The Flat Earth Society

Flat Earth Discussion Boards => Flat Earth Theory => Topic started by: WaterBell on July 13, 2017, 08:55:59 AM

Title: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: WaterBell on July 13, 2017, 08:55:59 AM
Hi,

I was reading the wiki when I came accross the motives for the conspiracy. I have a hard time understanding it, I hope someone can explain it to me.

There is a Space Travel Conspiracy. The purpose of NASA is to fake the concept of space travel to further America's militaristic dominance of space. That was the purpose of NASA's creation from the very start: To put ICBMs and other weapons into space

It is most often associated with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), its constituents and fellow so-called "space agencies" as well as those who are informed by them (including government).

So NASA fakes the possibility of space travel to further America's dominance of space but what about the other space agencies ?
Are all of these government and space agencies working together to maintain the conspiracy ?
They are each competing for space dominance and then still collaborating to fake space travel ?

Am I reading it wrong ?


I'm a bit dissapointed by the forum, i've been reading many topics and very often legitimate and correctly formulated questions are left unanswerd. You can't ignore things that question your theory and expect people to believe you without proof. Most FE answers are more about disproving RE than giving valid proofs of FE's viability.

Thank you for your answers  :)
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: 3DGeek on July 13, 2017, 02:33:56 PM
Hi,

I was reading the wiki when I came accross the motives for the conspiracy. I have a hard time understanding it, I hope someone can explain it to me.

There is a Space Travel Conspiracy. The purpose of NASA is to fake the concept of space travel to further America's militaristic dominance of space. That was the purpose of NASA's creation from the very start: To put ICBMs and other weapons into space

It is most often associated with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), its constituents and fellow so-called "space agencies" as well as those who are informed by them (including government).

So NASA fakes the possibility of space travel to further America's dominance of space but what about the other space agencies ?
Are all of these government and space agencies working together to maintain the conspiracy ?
They are each competing for space dominance and then still collaborating to fake space travel ?

Am I reading it wrong ?


I'm a bit disappointed by the forum, i've been reading many topics and very often legitimate and correctly formulated questions are left unanswered. You can't ignore things that question your theory and expect people to believe you without proof. Most FE answers are more about disproving RE than giving valid proofs of FE's viability.

Thank you for your answers  :)

The NASA conspiracy theory doesn't work because:

a) There are multiple foreign nations who have travelled to space - many of whom are openly hostile to the USA.  None of them blabbed?
b) There are multiple non-government agencies (SpaceX, for example) who would have to have been in collusion.  None of them blabbed?
c) Not one "death bed" confession from an astronaut?  Really?  Not a single one?
d) What about all of those astronomers - they'd all have to be in on it.  Nobody blabbed?
e) What about all of the people who build and sell GPS equipment, without satellites in orbit, GPS can't work the way it's claimed - but the people who write the software for these things would also have to be a part of the conspiracy.
f) Ditto satellite TV companies.
g) All of those ships, drones and aircraft that are claimed to be patrolling The Great Ice Barrier have to be in on the conspiracy - so do the people who build those ships, the people who supply them, the people who crew and repair them.   So do all of the countries who have navies down there who'd have spotted them.  So do all of the air-traffic control people who watch these aircraft land and take off in huge numbers.

As if all of that isn't bad enough...

h) Navigation by the stars can't work the same way in FE as it does in RE.  But sailing ships going back to the 1600's used this navigation technique...and their sailors wrote manuals about it - there are copious books on the subject.  Every commercial shipping company and every navy in the world would have had to be a part of the conspiracy.
i) But hold on - the ancient Chinese had fleets that sailed around the pacific and indian oceans using celestial navigation - and they did this BEFORE they met the Europeans who were doing the same exact thing.   This means that they both, independently, discovered that the world is flat and separately decided to collude on this (seemingly) more bizarre round-earth solution to whatever problem caused them to do this coverup.
j) Now add all of those sailors - not a single one of them came home from years at sea and told their wives and family that there was an enormous cover-up to hide the flat earth?
k) The pirates of the caribbean and south seas had to navigate by the stars.  They LOVED upsetting the apple cart.   Why didn't a single one of them expose the secret FE navigation charts and whatever stood in for a theodolite?

Oh, good grief FE'ers.  How can you POSSIBLY continue to believe that such an insanely widespread and long-lasting coverup could continue for hundreds of years and over 50 sea-faring nations.

But if not - how the heck can you explain all of the evidence produced by (a) through (k) that the Earth is round?
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 15, 2017, 04:37:51 AM
So NASA fakes the possibility of space travel to further America's dominance of space but what about the other space agencies ?

Other space agencies are fake as well, for similar purposes. The quality of the Chinese space agency is especially bad (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBL98p0wZ7g), as an example.

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Are all of these government and space agencies working together to maintain the conspiracy ?

Allied countries work together. Non-allied countries tend to cast doubt and skepticism on each other's space capabilities.

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They are each competing for space dominance and then still collaborating to fake space travel ?

Again, non-allied countries do not work together. China is barred from participating in ISS activities, for example.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Rounder on July 15, 2017, 04:55:59 AM
Non-allied countries tend to cast doubt and skepticism on each other's space capabilities.

Why bother pretending to even have a space program?  It would be cheaper to expose the "fraud" of the big players. 
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 15, 2017, 05:01:36 AM
a) There are multiple foreign nations who have travelled to space - many of whom are openly hostile to the USA.  None of them blabbed?

During the cold war the US expressed open skepticism against the Soviet Space Program, and vice-versa.

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b) There are multiple non-government agencies (SpaceX, for example) who would have to have been in collusion.  None of them blabbed?

NASA is actually composed entirely of non-governmental agencies called government contractors, public-private arms of the state which operate within the government's secure realms.

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c) Not one "death bed" confession from an astronaut?  Really?  Not a single one?

Buzz Aldrin's entire personal and professional life revolves around the fact that he was an Apollo astronaut. It has brought him fame and fortune and he has traveled around the country inspiring adults and children alike. Do you really think he would admit that he was a phoney?

Also, when people are sick they generally believe that they will pull out of it.

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d) What about all of those astronomers - they'd all have to be in on it.  Nobody blabbed?

Astronomers merely observe the sky and interpret. They are not scientists who put their subject matter under controlled conditions to come to the truth of a matter --they can't. Astronomy is not a real science. Astronomers are fake scientists.

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e) What about all of the people who build and sell GPS equipment, without satellites in orbit, GPS can't work the way it's claimed - but the people who write the software for these things would also have to be a part of the conspiracy.

The military built the GPS satellites and the military is publishing the spec.

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f) Ditto satellite TV companies.

Do you really think that Dish network is building and launching their own satellites single handedly?


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g) All of those ships, drones and aircraft that are claimed to be patrolling The Great Ice Barrier have to be in on the conspiracy - so do the people who build those ships, the people who supply them, the people who crew and repair them.   So do all of the countries who have navies down there who'd have spotted them.  So do all of the air-traffic control people who watch these aircraft land and take off in huge numbers.

Who claimed that the wall was guarded? Why are you making stuff up?

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h) Navigation by the stars can't work the same way in FE as it does in RE.  But sailing ships going back to the 1600's used this navigation technique...and their sailors wrote manuals about it - there are copious books on the subject.  Every commercial shipping company and every navy in the world would have had to be a part of the conspiracy.

Celestial navigation works by looking at the North Star and gauging where East and West are based on that. For the South it involves finding the Southern Cross.

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i) But hold on - the ancient Chinese had fleets that sailed around the pacific and indian oceans using celestial navigation - and they did this BEFORE they met the Europeans who were doing the same exact thing.   This means that they both, independently, discovered that the world is flat and separately decided to collude on this (seemingly) more bizarre round-earth solution to whatever problem caused them to do this coverup.

The North Star is North in the Flat Earth model. To find the direction of North the Chinese just had to find the North Star. It's the brightest one. Simple!

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j) Now add all of those sailors - not a single one of them came home from years at sea and told their wives and family that there was an enormous cover-up to hide the flat earth?

See above.

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k) The pirates of the caribbean and south seas had to navigate by the stars.  They LOVED upsetting the apple cart.   Why didn't a single one of them expose the secret FE navigation charts and whatever stood in for a theodolite?

See above.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 15, 2017, 05:11:29 AM
Non-allied countries tend to cast doubt and skepticism on each other's space capabilities.

Why bother pretending to even have a space program?  It would be cheaper to expose the "fraud" of the big players.

That would preclude you from claiming to have ICBMs that can destroy any country at the push of a button (therefore untouchable), and you risk that you will not be believed.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: nunya on July 15, 2017, 05:23:00 AM
Non-allied countries tend to cast doubt and skepticism on each other's space capabilities.

Why bother pretending to even have a space program?  It would be cheaper to expose the "fraud" of the big players.

Do you consider $18T cheap?  because that is what NASA and the gov't would have to answer for after the "lack of space" was exposed.  They would have to shutdown and all their subcontractors shutdown, the thousands of lost jobs and the law suits.  every "space" related program in every university and college would be shut down.  Then ultimately, the mighty question to all the 'space' people, "how have you been looking out into space and not known?"

It's bigger than just letting the cat-out-of-the-bag, way bigger.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Rounder on July 15, 2017, 05:26:31 AM
That would preclude you from claiming to have ICBMs that can destroy any country at the push of a button (therefore untouchable), and you risk that you will not be believed.
Nonsense, you could claim a missile flies high up and far away without needing to also claim it can reach space.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Rounder on July 15, 2017, 05:28:57 AM
Non-allied countries tend to cast doubt and skepticism on each other's space capabilities.

Why bother pretending to even have a space program?  It would be cheaper to expose the "fraud" of the big players.

Do you consider $18T cheap?  because that is what NASA and the gov't would have to answer for after the "lack of space" was exposed.  They would have to shutdown and all their subcontractors shutdown, the thousands of lost jobs and the law suits.  every "space" related program in every university and college would be shut down.  Then ultimately, the mighty question to all the 'space' people, "how have you been looking out into space and not known?"

It's bigger than just letting the cat-out-of-the-bag, way bigger.
Exactly my point.  It's hella expensive to run a space program, if you are China or India (for example) it would be cheaper to NOT play with rockets and instead spend a small amount of money debunking the US program.  Nobody does this.  Why not?
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 15, 2017, 05:34:01 AM
That would preclude you from claiming to have ICBMs that can destroy any country at the push of a button (therefore untouchable), and you risk that you will not be believed.
Nonsense, you could claim a missile flies high up and far away without needing to also claim it can reach space.

That's not really possible and no one would believe you. Hitler's V2 rockets could reach space, but only had an operational range of about 200 miles.

The rockets need to get into an orbital or sub-orbital path and velocity in order to hit targets that are thousands of miles away.

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Exactly my point.  It's hella expensive to run a space program, if you are China or India (for example) it would be cheaper to NOT play with rockets and instead spend a small amount of money debunking the US program.  Nobody does this.  Why not?

If you don't claim to have ICBMs then everyone in your country is going to be really uncomfortable thinking that other countries have ICBMs pointed at them and that their country is defenseless, no matter how much their leaders shout "it's all fake" into the air. Come on, it is pretty obvious what path the state would go.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Rounder on July 15, 2017, 06:13:50 AM
you could claim a missile flies high up and far away without needing to also claim it can reach space.
That's not really possible and no one would believe you. Hitler's V2 rockets could reach space, but only had an operational range of about 200 miles.
The rockets need to get into an orbital or sub-orbital path and velocity in order to hit targets that are thousands of miles away.
"No one would believe?"  The FE side claims that the whole world already believes things the FE find ridiculous, why would no one believe this?  Airplanes reach targets thousands of miles away slowly; I don't think anyone would have trouble accepting that a missile could go higher and faster in order to reach that same target quickly.


If you don't claim to have ICBMs then everyone in your country is going to be really uncomfortable thinking that other countries have ICBMs pointed at them and that their country is defenseless, no matter how much their leaders shout "it's all fake" into the air. Come on, it is pretty obvious what path the state would go.
If I pretend I have a back yard full of fire-breathing dragons threatening the kids next door, the neighbors wouldn't feel the need to also pretend to have their own dragons in an effort to comfort their kids; they would prove that dragons aren't a thing and therefore I don't actually have any.  Then they would all make fun of all the money I'm spending on my ridiculous charade.

By the same token, if China or North Korea could prove that the nations with ICBMs are making the whole thing up, there is no need to pretend to have ICBMs of their own, because they aren't even a real thing (in that world)!
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 15, 2017, 09:33:01 AM
"No one would believe?"  The FE side claims that the whole world already believes things the FE find ridiculous, why would no one believe this?  Airplanes reach targets thousands of miles away slowly; I don't think anyone would have trouble accepting that a missile could go higher and faster in order to reach that same target quickly.

Airplanes fly via lift. Rockets follow a ballistic trajectory, and a rocket full of rocket fuel only has enough power for about 100 miles before it starts dropping. Unless it gets into earth orbit or on a sub-orbital velocity, it's not going to go very far.

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If I pretend I have a back yard full of fire-breathing dragons threatening the kids next door, the neighbors wouldn't feel the need to also pretend to have their own dragons in an effort to comfort their kids; they would prove that dragons aren't a thing and therefore I don't actually have any.

How are you supposed to prove to your kids that dragons don't exist? That's called proving a negative and is incredibly difficult/impossible.

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By the same token, if China or North Korea could prove that the nations with ICBMs are making the whole thing up, there is no need to pretend to have ICBMs of their own, because they aren't even a real thing (in that world)!

If North Korea said that our ICBM system was fake, how do you really see it playing out?
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: 3DGeek on July 15, 2017, 05:07:28 PM
a) There are multiple foreign nations who have travelled to space - many of whom are openly hostile to the USA.  None of them blabbed?

During the cold war the US expressed open skepticism against the Soviet Space Program, and vice-versa.
Their skepticism was about the EXTENT of the opposition's capabilities - not about whether they could orbit a satellite or put a man into space...which is why (for example) the Soviets put a radio transmitter onto Sputnik that was tuned to a frequency that any amateur radio ham could pick up.   I vividly recall my father (who repaired TV's and radios for a living) spending all night building a 20MHz radio receiver so that his three year old son (me!) could listen in on the sounds from it every 90 minutes as it rose above the horizon and tracked across the sky in a matter of a minute or two.  At that young age, I couldn't understand why it was important - but my Father told me "This is the most important thing you'll ever hear!" and it turns out to be pretty much my first memory.   As it turns out, he was probably wrong about the significance of it...but he was no fool.
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b) There are multiple non-government agencies (SpaceX, for example) who would have to have been in collusion.  None of them blabbed?

NASA is actually composed entirely of non-governmental agencies called government contractors, public-private arms of the state which operate within the government's secure realms.
Actually, NASA has over 17,000 employees of it's own - they are NOT entirely composed of NGA's.   Also, I've worked on projects for NASA (I built simulators to train Space Shuttle pilots and the people who operate the Canadian robot arm on the ISS.  I've met and worked with astronauts who've been to the ISS...and they don't seem to me to be at all dishonest people.
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c) Not one "death bed" confession from an astronaut?  Really?  Not a single one?

Buzz Aldrin's entire personal and professional life revolves around the fact that he was an Apollo astronaut. It has brought him fame and fortune and he has traveled around the country inspiring adults and children alike. Do you really think he would admit that he was a phoney?

Also, when people are sick they generally believe that they will pull out of it.
Deathbed confessions are quite common - and generally turn out to be true. See:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathbed_confession

Your explanation might explain why SOME people do not confess - but it cannot remotely explain why not a single one of the hundreds of thousands of people who would have had knowledge of this supposed conspiracy ever admitted it.

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d) What about all of those astronomers - they'd all have to be in on it.  Nobody blabbed?

Astronomers merely observe the sky and interpret. They are not scientists who put their subject matter under controlled conditions to come to the truth of a matter --they can't. Astronomy is not a real science. Astronomers are fake scientists.

That's not a very nice thing to say!  Wow!

Anyway - what you say is untrue.  Astronomers (some of my best friends are astronomers) do indeed do controlled experiments.   For example, the idea that the expansion of the universe results in a measurable red-shift in starlight.  That was a "hypothesis" - which was then tested by performing the experiment of looking at the spectra of light from many stars who's distance could be estimated by other means.   When the degree of red shift was found to accurately match the theoretical values - the hypothesis was proven and "The Hubble Hypothesis" became "Hubbles' Law".   Yes, they are scientists - yes, they do experiments.  No - they are not idiots.   No, not a single one of them believes in the Flat Earth and if they are conspiracists then not a single one of them has ever blabbed about it.

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e) What about all of the people who build and sell GPS equipment, without satellites in orbit, GPS can't work the way it's claimed - but the people who write the software for these things would also have to be a part of the conspiracy.

The military built the GPS satellites and the military is publishing the spec.
Yes - but what about the software engineers who write the software to decode the signals from these radio sources and the hardware designers at places like Apple, Sony?   They have to write software that calculates positions of satellites - to assume that this is possible without understanding that the Earth is round is...beyond naive.  Honestly - either all of those people are in on the conspiracy - or there is no conspiracy.

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f) Ditto satellite TV companies.

Do you really think that Dish network is building and launching their own satellites single handedly?
Again, you're assuming that once the satellite is launched - that's the end of the story.   Of course it isn't.  Every one of those Dish Network electronics packs is running software written by someone who doesn't work for NASA or any of the launch companies that alters the dipole on the satellite disk to track the signal.  Really - the business of making and selling satellite TV receivers REQUIRES that you know how the satellites are placed - and if the world is really flat then an awful lot of people at Dish Network are "in on the conspiracy".   It's naive to assume otherwise.

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g) All of those ships, drones and aircraft that are claimed to be patrolling The Great Ice Barrier have to be in on the conspiracy - so do the people who build those ships, the people who supply them, the people who crew and repair them.   So do all of the countries who have navies down there who'd have spotted them.  So do all of the air-traffic control people who watch these aircraft land and take off in huge numbers.

Who claimed that the wall was guarded? Why are you making stuff up?
Many of your fellow FE'ers believe that.  I guess you personally do not - but if you don't, you have to explain how it is that antarctic explorers and the people who live for extended periods at the south pole are "in on the conspiracy".

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h) Navigation by the stars can't work the same way in FE as it does in RE.  But sailing ships going back to the 1600's used this navigation technique...and their sailors wrote manuals about it - there are copious books on the subject.  Every commercial shipping company and every navy in the world would have had to be a part of the conspiracy.

Celestial navigation works by looking at the North Star and gauging where East and West are based on that. For the South it involves finding the Southern Cross.

Again, your understanding of the very basics here is sadly lacking for someone who claims to be an expert in FET.   Navigation is a hell of a lot more than knowing which direction you're facing (which is really all you'd know from seeing which direction Polaris is in).   It's about calculating your latitude and longitude - from stellar, solar and lunar position observations which allow you to deduce the local time and therefore your position.

Those calculations - in fact the very way you measure the things that go into those calculations - are based on the presumption that the earth is an approximate sphere and that it rotates every 24 hours and that the sun is a VERY long way away so it's parallax may be ignored.

Imagining navigation to be as simple as you say is ridiculous.   Really - go learn some of the very BASIC facts of how ships navigated before GPS and other radio navigation aids before saying this kind of nonsense.

Really Tom - for someone who claims to be an expert (possibly THE expert) on FET, you really should get to understand the counter arguments.

I strongly recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_navigation to understand how exactly ships navigated before around 1900.  If you take the time to understand what this is saying - then you'll realise that the technique described cannot possibly work with FET being the way it is claimed to be.

So, again, you're left with literally MILLIONS of people today, and going back to the 1600's and earlier who are a part of this conspiracy - or the earth is round.

I also recommend the excellent book "Latitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time" by Dava Sobel - which explains the great lengths that people went to in order to navigate at sea.   It's a great read...and leaves an awful lot for you FE'ers to explain.


Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 15, 2017, 06:07:43 PM
Their skepticism was about the EXTENT of the opposition's capabilities - not about whether they could orbit a satellite or put a man into space...which is why (for example) the Soviets put a radio transmitter onto Sputnik that was tuned to a frequency that any amateur radio ham could pick up.   I vividly recall my father (who repaired TV's and radios for a living) spending all night building a 20MHz radio receiver so that his three year old son (me!) could listen in on the sounds from it every 90 minutes as it rose above the horizon and tracked across the sky in a matter of a minute or two.  At that young age, I couldn't understand why it was important - but my Father told me "This is the most important thing you'll ever hear!" and it turns out to be pretty much my first memory.   As it turns out, he was probably wrong about the significance of it...but he was no fool.

There were a lot of people questioning the claims of the other side, don't kid yourself.

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Actually, NASA has over 17,000 employees of it's own - they are NOT entirely composed of NGA's.   Also, I've worked on projects for NASA (I built simulators to train Space Shuttle pilots and the people who operate the Canadian robot arm on the ISS.  I've met and worked with astronauts who've been to the ISS...and they don't seem to me to be at all dishonest people.

NASA is very heavy on contractors. 88% of their budget goes towards paying contractors:

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/28/us/nasa-s-reliance-on-contractors-is-seen-as-eroding-its-capabilities.html

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NASA's reliance on contractors is shown both by the composition of its workforce and by the portion of its budget going to procurement, officials said. The percentage of NASA's $11 billion budget devoted to procurement has increased to 88 percent, according to Mr. Colvin and the Administration intends to expand commercial involvement in the space program.

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Deathbed confessions are quite common - and generally turn out to be true. See:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathbed_confession

Your explanation might explain why SOME people do not confess - but it cannot remotely explain why not a single one of the hundreds of thousands of people who would have had knowledge of this supposed conspiracy ever admitted it.

Why would "hundreds of thousands" of people need to be in on it? NASA instructs a contractor to build a museum prop lunar lander by x date. The contractor isn't in the position to know the purpose of this lander, or whether it will used in a fraudulent moon film.

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That's not a very nice thing to say!  Wow!

Anyway - what you say is untrue.  Astronomers (some of my best friends are astronomers) do indeed do controlled experiments.   For example, the idea that the expansion of the universe results in a measurable red-shift in starlight.  That was a "hypothesis" - which was then tested by performing the experiment of looking at the spectra of light from many stars who's distance could be estimated by other means.   When the degree of red shift was found to accurately match the theoretical values - the hypothesis was proven and "The Hubble Hypothesis" became "Hubbles' Law".   Yes, they are scientists - yes, they do experiments.  No - they are not idiots.   No, not a single one of them believes in the Flat Earth and if they are conspiracists then not a single one of them has ever blabbed about it.

Observing the stars isn't an experiment.That's an observation. An experiment means you did something more than observe.

Do chemists observe chemicals at a distance and go off writing fantasies about the chemicals behave and how they are structured? No. Controlled experimentation to study the subject directly is required.

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Yes - but what about the software engineers who write the software to decode the signals from these radio sources and the hardware designers at places like Apple, Sony?   They have to write software that calculates positions of satellites - to assume that this is possible without understanding that the Earth is round is...beyond naive.  Honestly - either all of those people are in on the conspiracy - or there is no conspiracy.

The signals are just timestamps that tell you how far you are away from the broadcasting device. Location is determined by triangulation of three beacons.

Before GPS satellites the military used a world-wide network of towers called the LORAN system, which operated on the same principle. This principle has nothing to do with the shape of the world.

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Again, you're assuming that once the satellite is launched - that's the end of the story.   Of course it isn't.  Every one of those Dish Network electronics packs is running software written by someone who doesn't work for NASA or any of the launch companies that alters the dipole on the satellite disk to track the signal.  Really - the business of making and selling satellite TV receivers REQUIRES that you know how the satellites are placed - and if the world is really flat then an awful lot of people at Dish Network are "in on the conspiracy".   It's naive to assume otherwise.

Pointing a satellite dish into the sky does not tell you that the broadcasting device is in orbit around a globe.

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Many of your fellow FE'ers believe that.  I guess you personally do not - but if you don't, you have to explain how it is that antarctic explorers and the people who live for extended periods at the south pole are "in on the conspiracy".

I believe in the bi-polar model, so i don't have any issues with those claims.

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Again, your understanding of the very basics here is sadly lacking for someone who claims to be an expert in FET.   Navigation is a hell of a lot more than knowing which direction you're facing (which is really all you'd know from seeing which direction Polaris is in).   It's about calculating your latitude and longitude - from stellar, solar and lunar position observations which allow you to deduce the local time and therefore your position.

Those calculations - in fact the very way you measure the things that go into those calculations - are based on the presumption that the earth is an approximate sphere and that it rotates every 24 hours and that the sun is a VERY long way away so it's parallax may be ignored.

Imagining navigation to be as simple as you say is ridiculous.   Really - go learn some of the very BASIC facts of how ships navigated before GPS and other radio navigation aids before saying this kind of nonsense.

Really Tom - for someone who claims to be an expert (possibly THE expert) on FET, you really should get to understand the counter arguments.

I strongly recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_navigation to understand how exactly ships navigated before around 1900.  If you take the time to understand what this is saying - then you'll realise that the technique described cannot possibly work with FET being the way it is claimed to be.

So, again, you're left with literally MILLIONS of people today, and going back to the 1600's and earlier who are a part of this conspiracy - or the earth is round.

I also recommend the excellent book "Latitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time" by Dava Sobel - which explains the great lengths that people went to in order to navigate at sea.   It's a great read...and leaves an awful lot for you FE'ers to explain.

Altitude of Polaris above the horizon is equal to the observers' Geographical Latitude

To calculate your longitude, you simply need to work out the time difference between noon at your location and noon at the Prime Meridian.

I don't see how either are impossible on a Flat Earth.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: 3DGeek on July 15, 2017, 06:59:35 PM

Why would "hundreds of thousands" of people need to be in on it? NASA instructs a contractor to build a museum prop lunar lander by x date. The contractor isn't in the position to know the purpose of this lander, or whether it will used in a fraudulent moon film.

That's not a good argument.  Sure, if they'd ONLY been asked to make movie props - then that's what they'd have done.   But these defense contractors (some of which I've worked for BTW) say very clearly that they developed the REAL lunar lander, the REAL Saturn V launcher, the REAL Mars rovers.  Their employees built the machines in such a way that they could go to the moon (or land on mars or whatever).

Do you seriously imagine that their engineers couldn't tell the difference between building a movie prop and an actual machine that could produce five million lbs of thrust?

So EITHER they are in on the conspiracy - or they really built machines with the necessary capacity to do the things NASA wanted them to do...and now you're including the 400,000 NASA employees (at the time of Apollo) AND all of those contractors.

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That's not a very nice thing to say!  Wow!

Anyway - what you say is untrue.  Astronomers (some of my best friends are astronomers) do indeed do controlled experiments.   For example, the idea that the expansion of the universe results in a measurable red-shift in starlight.  That was a "hypothesis" - which was then tested by performing the experiment of looking at the spectra of light from many stars who's distance could be estimated by other means.   When the degree of red shift was found to accurately match the theoretical values - the hypothesis was proven and "The Hubble Hypothesis" became "Hubbles' Law".   Yes, they are scientists - yes, they do experiments.  No - they are not idiots.   No, not a single one of them believes in the Flat Earth and if they are conspiracists then not a single one of them has ever blabbed about it.

Observing the stars isn't an experiment.That's an observation. An experiment means you did something more than observe.

Do chemists observe chemicals at a distance and go off writing fantasies about the chemicals behave and how they are structured? No. Controlled experimentation to study the subject directly is required.

I think you're just playing with words here.  What's the difference between a prediction that's confirmed by an experiment versus one that's confirmed by an observation that had not been made before the prediction?

The OED defines "experiment" as:

   "A scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact."

...pointing a telescope at a star and making a measurement of it's red-shift to test the Hubble hypothesis is an experiment.

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Yes - but what about the software engineers who write the software to decode the signals from these radio sources and the hardware designers at places like Apple, Sony?   They have to write software that calculates positions of satellites - to assume that this is possible without understanding that the Earth is round is...beyond naive.  Honestly - either all of those people are in on the conspiracy - or there is no conspiracy.

The signals are just timestamps that tell you how far you are away from the broadcasting device. Location is determined by triangulation of three beacons.

Before GPS satellites the military used a world-wide network of towers called the LORAN system, which operated on the same principle. This principle has nothing to do with the shape of the world.


But there is a difference between GPS and Loran which is key here.   In Loran (which I actually worked on BTW) - the towers are fixed.  You know their latitudes and longitudes from fixed, unchanging data.   With GPS, the signal sources are moving...very rapidly in fact.  Each satellite is in a different orbit.   The timestamps (along with the unchanging speed of light) allow you to figure out how far you are away from each signal source - but that doesn't tell you where you are unless you know where the signal source is right now.   Hence GPS receivers have to calculate the orbital parameters of each satellite to know where they all are at any given moment.  Older hand-held GPS units actually display that information - but newer ones don't bother.  It's actually even more subtle than that - knowing that the gravitational field of the Earth isn't uniform and that the satellites are in rapid motion, Einstein's theories of Special and General relativity have to be included into the calculations.

All of this sophistication is done by software engineers at Google, TomTom, Apple and others...so either they - and all of their management - are all in on this conspiracy - or the Earth is round.

I wasn't born yesterday Tom - as I hope comes through in my writings, I have a sophisticated understanding of science and technology - and I know how these kinds of things work.

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Altitude of Polaris above the horizon is equal to the observers' Geographical Latitude

To calculate your longitude, you simply need to work out the time difference between noon at your location and noon at the Prime Meridian.

I don't see how either are impossible on a Flat Earth.

The thing is that the ability to have a clock that ran for long enough, and with enough precision on a rolling, tossing deck of a ship was impossible until the 1750's.   So in practice, you didn't know the time at the Prime Meridian with enough accuracy to navigate.

However, there were other approaches to this, not easy to do, but in common use on sailing ships for the previous 100 years at least...which are outlined in some detail in the Wikipedia article and book that I recommended to you.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 15, 2017, 08:32:26 PM
That's not a good argument.  Sure, if they'd ONLY been asked to make movie props - then that's what they'd have done.   But these defense contractors (some of which I've worked for BTW) say very clearly that they developed the REAL lunar lander, the REAL Saturn V launcher, the REAL Mars rovers.  Their employees built the machines in such a way that they could go to the moon (or land on mars or whatever).

NASA is in complete control of what is happening at their bases. NASA is pulling the strings and can manipulate it all without needing everyone to be "in on it".

Honeywell engineers, for example, may believe they they are making a device that will be used to detect carbon monoxide or smoke on the Spacelab, but NASA patents the technology and instead uses it for profit.

Computer Science Corporation programmers may be told, for example, that they were programming legitimate Apollo simulation software. Rather than used for legitimate training purposes, however, that simulation software is then taken and played back in mission control for the actual mission. In fact, Apollo flight director Gene Krantz let it slip in the documentary 'Failure is Not an Option' that mission control (including himself) could not tell the difference between a simulated lunar landing and a real one. He said that the sims were so realistic in every respect, that it was impossible to discern the difference.

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Do you seriously imagine that their engineers couldn't tell the difference between building a movie prop and an actual machine that could produce five million lbs of thrust?

So EITHER they are in on the conspiracy - or they really built machines with the necessary capacity to do the things NASA wanted them to do...and now you're including the 400,000 NASA employees (at the time of Apollo) AND all of those contractors.

Even if some machines were built do do what they needed to do, it does not follow that the machines were actually used for that purpose. NASA could order a production Curiosity Rover and then either trash it, sell it to a museum, sell off parts to a university, or parade it in front of politicians as they beg for more money. The design firm doesn't know.

The research that goes behind creating a real Curiosity Rover is helpful, too. Everything designed by anyone NASA contracts or hires belongs to NASA. NASA works to develop new technologies so they can proceed to patent and profit off of everything, as they do. NASA maintains a huge catalog of technologies it has helped to create, and maintains extensive business connections with large multi-nationals to license out or sell its tech. NASA invites the most prestigious universities to send its best and brightest students to intern at NASA so that NASA can take advantage of their creativity by patenting all of their creations for its own greed.

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I think you're just playing with words here.  What's the difference between a prediction that's confirmed by an experiment versus one that's confirmed by an observation that had not been made before the prediction?

The OED defines "experiment" as:

   "A scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact."

...pointing a telescope at a star and making a measurement of it's red-shift to test the Hubble hypothesis is an experiment.

Looking at a star through a telescope is called an Observational Study, and is different than an Experimental Study. See: http://www.differencebetween.net/science/difference-between-observational-study-and-experiments/

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Observational Study vs Experiments

Observational study and experiments are the two major types of study involved in research. The main difference between these two types of study is in the way the observation is done.

In experiments, the researcher will undertake some experiment and not just make observations. In observational study, the researcher simply makes an observation and arrives at a conclusion.

In an experiment, the researcher manipulates every aspect for deriving a conclusion. In observational study, no experiment is conducted. In this type of study, the researcher relies more on data collected.

In observational study, the researcher just observes what has happened in the past and what is happening now and draws conclusions based on these data. But in experiments, the researcher observes things through various studies. In other words, it can be said that there is human intervention in experiments whereas there is no human intervention in observational study.

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But there is a difference between GPS and Loran which is key here.   In Loran (which I actually worked on BTW) - the towers are fixed.  You know their latitudes and longitudes from fixed, unchanging data.   With GPS, the signal sources are moving...very rapidly in fact.  Each satellite is in a different orbit.   The timestamps (along with the unchanging speed of light) allow you to figure out how far you are away from each signal source - but that doesn't tell you where you are unless you know where the signal source is right now.  Hence GPS receivers have to calculate the orbital parameters of each satellite to know where they all are at any given moment.  Older hand-held GPS units actually display that information - but newer ones don't bother.  It's actually even more subtle than that - knowing that the gravitational field of the Earth isn't uniform and that the satellites are in rapid motion, Einstein's theories of Special and General relativity have to be included into the calculations.

All of this sophistication is done by software engineers at Google, TomTom, Apple and others...so either they - and all of their management - are all in on this conspiracy - or the Earth is round.

To account for special relativity effects for extremely fast moving beacons, it may helpful to have he velocity of the beacon embedded in the signal, but all that data would tell me is that the beacon is moving very fast over the Flat Earth. You will need to show that the data can only mean that it is an actual orbit around a Round Earth.

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The thing is that the ability to have a clock that ran for long enough, and with enough precision on a rolling, tossing deck of a ship was impossible until the 1750's.   So in practice, you didn't know the time at the Prime Meridian with enough accuracy to navigate.

However, there were other approaches to this, not easy to do, but in common use on sailing ships for the previous 100 years at least...which are outlined in some detail in the Wikipedia article and book that I recommended to you.

I didn't see anything in the wikipedia article you linked to except some references to some old methods using the moon or Jupiter as a substitute and mentions that they were difficult methods and not used often. The methods were not explained. If you have any critique with more substance, please share it.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: inquisitive on July 15, 2017, 09:13:55 PM
The operation of GPS systems is known, understood and documented.

Also the measurement of the angle of the sun from multiple positions at different times proves a round earth.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 15, 2017, 09:17:39 PM
The operation of GPS systems is known, understood and documented.

Also the measurement of the angle of the sun from multiple positions at different times proves a round earth.

Why not post the measurements for us then?
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: inquisitive on July 15, 2017, 09:23:04 PM
The operation of GPS systems is known, understood and documented.

Also the measurement of the angle of the sun from multiple positions at different times proves a round earth.

Why not post the measurements for us then?
Refer to the various websites that do.  Also see those that give the angles for aligning satellite dishes.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 15, 2017, 09:29:11 PM
The operation of GPS systems is known, understood and documented.

Also the measurement of the angle of the sun from multiple positions at different times proves a round earth.

Why not post the measurements for us then?
Refer to the various websites that do.  Also see those that give the angles for aligning satellite dishes.

Provide the links rather than saying "various websites." Thank you.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: inquisitive on July 16, 2017, 03:22:34 AM
The operation of GPS systems is known, understood and documented.

Also the measurement of the angle of the sun from multiple positions at different times proves a round earth.

Why not post the measurements for us then?
Refer to the various websites that do.  Also see those that give the angles for aligning satellite dishes.

Provide the links rather than saying "various websites." Thank you.
http://www.geosats.com/lookangle.html
https://www.sunearthtools.com/dp/tools/pos_sun.php?lang=en
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Position_of_the_Sun
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 16, 2017, 03:30:15 AM
The operation of GPS systems is known, understood and documented.

Also the measurement of the angle of the sun from multiple positions at different times proves a round earth.

Why not post the measurements for us then?
Refer to the various websites that do.  Also see those that give the angles for aligning satellite dishes.

Provide the links rather than saying "various websites." Thank you.
http://www.geosats.com/lookangle.html
https://www.sunearthtools.com/dp/tools/pos_sun.php?lang=en
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Position_of_the_Sun
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/

Thise are calculators, not "measurements of the angle of the sun from multiple positions at different times." Please post the real proof this time, thanks!
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: inquisitive on July 16, 2017, 03:40:58 AM
The operation of GPS systems is known, understood and documented.

Also the measurement of the angle of the sun from multiple positions at different times proves a round earth.

Why not post the measurements for us then?
Refer to the various websites that do.  Also see those that give the angles for aligning satellite dishes.

Provide the links rather than saying "various websites." Thank you.
http://www.geosats.com/lookangle.html
https://www.sunearthtools.com/dp/tools/pos_sun.php?lang=en
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Position_of_the_Sun
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/

Thise are calculators, not "measurements of the angle of the sun from multiple positions at different times." Please post the real proof this time, thanks!
We know the shape of the earth and these use that to calculate the results.  If you have any proof that the earth is any other shape then please provide it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_path describes the path of the sun, is there anything you disagree with?
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Rounder on July 16, 2017, 04:48:59 AM
"No one would believe?"  The FE side claims that the whole world already believes things the FE find ridiculous, why would no one believe this?  Airplanes reach targets thousands of miles away slowly; I don't think anyone would have trouble accepting that a missile could go higher and faster in order to reach that same target quickly.

Airplanes fly via lift. Rockets follow a ballistic trajectory, and a rocket full of rocket fuel only has enough power for about 100 miles before it starts dropping. Unless it gets into earth orbit or on a sub-orbital velocity, it's not going to go very far.

Yes, thank you Tom, I actually do know how rockets and airplanes work.  What I'm saying is that on a flat earth where nothing goes to space, the US and Soviet ICBM's DID NOT GO TO SPACE either.  Therefore, it must be true (on a flat earth) that missiles get where they're going by flying high and fast in the thin upper atmosphere, and if you are China or India why not just say so instead of joining the US and USSR in their big space lie?  Most people have only a vague idea of how things work outside their own areas of expertise, and most FE think the average person is pretty easily fooled by the round earth you find so preposterous; why wouldn't those same sheeple easily accept yet another preposterous explanation, this time covering a false description of how ICBM's work?


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If I pretend I have a back yard full of fire-breathing dragons threatening the kids next door, the neighbors wouldn't feel the need to also pretend to have their own dragons in an effort to comfort their kids; they would prove that dragons aren't a thing and therefore I don't actually have any.

How are you supposed to prove to your kids that dragons don't exist? That's called proving a negative and is incredibly difficult/impossible.

Well, they could start with your proof that the earth isn't a globe.  "Have you ever seen these 'dragons' that Rounder claims to have?  No?  Okay then, have you ever seen ANY dragons, anywhere?  No?  Well, why do you believe Rounder then?"  Plus, if this is what it takes to calm their kids down, I bet my neighbors would be willing to fly a drone into my 'dragon barns' to show the kids that they're empty, no dragons at all.  Even if it meant losing their drone.


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By the same token, if China or North Korea could prove that the nations with ICBMs are making the whole thing up, there is no need to pretend to have ICBMs of their own, because they aren't even a real thing (in that world)!

If North Korea said that our ICBM system was fake, how do you really see it playing out?

That would be far and away the most reasonable lie in the collection of crap the "Dear Leader" feeds his people (http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/NewsDetail/index/6/5186/10-Myths-That-Are-Facts-In-North-Korea-Kim-Jong-IL-Invented-The-Hamburger).  I think it would be quite eagerly accepted. 
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Smokified on July 18, 2017, 12:25:17 AM
a) There are multiple foreign nations who have travelled to space - many of whom are openly hostile to the USA.  None of them blabbed?

During the cold war the US expressed open skepticism against the Soviet Space Program, and vice-versa.

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b) There are multiple non-government agencies (SpaceX, for example) who would have to have been in collusion.  None of them blabbed?

NASA is actually composed entirely of non-governmental agencies called government contractors, public-private arms of the state which operate within the government's secure realms.

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c) Not one "death bed" confession from an astronaut?  Really?  Not a single one?

Buzz Aldrin's entire personal and professional life revolves around the fact that he was an Apollo astronaut. It has brought him fame and fortune and he has traveled around the country inspiring adults and children alike. Do you really think he would admit that he was a phoney?

Also, when people are sick they generally believe that they will pull out of it.

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d) What about all of those astronomers - they'd all have to be in on it.  Nobody blabbed?

Astronomers merely observe the sky and interpret. They are not scientists who put their subject matter under controlled conditions to come to the truth of a matter --they can't. Astronomy is not a real science. Astronomers are fake scientists.

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e) What about all of the people who build and sell GPS equipment, without satellites in orbit, GPS can't work the way it's claimed - but the people who write the software for these things would also have to be a part of the conspiracy.

The military built the GPS satellites and the military is publishing the spec.

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f) Ditto satellite TV companies.

Do you really think that Dish network is building and launching their own satellites single handedly?


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g) All of those ships, drones and aircraft that are claimed to be patrolling The Great Ice Barrier have to be in on the conspiracy - so do the people who build those ships, the people who supply them, the people who crew and repair them.   So do all of the countries who have navies down there who'd have spotted them.  So do all of the air-traffic control people who watch these aircraft land and take off in huge numbers.

Who claimed that the wall was guarded? Why are you making stuff up?

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h) Navigation by the stars can't work the same way in FE as it does in RE.  But sailing ships going back to the 1600's used this navigation technique...and their sailors wrote manuals about it - there are copious books on the subject.  Every commercial shipping company and every navy in the world would have had to be a part of the conspiracy.

Celestial navigation works by looking at the North Star and gauging where East and West are based on that. For the South it involves finding the Southern Cross.

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i) But hold on - the ancient Chinese had fleets that sailed around the pacific and indian oceans using celestial navigation - and they did this BEFORE they met the Europeans who were doing the same exact thing.   This means that they both, independently, discovered that the world is flat and separately decided to collude on this (seemingly) more bizarre round-earth solution to whatever problem caused them to do this coverup.

The North Star is North in the Flat Earth model. To find the direction of North the Chinese just had to find the North Star. It's the brightest one. Simple!

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j) Now add all of those sailors - not a single one of them came home from years at sea and told their wives and family that there was an enormous cover-up to hide the flat earth?

See above.

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k) The pirates of the caribbean and south seas had to navigate by the stars.  They LOVED upsetting the apple cart.   Why didn't a single one of them expose the secret FE navigation charts and whatever stood in for a theodolite?

See above.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!

How long did it take you to come up with this complete shit?
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: juner on July 18, 2017, 03:19:05 AM
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!

How long did it take you to come up with this complete shit?

Last warning. Next one is a week-long ban since you are coming off a 3-day ban for the exact same childish behavior.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 18, 2017, 03:42:20 AM
Yes, thank you Tom, I actually do know how rockets and airplanes work.  What I'm saying is that on a flat earth where nothing goes to space, the US and Soviet ICBM's DID NOT GO TO SPACE either.  Therefore, it must be true (on a flat earth) that missiles get where they're going by flying high and fast in the thin upper atmosphere, and if you are China or India why not just say so instead of joining the US and USSR in their big space lie?  Most people have only a vague idea of how things work outside their own areas of expertise, and most FE think the average person is pretty easily fooled by the round earth you find so preposterous; why wouldn't those same sheeple easily accept yet another preposterous explanation, this time covering a false description of how ICBM's work?

Well, there was a World War, in which people believe that the only reason Hitler couldn't reach the United States with his rockets is that he couldn't get them into orbit. It's not some obscure topic.

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Well, they could start with your proof that the earth isn't a globe.  "Have you ever seen these 'dragons' that Rounder claims to have?  No?  Okay then, have you ever seen ANY dragons, anywhere?  No?  Well, why do you believe Rounder then?"  Plus, if this is what it takes to calm their kids down, I bet my neighbors would be willing to fly a drone into my 'dragon barns' to show the kids that they're empty, no dragons at all.  Even if it meant losing their drone.

How would that prove that there are no such things as dragons? You see them all the time on TV and there are rumors around school that there is a dragon living in the forest.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: neutrinо on July 18, 2017, 08:58:21 AM
The operation of GPS systems is known, understood and documented.

Also the measurement of the angle of the sun from multiple positions at different times proves a round earth.

Why not post the measurements for us then?
Refer to the various websites that do.  Also see those that give the angles for aligning satellite dishes.

Provide the links rather than saying "various websites." Thank you.
http://www.geosats.com/lookangle.html
https://www.sunearthtools.com/dp/tools/pos_sun.php?lang=en
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Position_of_the_Sun
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/

Thise are calculators, not "measurements of the angle of the sun from multiple positions at different times." Please post the real proof this time, thanks!
Well, easily doable. Let's commit on a specific time and measure it. I'm in!
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Rounder on July 19, 2017, 12:54:15 PM
Well, they could start with your proof that the earth isn't a globe.  "Have you ever seen these 'dragons' that Rounder claims to have?  No?  Okay then, have you ever seen ANY dragons, anywhere?  No?  Well, why do you believe Rounder then?"  Plus, if this is what it takes to calm their kids down, I bet my neighbors would be willing to fly a drone into my 'dragon barns' to show the kids that they're empty, no dragons at all.  Even if it meant losing their drone.

How would that prove that there are no such things as dragons? You see them all the time on TV and there are rumors around school that there is a dragon living in the forest.

TV (photos are easily faked) and schoolyard gossip (shills) will not make my neighbors spend a gazillion dollars building dragon barns and buying dragon food to compete in a dragon arms race when they know there's no such thing as dragons.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: JoeTheToe on July 25, 2017, 06:24:21 PM
Also, when people are sick they generally believe that they will pull out of it.

Wait, what? Is this your own anecdotal experience, or are you referencing some proven claim? And how does this random assertion buttress the flat-earth argument?

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Astronomers merely observe the sky and interpret. They are not scientists who put their subject matter under controlled conditions to come to the truth of a matter --they can't. Astronomy is not a real science. Astronomers are fake scientists.

Huh. I wasn't aware that astronomers didn't make testable, predictive hypotheses, and then test them. But...still...I'll start taking FE seriously, when you predict the time, date, and path of future earth-visible solar eclipses.

Where are those predictions?

Where are the open-source, flat-earth equivalents of Stellarium (whose Newtonian and Einsteinian math can be viewed and verified by anyone to see how they predict future sky events)?

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The military built the GPS satellites and the military is publishing the spec.

Remind me again how GPS works? I'm sure it's in the Wiki, and I've seen you explain it a decade ago, but there are so many conflicting and nonsensical hand-wavy answers that I'm confused.

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Who claimed that the wall was guarded? Why are you making stuff up?

You know this is an intellectually dishonest answer. Just because you believe Antarctica may be a continent, doesn't mean all or most FE'ers do. Using the Zetetic method, I can confidently say that most FE'ers believe in the ice wall model. But then again, for at least a decade your approach has been to attack and distract, rather than offer up your own coherent, consistent hypotheses and testable predictions that you can be - gasp - tested and called out on.

So, instead of pretending that you have no idea what the ice wall model is, why not honestly address the question from that perspective? And/or your own opinion of that model?

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Celestial navigation works by looking at the North Star and gauging where East and West are based on that.

Huh? After all these years you still have no idea how celestial navigation works? That might explain why celestial navigation works under your vague, hand-wavy "dual swirling star domes" hypothesis works in your mind, in spite of the fact that it can't explain away the parallax problem for observers in different locations.

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The North Star is North in the Flat Earth model. To find the direction of North the Chinese just had to find the North Star. It's the brightest one. Simple!

Really? The North Star is the brightest? Are you sure about that?

This statement helps support my hypothesis that the main problem with FE'ers is that they don't get out much, and didn't spend much time outside as kids. People that spend much time outside at night (e.g. camping, star-gazing, or just hanging out) understand things like the basic geometry of celestial bodies, sunrises and sunsets, the relative apparent brightness of objects such as polaris, etc. (All using the Zetetic method.)
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: JoeTheToe on July 25, 2017, 06:39:13 PM
Well, there was a World War, in which people believe that the only reason Hitler couldn't reach the United States with his rockets is that he couldn't get them into orbit. It's not some obscure topic.

Are you saying you believe that ICBMs go into orbit, or that "people" believe that? You do know what the acronym "ICBM" actually stands for, and pretty much rules out - or strongly suggests not - entering orbit, right?

Are you saying that your FE model rules out the existence of ICBMs?
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: TomInAustin on July 25, 2017, 06:42:36 PM
The operation of GPS systems is known, understood and documented.

Also the measurement of the angle of the sun from multiple positions at different times proves a round earth.

Why not post the measurements for us then?

Why not post proof NASA is fake?
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: 3DGeek on July 25, 2017, 07:50:45 PM
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The North Star is North in the Flat Earth model. To find the direction of North the Chinese just had to find the North Star. It's the brightest one. Simple!

Really? The North Star is the brightest? Are you sure about that?

This statement helps support my hypothesis that the main problem with FE'ers is that they don't get out much, and didn't spend much time outside as kids. People that spend much time outside at night (e.g. camping, star-gazing, or just hanging out) understand things like the basic geometry of celestial bodies, sunrises and sunsets, the relative apparent brightness of objects such as polaris, etc. (All using the Zetetic method.)

Ha ha!  I hadn't noticed that blunder.  But indeed, Polaris is the 53rd brightest star and the 24th brightest in the northern hemisphere.

If you find the brightest star (Sirius) and follow that, you'd sail round in circles.

I think I can forgive Tom for this one though...it's a claim that's untrue in both FET and RET - so we'll just call it a mistake.  In truth, to navigate by Polaris, you have to find the right constellations and locate it from there.  In the patch of the sky it occupies, Polaris is quite bright and it's hard to mistake it for some other star once it's been pointed out to you.

Bad problem is, if you use Tom's approach, in FE you sail along a circular route that's much longer than the shortest route.

What makes him BADLY wrong about this one is that he's assuming that navigation is all about using the stars as a compass...which is kinda pointless since you already have one of those.   Navigation is about finding POSITION - which in RET means latitude and longitude - but in FET, it's a horrible mess because the huge optical distortions implied by "The Bishop Equation" make stellar navigation quite impossible without fully understanding that the earth is flat - and the seamen of yesteryear either didn't know that or there was a conspiracy back in the 1600's and throughout the long history of chinese sailors that would have encompassed vastly too many people to be plausible.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: JoeTheToe on July 25, 2017, 10:51:39 PM
Quote
The North Star is North in the Flat Earth model. To find the direction of North the Chinese just had to find the North Star. It's the brightest one. Simple!

Really? The North Star is the brightest? Are you sure about that?

This statement helps support my hypothesis that the main problem with FE'ers is that they don't get out much, and didn't spend much time outside as kids. People that spend much time outside at night (e.g. camping, star-gazing, or just hanging out) understand things like the basic geometry of celestial bodies, sunrises and sunsets, the relative apparent brightness of objects such as polaris, etc. (All using the Zetetic method.)

Ha ha!  I hadn't noticed that blunder.  But indeed, Polaris is the 53rd brightest star and the 24th brightest in the northern hemisphere.

If you find the brightest star (Sirius) and follow that, you'd sail round in circles.

I think I can forgive Tom for this one though...it's a claim that's untrue in both FET and RET - so we'll just call it a mistake.  In truth, to navigate by Polaris, you have to find the right constellations and locate it from there.  In the patch of the sky it occupies, Polaris is quite bright and it's hard to mistake it for some other star once it's been pointed out to you.

Bad problem is, if you use Tom's approach, in FE you sail along a circular route that's much longer than the shortest route.

What makes him BADLY wrong about this one is that he's assuming that navigation is all about using the stars as a compass...which is kinda pointless since you already have one of those.   Navigation is about finding POSITION - which in RET means latitude and longitude - but in FET, it's a horrible mess because the huge optical distortions implied by "The Bishop Equation" make stellar navigation quite impossible without fully understanding that the earth is flat - and the seamen of yesteryear either didn't know that or there was a conspiracy back in the 1600's and throughout the long history of chinese sailors that would have encompassed vastly too many people to be plausible.

Exactly, on celestial navigation. Tom can't answer that one, other than to grossly mischaracterize celestial navigation.

But his gaffe on polaris is an important and illuminating clue, IMO. I don't think it was a gaffe. I think we should read it exactly as he wrote it, and take him at his word. I think he literally has no idea how bright it is, and thinks that it is an important star because it is literally "the brightest". In the whole sky.

In the ten years I've read his posts (mostly off and occasionally on), it seems painfully, pitifully obvious that he doesn't get out much. He has a profoundly naive understanding of basic physical and geometric things in the world - not even relating to flat vs spheroid earth - that anyone who has spend much time outdoors, intrinsically understands. (Like the relative brightness of Polaris.) I think he literally sits inside all day stewing over the RE conspiracy and watching Youtube videos - completely oblivious to things like the movement of trees in the wind, the flocking of birds, the resistance of water to your body in it, the eerie glow of moonlight in a forest. (Though I seem to recall he had a professional occupation at one time, maybe still.) I haven't compiled a list, obviously, it's just an impression I've formed over the years. Via the Zetetic Method. He seems "booksmart" (arguably), but profoundly - dangerously - naive. I mean, he seems to not have noticeable cognitive deficiency - he seems to be not brain-damaged or mentally impaired. And yet at times you're left scratching your head, asking, "what the f--- is he talking about? Has he ever once been outdoors"?

I feel profoundly sorry for him. But back to the topic at hand: In summary, I don't think at all that the Polaris flub was a grammar mistake or other failure to adequately communicate. Besides, he has a long history of picking apart and dismissing arguments, based on obvious, trivial grammatical mistakes, and using it as pretext to abandon a debate that is leading to intellectually uncomfortable places. "Intellectual dishonesty" is his trademark. I'm not calling him a liar. There's a difference. He uses intellectually dishonest tactics to avoid honest, legitimate, fact and issues-based debate. And rather than submit his own theories to detailed analysis and constructive debate, he uses hand-wavy assertions, vague ad hominem attack, puts forth strawmen attacks that he clearly knows are such, and puts forth blatantly pedantic arguments to pick apart imperfect presentations of well-established RE arguments.

And yet, for those reasons, he's the perfect FE advocate. Also, he's online 24-7, 365, for the last ten years. (It would seem at least from random sampling.)

(He also uses an avatar photo that is at least ten years old, and I strongly suspected was that old then. Nothing wrong with being "old", just be honest. I don't use an avatar because 1] I don't plan on being here for years or even months, 2] I don't want anyone knowing that the real me even has time to engage such lunacy, etc. But I'm not dishonest in my presentation of who I am. I have a cousin who is seriously cognitively impaired not only from birth but through decades of heavy drug use. He believes that aliens are everywhere and abducting people all the time. He is very active online and uses a 30 year-old photo of himself! He was a reasonably handsome middle-age man then. Now he just looks like a fat old useless blob. That's not proof that Tom's photo is 20 years old. But if his avatar was, say, that of a 300 lbs 75 year-old man with a droopy stroke-face on one side, I'd have a heck of alot more empathy for him!)
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: 3DGeek on July 26, 2017, 05:06:42 PM
There is no doubt that Flat Earthers are not well travelled people.

Far *FAR* too many of their claims (moon rotation being my personal favorite) are completely obvious proofs of round earth - but unless you've travelled beyond Europe and North America - you'll never see the profound weirdness of the moon "on it's side".

Their maps of the round earth also reveal this.   The maps are a reasonable (although FAR from perfect) representation of Europe and North America - but become increasingly untenable once you go further south.

Their total failure to grasp how the stars appear in areas further South than about 45N show that they have never travelled far beyond their own backyards.

Growing up as I did in the UK, then spending a few years in Nairobi, Kenya brought a PROFOUND feeling of oddness when looking at the crescent moon looking like a cup or a hat instead of a letter 'C'.    Right now, when I look at the sun in Texas, it seems wrong.   When I spent time with a cousin in NewZealand and the whole thing was upside down...it's downright freaky.

That visual evidence brings it home in a visceral way that the Earth is round.

But unless you've seen that - preferably with your own eyes - it's possible to deny it or to come up with an explanation (as Tom did) that completely fails to produce the results that you can actually see.

So yes - we have people who have not experienced much of the world - or who have gone around with their eyes shut for much of the time.

However, this does not excuse them from listening to the experiences of people who have had that luxury.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: TomInAustin on July 26, 2017, 07:34:07 PM
There is no doubt that Flat Earthers are not well travelled people.

Far *FAR* too many of their claims (moon rotation being my personal favorite) are completely obvious proofs of round earth - but unless you've travelled beyond Europe and North America - you'll never see the profound weirdness of the moon "on it's side".

Their maps of the round earth also reveal this.   The maps are a reasonable (although FAR from perfect) representation of Europe and North America - but become increasingly untenable once you go further south.

Their total failure to grasp how the stars appear in areas further South than about 45N show that they have never travelled far beyond their own backyards.

Growing up as I did in the UK, then spending a few years in Nairobi, Kenya brought a PROFOUND feeling of oddness when looking at the crescent moon looking like a cup or a hat instead of a letter 'C'.    Right now, when I look at the sun in Texas, it seems wrong.   When I spent time with a cousin in NewZealand and the whole thing was upside down...it's downright freaky.

That visual evidence brings it home in a visceral way that the Earth is round.

But unless you've seen that - preferably with your own eyes - it's possible to deny it or to come up with an explanation (as Tom did) that completely fails to produce the results that you can actually see.

So yes - we have people who have not experienced much of the world - or who have gone around with their eyes shut for much of the time.

However, this does not excuse them from listening to the experiences of people who have had that luxury.


Where is Texas are you? Austin here (duh).

As for FEers not being well traveled, the majority of You Tubers (and a lot of passers by here) that I have seen seem to be flat out illiterate.  The types you can imagine handling snakes in a back woods church.  That's why it freaks me out that some of the FE posters seem to be educated and claim to have advanced degrees that require a lot of science courses.  Hmmm

Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 26, 2017, 07:52:26 PM
Huh. I wasn't aware that astronomers didn't make testable, predictive hypotheses, and then test them. But...still...I'll start taking FE seriously, when you predict the time, date, and path of future earth-visible solar eclipses.

Where are those predictions?

Check NASA's eclipse website. They are using a method created by a society of people who believed that the earth was flat.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Curious Squirrel on July 26, 2017, 08:38:28 PM
Huh. I wasn't aware that astronomers didn't make testable, predictive hypotheses, and then test them. But...still...I'll start taking FE seriously, when you predict the time, date, and path of future earth-visible solar eclipses.

Where are those predictions?

Check NASA's eclipse website. They are using a method created by a society of people who believed that the earth was flat.
Firstly, as pointed out in another thread, NASA doesn't rely strictly upon the Saros cycle for predictions. They also use a solved variation of the three body problem. But I'll leave that there.

Secondly, and more importantly since you like to bring it up, Babylonian atronomers and astrologers may have actually thought of the Earth as round. Unfortunately our knowledge of their society and culture is severely lacking. To blanketely say they believed the Earth was flat isn't very accurate. There are about a dozen ideas on how they thought of the Earth's shape, from a round hemisphere, to a series of up to 7 Earth's in some fashion. While the Earth being flat may have been a belief of the less educated of the populace, astronomers and their like appeared to mostly agree upon some form of spherical nature to the Earth.

In fact, during the Neo-Babylonian period (from whence Saros cycles come) the only surviving model we have is one that is Heliocentric, one most frequently put to/with Seleucus of Seleucia.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 26, 2017, 08:44:16 PM
Firstly, as pointed out in another thread, NASA doesn't rely strictly upon the Saros cycle for predictions. They also use a solved variation of the three body problem. But I'll leave that there.

That is incorrect. The book (https://eclipses.gsfc.nasa.gov/5MCSE/TP2009-214174.pdf) that describes the methods used for compiling the eclipse predictions describes the Saros Cycle as being the mechanism for finding the time of the eclipse.

Secondly, and more importantly since you like to bring it up, Babylonian atronomers and astrologers may have actually thought of the Earth as round. Unfortunately our knowledge of their society and culture is severely lacking. To blanketely say they believed the Earth was flat isn't very accurate. There are about a dozen ideas on how they thought of the Earth's shape, from a round hemisphere, to a series of up to 7 Earth's in some fashion. While the Earth being flat may have been a belief of the less educated of the populace, astronomers and their like appeared to mostly agree upon some form of spherical nature to the Earth.

In fact, during the Neo-Babylonian period (from whence Saros cycles come) the only surviving model we have is one that is Heliocentric, one most frequently put to/with Seleucus of Seleucia.

Since you claim to know more about Babylonia than leading scholars who tell us that they believed in a Flat Earth, maybe you should start a new thread with your findings.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Curious Squirrel on July 26, 2017, 08:48:54 PM
Firstly, as pointed out in another thread, NASA doesn't rely strictly upon the Saros cycle for predictions. They also use a solved variation of the three body problem. But I'll leave that there.

That is incorrect. Half of the book that describes the methods used for compiling the eclipse predictions describes the Saros Cycle as being the mechanism for finding the time of the eclipse.

Secondly, and more importantly since you like to bring it up, Babylonian atronomers and astrologers may have actually thought of the Earth as round. Unfortunately our knowledge of their society and culture is severely lacking. To blanketely say they believed the Earth was flat isn't very accurate. There are about a dozen ideas on how they thought of the Earth's shape, from a round hemisphere, to a series of up to 7 Earth's in some fashion. While the Earth being flat may have been a belief of the less educated of the populace, astronomers and their like appeared to mostly agree upon some form of spherical nature to the Earth.

In fact, during the Neo-Babylonian period (from whence Saros cycles come) the only surviving model we have is one that is Heliocentric, one most frequently put to/with Seleucus of Seleucia.

Since you claim to know more about Babylonia than leading scholars who tell us that they believed in a Flat Earth, maybe you should start a new thread with your findings.
What I stated is all laid out right here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_astronomy#Neo-Babylonian_astronomy) and I'm not speaking about Babylonia as a whole, but the astronomers and astrologers of the time. Even in Greece the idea of a round Earth was (at least early on) largely a view among the higher educated populace. At least based on what I've read while looking into this.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 26, 2017, 09:01:26 PM
What I stated is all laid out right here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_astronomy#Neo-Babylonian_astronomy) and I'm not speaking about Babylonia as a whole, but the astronomers and astrologers of the time. Even in Greece the idea of a round Earth was (at least early on) largely a view among the higher educated populace. At least based on what I've read while looking into this.

The cosmology clearly describes a Flat Earth. The cosmology is depicted in several of their texts. Why would you assume that their astronomers believed in a Round Earth? We will need some sort of evidence that the "astronomers and astrologers" of the time believed in something contrary to their published cosmology.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Curious Squirrel on July 26, 2017, 09:06:44 PM
What I stated is all laid out right here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_astronomy#Neo-Babylonian_astronomy) and I'm not speaking about Babylonia as a whole, but the astronomers and astrologers of the time. Even in Greece the idea of a round Earth was (at least early on) largely a view among the higher educated populace. At least based on what I've read while looking into this.

The cosmology clearly describes a Flat Earth. The cosmology is depicted in several of their texts. Why would their astronomy depict a Round Earth while society believed in a Flat Earth? We will need some sort of evidence that the "astronomers and astrologers" of the time believed in something contrary to their published cosmology.
Did you follow the link? Should have taken you directly to the Neo-Babylonian astronomy, which contained the Saros cycle discovery, and the explanation that our only surviving model depicts heliocentric, which has a round Earth. Above it also notes that Cosmology and Astronomy were separate things within Babylonia, which could explain the disconnect, not to mention the fact Saros (and somewhat the heliocentric model) were a 'late in life' discovery for the culture.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 26, 2017, 09:14:54 PM
What I stated is all laid out right here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_astronomy#Neo-Babylonian_astronomy) and I'm not speaking about Babylonia as a whole, but the astronomers and astrologers of the time. Even in Greece the idea of a round Earth was (at least early on) largely a view among the higher educated populace. At least based on what I've read while looking into this.

The cosmology clearly describes a Flat Earth. The cosmology is depicted in several of their texts. Why would their astronomy depict a Round Earth while society believed in a Flat Earth? We will need some sort of evidence that the "astronomers and astrologers" of the time believed in something contrary to their published cosmology.
Did you follow the link? Should have taken you directly to the Neo-Babylonian astronomy, which contained the Saros cycle discovery, and the explanation that our only surviving model depicts heliocentric, which has a round Earth. Above it also notes that Cosmology and Astronomy were separate things within Babylonia, which could explain the disconnect, not to mention the fact Saros (and somewhat the heliocentric model) were a 'late in life' discovery for the culture.

Our Flat Earth models are also Heliocentric. Heliocentric has nothing to do with the shape of the earth. It just means "sun at the center" and has to do with the sun being the center of rotation for the planets, as an explanation for their movements.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Curious Squirrel on July 26, 2017, 09:20:39 PM
What I stated is all laid out right here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_astronomy#Neo-Babylonian_astronomy) and I'm not speaking about Babylonia as a whole, but the astronomers and astrologers of the time. Even in Greece the idea of a round Earth was (at least early on) largely a view among the higher educated populace. At least based on what I've read while looking into this.

The cosmology clearly describes a Flat Earth. The cosmology is depicted in several of their texts. Why would their astronomy depict a Round Earth while society believed in a Flat Earth? We will need some sort of evidence that the "astronomers and astrologers" of the time believed in something contrary to their published cosmology.
Did you follow the link? Should have taken you directly to the Neo-Babylonian astronomy, which contained the Saros cycle discovery, and the explanation that our only surviving model depicts heliocentric, which has a round Earth. Above it also notes that Cosmology and Astronomy were separate things within Babylonia, which could explain the disconnect, not to mention the fact Saros (and somewhat the heliocentric model) were a 'late in life' discovery for the culture.

Our Flat Earth models are also Heliocentric. Heliocentric has nothing to do with the shape of the earth. It just means "sun at the center" and has to do with the sun being the center of rotation for the planets, as an explanation for their movements.
What FE model is Heliocentric? Every one I've seen has the sun scribing an orbit through the 'sky'/space above Earth. The Earth does not move about the sun in that model. That would not be heliocentric, but you could call it an off shoot I suppose.

Again though, why I mentioned Seleucus of Seleucia as the main standard listed there. His model has the Earth rotating about it's axis, and then circling the sun.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: JoeTheToe on July 26, 2017, 10:32:10 PM
Our Flat Earth models are also Heliocentric. Heliocentric has nothing to do with the shape of the earth. It just means "sun at the center" and has to do with the sun being the center of rotation for the planets, as an explanation for their movements.

Damn Tom, you're not even trying any more. That's no fun.

The Earth doesn't go around the sun in any FE model I'm aware of. Perhaps you could illuminate me. (With a spotlight?)

All of the known Heliocentric models [ie]xplicitly[/i] involve the Earth being just another planet revolving around the sun. Not one of them - from Aristarchus to Copernicus to Galilei to Newton to even Descartes, described a flat Earth upon which the other stuff swirled around (via incoherently explained and contradictory mechanisms while invoking answers to big questions with words like "Firmament" and "Celestial Gears"). They excplicitly described the Earth as just another planet (which they described as spherical - and few people believed in a flat Earth in antiquity anyway - I guess the conspiracy goes way, way back).

https://www.britannica.com/topic/heliocentric-system

So Tom, I've always wondered how or why you are so deeply enamored with the insufferably arrogant, unnecessarily flowery text of a 19th-century snake-oil salesman, who did nothing but make a series of confident but utterly unsupported assertions, each building on - and more silly than - the last - amounting to nothing more than supposition; while inventing rickety ad-hoc hyptotheses on top of ad-hoc hypotheses... all to arrive at conclusions such as, the oceans are supported by steam from the fires of hades? How does someone clearly smart enough to operate a computer fall for such nonsense? (But then, they are your "sacred texts" and you are looking for a "messiah". This s*** gets weirder every year.) I mean, if you want to believe in a flat earth, believe in a flat earth. But every time you reference Robotham, I think somewhere an angel is raped. Or at minimum, you lose credibility.

And yet, you casually disregard the even more ancient writings of sober people that weren't clearly having schizophrenic episodes?

Sheesh. Like I said, this isn't even fun anymore.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Tom Bishop on July 26, 2017, 11:16:38 PM
Heliocentric simply means that the planets revolve around the sun. The Flat Earth solar system is Heliocentric. The planets revolve around the sun.

The main difference is that under the Round Earth model the earth is a planet in the solar system, and the earth is therefore part of the Heliocentric system. However, under the Flat Earth model the earth is not a planet and is not in the solar system, and therefore the earth is not part of the Heliocentric solar system above it.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Curious Squirrel on July 26, 2017, 11:47:23 PM
Heliocentric simply means that the planets revolve around the sun. The Flat Earth solar system is Heliocentric. The planets revolve around the sun.

The main difference is that under the Round Earth model the earth is a planet in the solar system, and the earth is therefore part of the Heliocentric system. However, under the Flat Earth model the earth is not a planet and is not in the solar system, and therefore the earth is not part of the Heliocentric solar system above it.
I knew you were going to say that as soon as I posted my response. Respond to Joe please. You're claiming FE to be heliocentric, because the Earth is not a planet. You claim the Earth is not a planet because....yeah, I still don't understand how you claim that. As best I've gotten is that the Earth isn't a planet because it's flat. But why the Earth doesn't conform to literally every other observable body in the universe for structure? Don't think I've read anything in your wiki on that one.

Every (other if I must) heliocentric system is explicit in the fact that Earth too revolves around the sun. FE is NOT a heliocentric system.

You're also avoiding the subject, that the Babylonian's of the era and occupation that gave us the Saros cycle, appear to have believed in a round Earth model. So explain the relevancy of the age of the Saros cycle, in that context. You love to bring it up, but the people who made it believed in a round Earth.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: juner on July 27, 2017, 03:58:07 PM

Like I said. It's not even fun anymore. I don't know if you're losing your edge over the years or what - but this is really tedious. It's not even a Tom Bishop post anymore without some cutesy "gotcha", exit plan in case you get cornered, or back door to wiggle out of - and never an intellectual commitment to a single conjecture, lest it have holes poked in it and/or experimentally debunked.

Debating Tom is kind of like showing up to a gentleman's boxing match - rested and prepared, and with well-defined ethical rules of the bout...only to face off with a cowardly little fat little man who gets naked and smears grease all over himself, and does nothing but scurry about putting buckets of paint on top of ladders and lighting bags of dog poop on fire, giggling at his cleverness all the while.

You are pushing it. If you want to bitch about Tom, do it in AR or CN. But you are not going to continue to derail discussions in the upper fora. Warned (again).
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: juner on July 27, 2017, 05:06:45 PM
You are pushing it. If you want to bitch about Tom, do it in AR or CN. But you are not going to continue to derail discussions in the upper fora. Warned (again).

I must have missed it, what was the first warning?

Let me ask you an honest question: do you actually believe you have "power" on this dank little corner of the internet? You speak like you're trying to come off like you believe someone who speaks with authority would sound. Which is both funny and sad. (But mostly indifferent.) I try to conduct myself with decency and attack ideas not people (not always successfully) - because I try to not be a jerk, even anonymously. If anyone points out that I'm being a jerk, then that's not really up to me to disagree with, is it - and I offer thanks for pointing it out and adjust accordingly. (And as such, your observations are duly noted.) But the idea that some guy I don't know - with laughably absurd, rigidly dogmatic beliefs and an insufferably pedantic "communication" style - whom has earned the opposite of "respect", might ban me from a forum where nothing productive happens and is a huge time suck on humanity...is not as "threatening" as your daddy-tone seems to indicate that you believe.

Here's a tip: be a decent human being and ask others to behave like decent human beings when you think they aren't. Your role and software-based authority as a moderator is already understood.

Good day.

Sir!

Feel free to check replies to your posts to see where I have warned you (twice so far). Your derailing posts have been moved to the appropriate forum. (https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=6541.msg121105#msg121105) Please refrain from arguing moderation in threads where you were warned. It only serves to further derail the thread. If you have an issue, post it in the appropriate place. I am moving this post as well and giving you one final warning. Next one is a 3-day ban.

It has nothing to do with me having "power" and everything to do with you failing to follow simple rules.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Stu on July 28, 2017, 04:37:34 AM
The cosmology clearly describes a Flat Earth. The cosmology is depicted in several of their texts. Why would you assume that their astronomers believed in a Round Earth? We will need some sort of evidence that the "astronomers and astrologers" of the time believed in something contrary to their published cosmology.

Talk is cheap. Let's see those references.

Here's the references (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth#References) for the opposite of what you said.
Title: Re: Help me, I'm being deceived
Post by: Merkava on August 04, 2017, 03:14:50 AM

Like I said. It's not even fun anymore. I don't know if you're losing your edge over the years or what - but this is really tedious. It's not even a Tom Bishop post anymore without some cutesy "gotcha", exit plan in case you get cornered, or back door to wiggle out of - and never an intellectual commitment to a single conjecture, lest it have holes poked in it and/or experimentally debunked.

Debating Tom is kind of like showing up to a gentleman's boxing match - rested and prepared, and with well-defined ethical rules of the bout...only to face off with a cowardly little fat little man who gets naked and smears grease all over himself, and does nothing but scurry about putting buckets of paint on top of ladders and lighting bags of dog poop on fire, giggling at his cleverness all the while.

You are pushing it. If you want to bitch about Tom, do it in AR or CN. But you are not going to continue to derail discussions in the upper fora. Warned (again).
#fundthematch
#mymoneyonJoe
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