fall off the edge if they sailed too far. We are conditioned to mock and deride anyone who questions our modern "advanced wisdom" of the shape of the earth (or most anything else) from a shamefully tender age. This is not coincidence, and is the reason there is the opposite of "welcoming" and consideration/evaluation for this subject.
Mark said, "no scientific journal or phd student would risk their livlehood researching [FET]". This couldn't be farther from the truth!
I hope that you are right and there are those with the bravery and conviction to risk all for the benefit of mankind - however my experience with reality (including academia) has been distinctly less grandiose. People generally do what the money tells them to because they are too poor to object.
If there was a technically feasible experiment that could challenge the theory the earth is a globe, someone would conduct it.
There are many such observations (NOT experiments, as we have discussed) that can and have been made in the past. I will leave the puzzle of why they are not replicated to you. Personally, I think discovery happens wherever you look thoroughly, and it is through philosophy/creation myth that we influence where/how to look and the bounds on what can be hoped to be found. The reason the research groups don't take a chance on measuring the shape of the world rigorously (which would almost certainly garner them some attention!), is because their creation myth/philosophy/world view informs them there is no need to.
But the bottom line is, you cannot claim that academia is acting oppressively against FET without evidence.
The evidence is in every primary school in the world. As I explained, it is one of the first things all students learn.
since the 1st amendment (apologies if you aren't American) protects the freedom of speech.
Does it though? (he asks, knowingly)
Would anyone mind sharing instances that this happened to you?
I can direct you to many threads containing demonstration/examples of common/typical responses to flat earth research. Dissent is not tolerated, and many people froth at the mouth as a result of their conditioning to that effect through rote under the guise of education.