[Dr David Thork]

Should I have accepted the testimony of priests as proof of miracles?

If the priests had recorded data from their miracles, and if others got the same data by different methods for the same miracle, then maybe you should have....

5000 people witnessed Christ turn 2 loaves and 5 fish into a feast for all of them.
200 hundred guests at a wedding in Cana saw Christ turn water into wine.
Countless people saw Christ walk on water in the sea of Galilee.
12 Apostles witnessed him net miraculous catches of fish to feed them all.
100's of lepers were cured.

I have sources such as the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark etc, artwork such as the Sistine Chapel, letters to Paul, hymns, songs, poetry, books, Roman ledgers, and more recently wikipedia.

How many sources do I need, and how many proofs are necessary to endorse Jesus Christ as a wizard?

If so, this is something any layperson can test

Yes.

and we can use it to blow the whole conspiracy open.

No. As soon as you do you end up in the same place as priests without faith. Deplatformed, ridiculed, branded an idiot, powerless. Welcome to the flat earth society.

[Westprog]

Yes, there is a part on that, which is why I told you to read ENaG. You think I want to reiterate the book every time someone bring us an objection that the book covers? I've been at TFES for the better part of a decade. Read the ruddy book if you want the answers, and then come back if you want to critique its points.


http://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/za/za49.htm

Well, I actually read that. Or at any rate, as much as I could take. It's a genuine curiosity. There are probably people from the Southern Hemisphere reading this thread. It's possible to talk to people from the other side of the Earth live on Skype. So the waffle about Captain Ross and the idiotic nonsense about magic refraction is totally irrelevant. It is open to anyone to do the measurements live, not rely on antique documents.

The idea that the only way to tell when the Sun rises is to research ancient documents is so spectacularly wrong-headed that it's impossible to even refute it.

I'll note that the obfuscated and confusing language is no accident. Read through the bizarre word salad and you might not follow the reasoning (in fact, you certainly won't) but there's certainly plenty of it!

So far the whole matter is clear and easily understood; but in the second case, given by Captain Ross, a word is used which renders the meaning uncertain, and creates a difficulty; that word is "southern." "At midnight, in latitude 74° S., the sun was skimming along the southern horizon at an altitude of about 2°." Here, then, is evident confusion. First, it could not be the southern horizon, unless the earth is a globe; that it is not a globe has been more than sufficiently proved.

So there's an actual reference to something which is used to prove the flat Earth theory. However, the reference actually disproves the theory. So we simply ignore the testimony which contradicts the flat Earth.

That's why the arguing is ultimately futile. That someone can actually point to a reference that disproves his own contention, but say that it actually supports it because the contention is true... that's not something that can be refuted by normal argument. We're dealing with something quite different here. My own interest in this topic is purely to examine how this form of non-reasoning happens, because it's not just in the case of the flat Earth that it's prevalent.

[Opeo]

Yes.

Excellent

No. As soon as you do you end up in the same place as priests without faith. Deplatformed, ridiculed, branded an idiot, powerless. Welcome to the flat earth society.

That's because you guys have been doing it all wrong this whole time. Instead of asking where the stars are on pictures of the Apollo missions or whatever, all you need to do is bring up this one thing. Which, let's dive in shall we.

Ideally we'd both book just plane tickets now, but I know that's not going to happen, so let's get some primary sources.

Sydney
Sydney, Australia sits at a latitude of 33.8° S. And is home to the newspaper of record for Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald. Almost two years ago, The Morning Herald wrote this piece merely for the information of the locals, with nothing to do with the shape of the Earth: https://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/sydney-welcomes-winter-solstice-the-shortest-day-of-the-year-20160620-gpnkyj.html

On or around June 21, the sun is at its furthest point from the equator, appearing lower in the sky.

This point of the sun's 'declination' will happen at exactly 8.34am AEST on Tuesday.

According to Geoscience Australia, the sun will rise in Sydney at 7am and set at 4.54pm.

So, unless you think The Morning Herald is mistaken, data point one puts Sydney at 9 hours, 54 minutes of sun on the winter solstice.

Another Australian news site wrote this article for the 2016 summer solstice: http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2016-12-20/summer-solstice-earliest-sunrise-and-latest-sunset/8097844

This piece announces the sunset on December 21st, 2016 to occur at 9:44 PM, for a day length of 14 hours and 25 minutes. So those are our two data points so far.

Los Angeles
Next let's find a city near 33.8° N. Los Angeles is probably the best option: the city center sits on 34.0° N so any differences will be minutes at most.

For LA it was harder to find articles in the LA Times talking about it, but here's Time magazine: http://time.com/5075624/shortest-day-year-winter-solstice-sunset-time/

Los Angeles’s winter solstice sunset will take place at 4:48 p.m. and will see nine hours and 55 minutes of daylight.

And here's the longest day: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/los-angeles?month=6

This puts the longest day at 14 hours, 25 minutes and 4 seconds in LA.


In conclusion: across 4 entirely different sources I got the times of 9 hours, 54 minutes and 14 hours, 25 minutes for Sydney at 33.8° S, and the times of 9 hours, 55 minutes and 14 hours, 25 minutes for LA at  34.0° N. That seems pretty symmetric to me, it's not looking good for Rowbotham. Would you like for me to do more? Or are you ready to admit that the spotlight-sun flat Earth model doesn't work?

[Westprog]

In conclusion: across 4 entirely different sources I got the times of 9 hours, 54 minutes and 14 hours, 25 minutes for Sydney at 33.8° S, and the times of 9 hours, 55 minutes and 14 hours, 25 minutes for LA at  34.0° N. That seems pretty symmetric to me, it's not looking good for Rowbotham. Would you like for me to do more? Or are you ready to admit that the spotlight-sun flat Earth model doesn't work?

I will also note - the population of Los Angeles is about 4 million, that of greater Sydney, about 5 million. Concealing sunrises and sunsets from that many people would be quite a major undertaking. Sunsets and sunrises are quite visible phenomena.

One is then faced with a number of options:

• Reject the entire flat Earth hypothesis (Just kidding. This obviously won't happen)
• Reject the data and insist that the exact match between the equinoxes is faked in some way
• Accept the data and insist that it actually proves flat Earth theory
• Accept the data and insist that some unknown law totally explains it
• Link to some book or video that supposedly explains the whole thing
• Issue a warning to the people talking about this
• Ignore the whole thing. (I suspect this is the winner).

I can't think of any other possibilities. Well, there's my own multiple-sun theory, which I may start pushing for real on some other flat Earth forums and see if they go for it.

[wRadion]

So it seems that the discussion is not at all related to what I was first asked to a flat-earther, and I didn't even got a response x).

Just to recenter the debate:
The original question was, if you think "they" lie to us about the earth shape, why do you believe (if that's the case) the shape of the countries are right?

In other words, why would you believe anything that "they" told us from the first place? At this point, any flat-earther has to be a conspirationist (I don't know if that's the term for it but I hope you understand) from A to Z, like ALL flat-earther has to believe that everything is a conspiracy or else there is absolutely no reason to believe that "they" lie to them about something and not some other things. I mean, the first sentence you read when you go to their website is "It's true, I saw it on the Internet!" (should have been more like "I saw/learned it on <insert any media>!" but anyway...).

I'm not talking about scientific facts, timezones, proofs, or whatever. I just want to know the reasoning of a flat-earther on this particular topic.

Also, I saw a very good question in a comment on YouTube, can a flat-earther answer it? :3

[BrownRobin]

Should I have accepted the testimony of priests as proof of miracles?

If the priests had recorded data from their miracles, and if others got the same data by different methods for the same miracle, then maybe you should have....

5000 people witnessed Christ turn 2 loaves and 5 fish into a feast for all of them.
200 hundred guests at a wedding in Cana saw Christ turn water into wine.
Countless people saw Christ walk on water in the sea of Galilee.
12 Apostles witnessed him net miraculous catches of fish to feed them all.
100's of lepers were cured.

I have sources such as the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark etc, artwork such as the Sistine Chapel, letters to Paul, hymns, songs, poetry, books, Roman ledgers, and more recently wikipedia.

How many sources do I need, and how many proofs are necessary to endorse Jesus Christ as a wizard?

If so, this is something any layperson can test

Yes.

and we can use it to blow the whole conspiracy open.

No. As soon as you do you end up in the same place as priests without faith. Deplatformed, ridiculed, branded an idiot, powerless. Welcome to the flat earth society.

Baby Thork,

Is the Flat Earth Society a conspiracy group (like the Illuminati); that exists for reasons for profit and embezzlement of funds into the pockets of high ranking FES members?

- Flat Earther and rapper B.o.B. crowdfunded $1 million via GoFundMe to launch a satellite to see if he could detect for himself the curvature of the Earth. How do we know exactly where this money is going?

- For this years Flat Earth conference, full access tickets cost up to $349 (for a VIP ticket) to $299 (for only a 2-day pass). Where is all of this money going? Full access tickets to DisneyLand / DisneyWorld cost less than this. 

- "Mad Mike" Hughes is trying to raise capital through promotion of his steam-powered rocket and exploratory efforts to proven FE. How do we know that he isn't just going to pocket all of this money or squander all of this money for himself? Seems kind of fishy to me.

- FE Society exists to try and keep people like you and me from thinking they can go to space. If they have us believing that space travel is not possible, than FE believers will keep buying FE stuff and they will keep spending money to go to the FE conferences.

- Some FE say that there exists pictures of the Antarctic Ice Wall. This has to be fakery and done with CGI graphics. They likely faked the picture of the Ice Wall in a studio, with paid actors, or they faked this in a backyard setting in Canada or Alaska.

- Flat Earthers are simply mistaken about the shape of the Earth and think that it is Flat because that's what they assume it to be.

[Opeo]

So it seems that the discussion is not at all related to what I was first asked to a flat-earther, and I didn't even got a response x).

Just to recenter the debate:
The original question was, if you think "they" lie to us about the earth shape, why do you believe (if that's the case) the shape of the countries are right?

In other words, why would you believe anything that "they" told us from the first place? At this point, any flat-earther has to be a conspirationist (I don't know if that's the term for it but I hope you understand) from A to Z, like ALL flat-earther has to believe that everything is a conspiracy or else there is absolutely no reason to believe that "they" lie to them about something and not some other things. I mean, the first sentence you read when you go to their website is "It's true, I saw it on the Internet!" (should have been more like "I saw/learned it on <insert any media>!" but anyway...).

I'm not talking about scientific facts, timezones, proofs, or whatever. I just want to know the reasoning of a flat-earther on this particular topic.

Also, I saw a very good question in a comment on YouTube, can a flat-earther answer it? :3

The problem with this approach is anyone who already believes that every government, scientist, and professor is lying to them is just going to shrug it off. Their thought process isn't really I did some experiments and they showed that the Earth is flat, it's that the globe doesn't feel right intuitively at first glance and of course the government is lying about it, they lie about everything. They've already placed themselves in the opposite tribe as the experts, and so telling them what scientists say would be like trying to get a Bernie Sanders-voter to support something because Trump said it or a Tea Party-er to believe in Obama's new movement. Why did the UN put the flat Earth on their flag? It's because they're evil Jews who are laughing at the sheeple, and only me and my twitter feed know otherwise. Why has NASA forgotten to photoshop stars into every single brightly-lit picture of the ISS and moon landings? It's because they're stupid and lazy, and I'm the first person in 50 years to notice the mistake.

Instead, the best way to debate someone with such a different world-view is to stick to hard facts, get them to lay out their position ahead of time, and then use neutral unbiased sources to step-by-step disprove it. Any argument through psychology or statistics just won't stick because they're operating on an entirely different set of assumptions than you and me.

[wRadion]

Yeah. That's very hard to debate with people like that.

I just watched a video (in french) with a very interesting introduction. I'll try to translate it :

Imagine you are a man coming home 2 hours late. Your wife was waiting for you, and she obviously asks: "Where have you been? You've been with another girl, don't you?".
You have now 3 answers possible :
- You just say that that was the case, you slept with another woman. So she just screams at you and leaves you. So you lost.
- You say that you were in a restaurant with colleagues, so she replies "That's exactly what you would say if you were seeing another woman. I'm leaving you, bye." You lost again.
- The last chance is to present a proof, you give her the restaurant bill, with the right hour, date, and everything. She replies: "This is obviously fake, you asked a friend to give you his bill. I don't want to see you again.". Oh noes, you lost again .

The morale is; whatever you say or show to someone, they can easily prove you that you're wrong, unless you have a solid hard proof of this thing.
- In this case, they were no hard proof. The only thing that you could have done is taking your wife to the restaurant so she can see for herself what you were doing.
- For this flat-earth theory, the ultimate proof would be to take a flat-earther into space and show them the globe earth spinning before their own eyes.

So basically, today, that's impossible to prove that they are wrong. And don't get me wrong, it's also impossible to prove that the earth is a globe without relying on modern physics and sciences. Because, yeah, obviously all those globe earth pictures and videos are fake. The government is paying infographists all around the world just to fake some pictures for some reasons that are yet to be discussed by any flat-earther.

I tried really hard to understand flat-earthers. I've seen a lot of videos explaining why the flat earth theory works, and I've seen most of those explanations debunked with modern sciences. I think I'm gonna stop here and just let them in their own disillusion. Ignoring people is the fastest way to get rid of them on the internet. I'm hoping everything will do that at some point.

At this point, this is exactly like a religion : You can not prove someone that god doesn't exist, and you can not prove that he (or she/it, whatever) exists. I just hope that all these flat-earther stay away as far as possible from the scientific and education world. I don't want my kids to be educated by one of them.

So please, I don't think this message will be seen by everyone but, just leave them alone with their religion. Your just giving them visibility if you try to argue with them.

So enjoy your religion with yourselves, flat-earther, and just let us "sheeps" helping building the actual future of the human race.

[Opeo]

Yeah. That's very hard to debate with people like that.

I just watched a video (in french) with a very interesting introduction. I'll try to translate it :

Imagine you are a man coming home 2 hours late. Your wife was waiting for you, and she obviously asks: "Where have you been? You've been with another girl, don't you?".
You have now 3 answers possible :
- You just say that that was the case, you slept with another woman. So she just screams at you and leaves you. So you lost.
- You say that you were in a restaurant with colleagues, so she replies "That's exactly what you would say if you were seeing another woman. I'm leaving you, bye." You lost again.
- The last chance is to present a proof, you give her the restaurant bill, with the right hour, date, and everything. She replies: "This is obviously fake, you asked a friend to give you his bill. I don't want to see you again.". Oh noes, you lost again .

The morale is; whatever you say or show to someone, they can easily prove you that you're wrong, unless you have a solid hard proof of this thing.
- In this case, they were no hard proof. The only thing that you could have done is taking your wife to the restaurant so she can see for herself what you were doing.
- For this flat-earth theory, the ultimate proof would be to take a flat-earther into space and show them the globe earth spinning before their own eyes.

So basically, today, that's impossible to prove that they are wrong. And don't get me wrong, it's also impossible to prove that the earth is a globe without relying on modern physics and sciences. Because, yeah, obviously all those globe earth pictures and videos are fake. The government is paying infographists all around the world just to fake some pictures for some reasons that are yet to be discussed by any flat-earther.

I tried really hard to understand flat-earthers. I've seen a lot of videos explaining why the flat earth theory works, and I've seen most of those explanations debunked with modern sciences. I think I'm gonna stop here and just let them in their own disillusion. Ignoring people is the fastest way to get rid of them on the internet. I'm hoping everything will do that at some point.

At this point, this is exactly like a religion : You can not prove someone that god doesn't exist, and you can not prove that he (or she/it, whatever) exists. I just hope that all these flat-earther stay away as far as possible from the scientific and education world. I don't want my kids to be educated by one of them.

So please, I don't think this message will be seen by everyone but, just leave them alone with their religion. Your just giving them visibility if you try to argue with them.

So enjoy your religion with yourselves, flat-earther, and just let us "sheeps" helping building the actual future of the human race.

I'm with you. The only real reason to post here is if you get some perverse enjoyment out of it, like I do. Plus I think it's healthy and helpful to be asked justify and explain your own worldviews, but that only lasts so long.

However I'm with you with it mostly being futile. That's why I've been trying to set up debates where we start by strictly framing the problem first. If you can set up the problem and get all parties to agree that If A is true then flat Earth, if A is false then globe Earth, then you avoid the trap of all evidence proving a flat Earth, regardless of what it is.

[BrownRobin]

Yeah. That's very hard to debate with people like that.

I just watched a video (in french) with a very interesting introduction. I'll try to translate it :

Imagine you are a man coming home 2 hours late. Your wife was waiting for you, and she obviously asks: "Where have you been? You've been with another girl, don't you?".
You have now 3 answers possible :
- You just say that that was the case, you slept with another woman. So she just screams at you and leaves you. So you lost.
- You say that you were in a restaurant with colleagues, so she replies "That's exactly what you would say if you were seeing another woman. I'm leaving you, bye." You lost again.
- The last chance is to present a proof, you give her the restaurant bill, with the right hour, date, and everything. She replies: "This is obviously fake, you asked a friend to give you his bill. I don't want to see you again.". Oh noes, you lost again .

The morale is; whatever you say or show to someone, they can easily prove you that you're wrong, unless you have a solid hard proof of this thing.
- In this case, they were no hard proof. The only thing that you could have done is taking your wife to the restaurant so she can see for herself what you were doing.
- For this flat-earth theory, the ultimate proof would be to take a flat-earther into space and show them the globe earth spinning before their own eyes.

So basically, today, that's impossible to prove that they are wrong. And don't get me wrong, it's also impossible to prove that the earth is a globe without relying on modern physics and sciences. Because, yeah, obviously all those globe earth pictures and videos are fake. The government is paying infographists all around the world just to fake some pictures for some reasons that are yet to be discussed by any flat-earther.

I tried really hard to understand flat-earthers. I've seen a lot of videos explaining why the flat earth theory works, and I've seen most of those explanations debunked with modern sciences. I think I'm gonna stop here and just let them in their own disillusion. Ignoring people is the fastest way to get rid of them on the internet. I'm hoping everything will do that at some point.

At this point, this is exactly like a religion : You can not prove someone that god doesn't exist, and you can not prove that he (or she/it, whatever) exists. I just hope that all these flat-earther stay away as far as possible from the scientific and education world. I don't want my kids to be educated by one of them.

So please, I don't think this message will be seen by everyone but, just leave them alone with their religion. Your just giving them visibility if you try to argue with them.

So enjoy your religion with yourselves, flat-earther, and just let us "sheeps" helping building the actual future of the human race.

I'm with you. The only real reason to post here is if you get some perverse enjoyment out of it, like I do. Plus I think it's healthy and helpful to be asked justify and explain your own worldviews, but that only lasts so long.

However I'm with you with it mostly being futile. That's why I've been trying to set up debates where we start by strictly framing the problem first. If you can set up the problem and get all parties to agree that If A is true then flat Earth, if A is false then globe Earth, then you avoid the trap of all evidence proving a flat Earth, regardless of what it is.

The FE Society is on borrowed time and clinging to thin scraps of what they try to fit into their world view to be true.

What they believe rests on a very unsteady house of cards; much of it dependent upon the notion of fake space travel and a perverted view that the Earth is the center of the solar system with a very small sun going around overhead like a spotlight.

FES members talk about using principles like the Zetetic method which is an empirical and scientific question and answer approach, but then they subscribe to believing in hoaxes which is the total opposite approach as the Zetetic method intended.

It's going to be a matter of time when space travel and the like become so common (like traveling across the ocean in an airplane) that a Round Globe Earth will no longer be disputable.

I am only on this site because I think it is fascinating that there are still people that believe the Earth is flat. At first I thought it was a joke. To me, seeing folks like Tom Bishop, Pete, etc..  discuss their Flat Earth belief and the logic behind this belief is like what people believed in the 15th or 16th century. 

Then there are members like J-Man that believe in a FE but have a "fire and brim-stone" literal type of belief that the Earth is Flat because of scripture.

It's really fascinating.

[Tom Bishop]

FES members talk about using principles like the Zetetic method which is an empirical and scientific question and answer approach, but then they subscribe to believing in hoaxes which is the total opposite approach as the Zetetic method intended.

Sure, if we just claimed a hoax and cited nothing to support it, you might have a point. But that is not what we have been doing.

[wRadion]

Yea that's cool and all, zetetic and stuff... Can I get an answer, one day? From an actual flat-earther?

[Opeo]

FES members talk about using principles like the Zetetic method which is an empirical and scientific question and answer approach, but then they subscribe to believing in hoaxes which is the total opposite approach as the Zetetic method intended.

Sure, if we just claimed a hoax and cited nothing to support it, you might have a point. But that is not what we have been doing.

Hey Tom. Can I get your opinion on the issue I raised for the "spotlight" model, where it drastically underestimates the amount of sunlight we actually see south of the equator? I lay out my arguments here:

https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=9082.msg143291#msg143291
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=9082.msg143298#msg143298

I'd genuinely like to get your opinion, I've raised it a few times now and never gotten a satisfactory counter-argument.

[Westprog]

However I'm with you with it mostly being futile. That's why I've been trying to set up debates where we start by strictly framing the problem first. If you can set up the problem and get all parties to agree that If A is true then flat Earth, if A is false then globe Earth, then you avoid the trap of all evidence proving a flat Earth, regardless of what it is.

I agree that this is the optimum approach. However, it is as doomed as all the others. You'd think it would be straightforward to get the FE crowd to agree to an experiment, easily performed by ordinary people, which would demonstrate the truth or falsity of the hypothesis. However, you'll never get them to accept that any experimental result could ever disprove the Flat Earth, because they start with the premise that the flat Earth is true, and that things that seem to disprove it should be ignored.

[Westprog]

I am only on this site because I think it is fascinating that there are still people that believe the Earth is flat. At first I thought it was a joke. To me, seeing folks like Tom Bishop, Pete, etc..  discuss their Flat Earth belief and the logic behind this belief is like what people believed in the 15th or 16th century. 

Then there are members like J-Man that believe in a FE but have a "fire and brim-stone" literal type of belief that the Earth is Flat because of scripture.

It's really fascinating.

For me, it's a useful exercise because when you see the arguments used to defend an obviously false hypothesis like the flat Earth, you can tease out the common elements. The same arguments used by flat Earthers are used by a wide range of people out there. All the logical fallacies and absolute certainty prevalent here is out there among the sane people too.

[inquisitive]

FES members talk about using principles like the Zetetic method which is an empirical and scientific question and answer approach, but then they subscribe to believing in hoaxes which is the total opposite approach as the Zetetic method intended.

Sure, if we just claimed a hoax and cited nothing to support it, you might have a point. But that is not what we have been doing.

Yet you still fail to describe how you would determine the size and shape of the earth.

[AATW]

FES members talk about using principles like the Zetetic method which is an empirical and scientific question and answer approach, but then they subscribe to believing in hoaxes which is the total opposite approach as the Zetetic method intended.

Sure, if we just claimed a hoax and cited nothing to support it, you might have a point. But that is not what we have been doing.

You kinda have. You have a few links in the Wiki to some conspiracy nonsense, but when Elon Musk shot a car into space I saw no-one offer any evidence that it was faked.
Rather you seem to fall back on this reasoning

https://wiki.tfes.org/Place_of_the_Conspiracy_in_FET


P1) If personally unverifiable evidence contradicts an obvious truth then the evidence is fabricated
P2) The Flat Earth is an obvious truth

So, according to you it's obvious the earth is flat ergo Musk's launch must have been fake. No evidence provided or required.
This is not rational thinking, one should always be prepared to alter one's opinions in the light of new evidence.

If I see David Copperfield flying in a magic show then I might not be able to see a wire but my experience is that
a) Magic shows are about being tricked and
b) People can't fly
So I can fairly confidently assume that there is a wire or something supporting him. I don't change my views on whether people can fly or not. If someone shoots a car into space then if I believe that space travel is not possible then my immediate reaction may be that it's fake. But if that person has a history of customers who have paid him to shoot other things into space, and has a queue of other customers waiting for him to do so. If I notice that my GPS and satellite TV work, I'm shown evidence that the ISS can be seen from earth. As more and more evidence builds that actually we do now have the technology to shoot stuff into space it becomes more and more irrational to dig my heels in and claim it's all fake with no basis.

How you arrive at P2 remains a mystery to me. A flat earth is arguably the simplest conclusion if you understood nothing about the way the world works, just look out to sea and observe a horizon which appears flat (note the "appears" and consider the limits in our visual accuity). But as someone else noted, even the ancients wouldn't have thought that the sun was circling above a flat plane. The simplest conclusion would be that the sun is circling above and below a flat plane, they probably thought that when it was night it was dark everywhere on earth. Now we know better.

Your circling sun with its change in orbit to create the seasons and change in height to create moon phases is all rationalisation. It's a fudge which you try to use to explain observations but it fails on many levels. It cannot explain the observations of sunlight hours in the southern hemisphere, much less 24 hour sunlight in Antarctica. It cannot explain the consistent size of the sun (so you rationalise again and make up another fudge, some magnification thing). It cannot explain sunset (so you rationalise again and make up some new rule of perspective which attempts to explain how a the gap between a sun THREE THOUSAND MILES above the earth cannot be seen and the disc is observed to sink slowly behind the horizon). It cannot explain the consistent angular speed of the sun over the course of the day - I haven't heard a response to that one yet. Your model fails, it does not match empirical observations - something you claim to think important. And yet you don't change your model or opinion. Odd.

[wRadion]

Sure, if we just claimed a hoax and cited nothing to support it, you might have a point. But that is not what we have been doing.

Yea right. Might be because nobody is answering simple questions then.

I have a ton of questions to ask to a flat-earther (see some in my signature). But still, since I arrived, I asked 2 simple questions. I got no response from a FE so far. Why do you think so? My questions are so "obvious"? Or futile? Or stupid? Then why nobody told me that? I mean, it's not like I asked for a 50-pages book or anything, I just want 2 or 3 lines of text of explanation.

[wRadion]

I'll just note that not only will you not get answers to those simple questions, but for pointing out that you won't get answers, you'll be accused of "shitposting" and given a warning - presumably leading to a ban.

Yeah, I've no problem with that. We are in the "Flat Earth Debate" forum. I asked questions, I'm expecting answers. And from those answers, we can debate properly. But for now I got nothing to debate on. So, yeah, they can ban me if they want. That'll prove once again that the flat-earthers can't debate on this because of their lack of logic and reasoning. I didn't even ask a scientific question, I'm just basically expecting opinions to see how they can answer that.

[Westprog]

I'll just note that not only will you not get answers to those simple questions, but for pointing out that you won't get answers, you'll be accused of "shitposting" and given a warning - presumably leading to a ban.

Yeah, I've no problem with that. We are in the "Flat Earth Debate" forum. I asked questions, I'm expecting answers. And from those answers, we can debate properly. But for now I got nothing to debate on. So, yeah, they can ban me if they want. That'll prove once again that the flat-earthers can't debate on this because of their lack of logic and reasoning. I didn't even ask a scientific question, I'm just basically expecting opinions to see how they can answer that.

I'm engaged in an actual debate in an entirely different forum, dealing with different issues, and it's quite a different experience. Here there's a moment's satisfaction while you put forward a point, and wait for a response which never comes. There's the illusion of an argument, but the argument never really happens. Someone will say "that's in the FAQ" or "that's in this book" or "stop discussing this in this way" but they'll never coherently explain why you're wrong.

In general, in most situations, when you're debating with someone, and instead of counter-arguments, you're given a reading list, that's a pretty good indication that they have no idea what's wrong with your arguments.