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Flat Earth Community / Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?

« on: May 13, 2018, 07:06:49 AM »

Does dismissing all evidence for a round earth count as irrationality?

I am asking because I am not sure I understand your meaning of irrational. As a word, it is something that gets thrown around so often that it's meaning is more "felt" than "defined". But I "feel" that the continued dismissal of evidence with no reasonn for that dismissal is as irrational as it can get.

It's a slippery word. I take it to mean simultaneously accepting things that cannot together be true ('contraries').

I think I suggested that continued dismissal of evidence was irrational in that the refusal to accept it suggests fear that one's belief is false, and so in some sense implies a belief that one's belief is false. This would of course be irrational.

An example someone gave me in a seminar many years ago was of someone who totally believes that spiders cannot sting, yet scuttles out of the way of a spider.

Maybe he’s afraid that they can bite!

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: True Horizon Level

« on: May 12, 2018, 12:43:25 PM »

Surely if you look UP at the sun, it implies that if you were standing on the sun and looking at the “plate” if the earth were flat, you’d be looking down?!

Lol this whole “horizon rises to eye level” thing makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, what does it actually mean, and what would it actually prove even if it happened? If it did always rise to meet eye level, it’d have to physically actually MOVE as I ascended, OR the plate would actually be concave like a shallow pudding bowl! That’s not flat either.

The phenomenon of the horizon extending with observer elevation seems to point to the earth beinf some sort of ball, does it not?

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Observation of Sun Size During the Day

« on: May 08, 2018, 08:14:26 PM »

Rowbotham also saw sunset differently from how I do:



The bottom 1/3rd of this sun isn't being "compressed" by perspective while the upper 2/3rd remain orb-like.
The angular diameter of this sun, at less than 1° elevation, is the same as it was at solar noon.

The sun doesn't "compress" to a vanishing point.

When he says “now consider what happens when the sun is setting”, does he mean receding?

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: On a globe Earth the horizon should not curve

« on: April 20, 2018, 05:28:26 PM »

Exactly. I mean it’s odd that those old seafaring dudes thought the earth was flat for so long; after all they used crows’ nests to see further, they must have seen the masts of other ships over the horizon, they must have chased the edge only to see it recede as they approached, they must have seen the tops of mountains lit up by the low sun as it rose or set. At some point all the evidence mounted up and they changed their world view. The earth was a ball, the sun was at the centre, etc.

Why are some people keen on going back to the time before that was made clear?

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: On a globe Earth the horizon should not curve

« on: April 20, 2018, 05:45:47 AM »

I’m new. I just heard about this flat earth stuff and was curious.

Am I being thick? Surely if you’re standing on a small island looking at the horizon all around you, you cannot tell whether you are standing on a ball or a plate. The horizon forms a sharply-defined circle all around you, 5 miles away. Because it’s 5 miles away it looks like a horizontal edge, whether it’s a large ball or a large plate.

The one way to find out whether it’s a ball or a plate is to step onto on a chair or go up a hill. If the plate stays the same size then you are on a 10 mile diameter plate.

But if the horizon recedes with elevation, what other conclusion can there be but that this plate must be domed or ball-shaped?

I must be lacking in my logical facilities not to be able to conceive of any other explanation - can someone help me understand how that can point to the earth being flat?

Oh and I read earlier someone saying the horizon rises to eye level. What does this mean? That the earth is actually concave? Or that when you look directly down at the horizon from a height then, well, you are looking directly at it so it meets your eye level? Or that it physically moves? Surely anything you look at meets your eye level, whether you have to look up at it or down at it? I just can’t grasp these concepts.