Thank you for all the interesting points. This post will hopefully be a summary of the entire conversation thus far for anyone just joining. Unfortunately, I can't respond to the 10 points RhesusVX and Mark Antony are debating (though still interesting to read) since the original points I made are already blowing up.
To start, I'd like to respond to Mark Antony's point about debates going bad once video evidence is introduced:
The only debates I've had in the past were futile efforts with globe fundamentalists who have nothing but distain for FET (so the above debate is a breath of fresh air to me). One of the brick walls I come up against in these debates was when using photographic or video evidence. Usually at this point I get dismissed for presenting videos rather than "real science" such as what is found in peer reviewed scientific journals (the debate always gets very sour when I ask for peer reviewed articles in support of the globe theory in return) And that's where the debate usually ends.
I don't think videos should be dismissed outright. Of course, they aren't published science, but that doesn't mean we can't personally apply the scientific method in how we analyze them!
I apologize that this thread is going to look like its derailing if you read it from the beginning. After so much talk of philosophy and the definition of science, we are going to start sharing videos with each other? I started this thread as a complete newcomer here not knowing what to expect. So I started with some philosophical points, then after a good conversation with jack44556677 I felt interested in shifting the focus of the conversation towards the NASA conspiracy and some evidence of Antarctica. Again, I believe philosophy will still bubble up after we have some concrete evidence to discuss. I know most members of this forum probably have had these conversations a thousand times already, so I appreciate your patience with me as I navigate through it all.
Now onto my main pints...
As Jack44556677 said:
before NASA et al FINALLY validated it in the "space age" (If you believe everything you see on tv...)
Yeah, tv sucks. I don't even have cable. So since we all agree that the whole thing hinges on NASA, let's get into it. No TV is required.
1. Moon Rocks (just me so far)
I'll start with a section straight from https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Third-party_evidence_for_Apollo_Moon_landings, "Existence and age of Moon rocks". Just go and read it, it's only a short paragraph. I see this as an example of some simple and straightforward evidence from multiple 3rd party sources that verify that NASA did collect moon rocks. Do you deny this?
Nobody has yet responded to this. Also quoting Mark Antony:
the fundamental differences lie in competing photographic and video evidence for and against FET
I don't think that's true, given this point about 3rd party research on moon rocks.
2. "Bubbles and Harnesses"? (MarkAntony and Stack)
I, like so many others, lost confidence in NASA on viewing video clips that had clearly been tampered with or in videos that clearly show bubbles outside the ISS or people attached to harnesses such as this one:
Thanks for sharing how you first lost confidence in NASA @MarkAntony, but can you break this down more for a newcomer or at least post some URLs for further reading? I don't understand the problem with harnesses or what is happening in that video.
I read through Stack's full response. It looks thorough, but I'm still missing the original argument about this video. was it there something that should have been there that wasn't or something that was there that shouldn't have been? Maybe whoever comments on this next can give a full outline of both sides for me or share some URLs for further reading?
3. Switching Views (MarkAntony)
Don't get me wrong, I experienced nothing short of mental turmoil when my mind was coming around to the idea that space, as we are shown, is not real and the earth is not as it seems. Now, 2 years on, I am very comfortable with it.
Bringing back some of the philosophical discussion, I think it worth asking you the same thing I asked Jack. What, if any evidence or observations would cause you to start believing NASA's expeditions really took place again?
4. Vacuum of Space (MarkAntony)
But I would like to touch on the thermodynamic impossibilities relating to the infinite vacuum of space that @jack44556677 touched on [...]
So, this could be a powerful argument on your side. If you could just clear this up: is your argument that NASA's
current explanation for how their spacesuits work inconsistent with physics as we know it? Or are you saying that their
past explanations are not consistent, the current one are, but that the fact that their explanations changed over time is the problem. In any case, if you could provide the mathematical proof or at least a reference to a reading or a URL, that could also help. After you expand this, I'll give a more full response.
5. The Conspiracy (MarkAntony and jack44556677)
I'll admit again I liked the way to flat earth wiki explained the conspiracy, and yes you and Jack make it sound significantly less implausible. This might be obvious to a lot of you, but the first couple paragraphs of the "Motive of the Conspiracy" section which says "There is no Flat Earth Conspiracy ... There is a Space Travel Conspiracy" was not at all what I expected, and sounded a lot less crazy then what I expected. And it's what lead me to want to focus on NASA, of course. Now another good reference for this topic is the "Number of conspirators involved" section of
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories. So yes, after reading both of these I've concluded that I don't have as much evidence to back up my claim that the conspiracy is inherently impossible as I thought I did. I think we have to leave this specific point as a stalemate. The existence of a conspiracy has not been proven or disproven, simple as that. I think we should have enough evidence from specific expeditions (videos, moon rocks, etc.) to make those conclusions.
6. Water Wringing Video and pre-CGI clips (Iceman2020 and Stack)
I'm also curious to hear someone's explanation for these.
7. Antarctica (Mark Antony and jack44556677)
the pictures of Antarctica you linked us are physically impossible to acquire. Just look at how the earth is illuminated - almost perfect uniform lighting over an entire hemisphere. This is not possible at any time of day. The complete lack of cloud cover over vast expanses of the earth is another tell-tale sign.
Here's the image again for reference.
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003400/a003402/index.htmlSaying this image is physically impossible to acquire is quite a strong claim. Let's get into it.
7.1 Almost perfect uniform lighting
I don't have any specific references for this, but I think I've heard many times that NASA colorizes and in other ways modifies some of its images since the originals are not easy or even possible to see with the human eye. I'm not saying for sure that this image was modified, but just that it's possible. And of course, it being modified isn't evidence that it is fake.
7.2 complete lack of cloud cover over vast expanses of the earth
For one thing, I see a lot of clouds in the images. And even if some areas lack clouds in the images (like the American Midwest), what does that prove? You're saying that you know for a fact that on that particular day there were large visible clouds in the spot visible from space, but NASA's images suspiciously don't show those clouds? I'm not sure if I'm following your logic or not.
In conclusion about this image, I believe it's a stalemate. I don't think it's possible to prove these images are real or fake, so I don't think they stand as evidence in either direction. Again, I think we have better evidence to go on.
8. Just some discussionI don't anymore feel the need to contest the physics of FET at all in this thread. Rather, since the entire theory depends on the NASA conspiracy, that's the only topic logically necessary. And as we can see, that alone is a HUGE topic!
There are people who beleive in the NASA conspiracy but still don't believe in FET. So it can be discussed in isolation of FET. This is in line with the FET wiki, which states that NASA believes the world is a globe so that is how it presents it. I'd wager that if FET was somehow disproven independently of NASA, a lot of former FET believers would continue to be NASA conspiracy believers since the NASA conspiracy does not logically depend on FET.