Well... I never thought I'd be here writing this, but here I am. I'd never really looked into the flat earth thing before now and was always quite confident taking the majority position. I mean we've got much bigger fish to fry anyway, so who even cares what shape it is. I didn't even realise there was a thread on this topic until I looked the other day. (As an aside, I find it funny that I felt I need to put this disclaimer here - it's kind of like the "well I'm no anti-vaxxer but..." disclaimer you hear a lot of lately.)
Anyway a few weeks ago I somehow came across and decided to watch the 8 hour documentary "What on earth happened?" by Ewaranon (I believe it's the same one that MatiaS has posted above). It was purely a "what the hell" kind of moment and I don't think I was expecting to watch the whole 8 hours, but I decided to at least give it a go and see what those nutters are up to. Well I ended up watching the whole thing and I have to tell you I was pretty shaken up by it, as it was a whole lot more fascinating than I had anticipated. There were topics raised that I couldn't immediately dismiss as I had expected, and some really interesting things that I had never seen before and I thought warranted further investigation (the cymatics stuff for one). It kind of shocked me how much it shocked me and I was put in a kind of fugue state for a couple of days where a war was going on in my head between the two ways of thinking - it's like the black and white optical illusions where you naturally see one image and then need to "switch" your mind to see the other, and then it can be hard to switch back. I couldn't shake it from my mind. It sent me on a path of further research to try and "put out the flames" of this uncomfortable fire and put it to bed once and for all - to find that one proof that would flatten (pun intended?) them all so I can get on with my life. I haven't found it yet though, and I fear I've strayed even further down the path in the process. So now I find myself embroiled in this topic with no clear way out. I'd like to go back to my comfortable globe earth model please if anyone can assist
.
Talking about this here is certainly difficult for me (let alone anywhere else), given what the C's have alluded to and the general ridicule of the topic over the course of this thread so far, and even Laura's own statements about the mental sanity of those that dare to ask such questions. Yikes. Well, I don't think I'm an idiot or schizoid, and I have no desire to get on the wrong side of the people on this forum, but it was either suffer in silence as I typically do (I don't post much) or put myself in the frying pan for once. Why did it have to be this topic of all topics to drag me from my lurking slumber? These are desperate times after all and I'm starting to wonder whether I am actually disintegrating / reverting back to a 2D perception of things. That would certainly be non-ideal. Could both models be right? Is the nature of the earth dependant on the consensus belief of the inhabitants at any point in time? Is there a reality-split in progress?
One thing I found quite compelling in the doco was how closely the Gleason map matched the model used by ancient cultures and ties in very elegantly with the biblical viewpoint, mythology, astrology, calendars and clocks (See Part 13 starting at 07:06:45). The discussion about pre-history was also very interesting (See Part 11 starting at 5:25:00), talking about evidence of silicon based life, and that perhaps the move to carbon based life was "the fall". These things aren't necessarily reliant on the earth being flat and are interesting topics in their own right.
Back to the flat earth argument though - it seems that every supposed proof for one side has a counter-argument from the other. Yes, there is footage of curved horizons from balloons/rockets, and there is also footage showing flat horizons (depends on the shape of your lens) - who is right? Once I went on a cruise and I could have sworn the horizon was curved, but was it really, or was it just my brain creating the effect to appease my belief system? Zooming in with a telescopic lens on the sunset makes the sun rise again (apparently - I don't have the means to test this personally as yet). Flight paths seem to be being used by both sides of the argument to prove/disprove - stale-mate there it seems too. But wait, Space X and Virgin Galactic are flying people into space now right? False alarm, they're just high up in the atmosphere flying in a zero-G parabolic arc, and of course they're using curved windows too so everything looks curvy. Nothing from NASA is reliable either - too much obvious manipulation and fakery.
What else... we have the classic Eratosthenes shadow-clocks proof that relies on the assumption that the rays from the sun are parallel - which by observation does not seem to be so (covered in
at about 51 minutes in. This video also covers a few other interesting things such as atmospheric occlusion and flight paths - worth a watch).
Not to mention the stars don't seem to move regardless of supposed earth movement or "wobble". Polaris always seems to be in the same place (see
https://greatmountainpublishing.com...the-north-star-prove-the-earth-is-stationary/). Can any astronomers take a stab at this one?
It seems completely maddening to me that our proofs of something so fundamental are so brittle and open to counter-argument. So given this state of affairs, and regardless of the force of ridicule, it seems to me that taking a hard position on one side of the other is not logical and I'm now somewhere "in between". I'm on the spectrum as it were.
Now, I don't think that the flat earthers have given up on gravity...
Well, the Eric Debay camp from what I've seen don't consider gravity at all, only density.
One more recent thing I've noticed is the "fact checker" phenomenon. Just like our beloved virus, the fact checkers are all over this topic too. Everything involving the flat/globe earth argument on Youtube (at least) seems to now be graced with the infamous blue "context" box stating that
The
flat Earth model is an archaic and scientifically disproven conception of
Earth's shape as a
plane or
disk.
The fact that they do this is interesting in itself. Like the "correct" shape of the earth needs to be drilled into people just in case they stray from the narrative. The PTB are telling you not to look behind that door, so that just makes you want to go over and open it right? And they really need to come up with a better front-man for the globe model than Neil deGrasse Tyson as the guy just comes across as a shuckster.
So for those that have been through this process and have come out the other side with renewed faith in their chosen model - please feel free to share the killing blow with me.
