More Flat Earth

Did you ever notice how two different words sound much alike and sometimes complement each other? An example is obsessed and abscessed. Sometimes my wife thinks that my obsessions have turned into abscessions. That may indeed be the case, but once the abscess is lanced and the putrid contents exposed to the air, the wound heals. Some of my obsessions require just such a procedure. Flat earth seems to be just such an obsession. But, I will open it up today, and sleep much better tonight.

The flat-earth backers have a lot of unanswered and unanswerable questions to solve. (Theories) Here are a few more just to stir the pot a little more. (Note: Do not look “Flat earth” up on the internet. It is worse than I have made it. It is totally mind boggling to look at the monstrous errors that they claim are fact. It made my teeth hurt as I ground my jaw.)

One site, for instance shows a downward look at the north pole (polar projection) with the sun circling over the disk like a giant flood light. If you search for them, you will not find one like they show, because they “add” the polar regions, showing Antarctica stretching all the way around the outer “ring” of the map. The sun makes a small circle around the north pole (Tropic of Cancer) in the summer in the northern hemisphere–oops, cannot call it that, call it an inner ring. Then the track widens out in the fall and circles the Tropic of Capricorn during the winter.

This accounts for the seasons and the equinoxes. Just how the sun changes its track like that was not explained in the discussion I read. Maybe it was like my grade school teacher who informed me that the tilt of the earth “just happened” as the earth oscillated 23.3 degrees toward the sun and away. I had wondered how it stopped and tilted back. “It just does.” Oh, and by the way, these longer tracks in fall and winter would require the sun to speed up, then slow down as it moves back “north.” The length of day does not change from 24 hours, so the sun must vary its velocity. “It just does.”

Can we call it the north pole, since it is at the center of the disk? Oh, and where would the South pole be? This guess (we will not dignify it with the label, “theory”), this guess fails here. In reality, if you start at the north pole and go any direction from there, you are going south. On this diagram you can go east, west, or south. And depending on which direction you choose, you will end up at a different part of Antarctica. (Stop before you go off the edge. I wonder why no one has seen the “edge of the world” on the trips to the Antarctic? But I digress.)

In the real world, going straight south, using any radial direction from the North pole will end up at the South pole. The same spot. The supposed disk theory does not yield that result. Remember one of the rules for theories? They have to account for all of the data. Flat-earth fails here.

Let’s dig a little deeper. How, pray tell does one make a “spotlight” or floodlight out of a luminous body of some type? Ow! My jaw. It also shows the sun, followed by the moon, circling like a record player needle above the disk of the earth. The directional light shines down on the part of the disk directly below it. It does explain the progressive dawn, but does not describe the appearance of “rising and setting.” (The rising disproves the FE, as noted before.)

A jet plane, flying overhead with its landing lights on does not appear to rise from the horizon. It gradually appears high in the sky and as it gets closer, the lights are brighter. Passing overhead the process reverses with the lights gradually dimming until they “wink” out. Another failure to explain observed phenomena.

 Think about the moon. First, how does a “directional” light shine “backwards” to illuminate the moon? And how does the moon change phases and even eclipse the sun? A lunar eclipse would be impossible as the earth is never between the sun and the moon. To conclude, if the moon circles the earth like the sun, how can it be out of the plane of the sun? More data failure.

The picture shown on the web site shows the sun and moon circling the earth in tandem like a horse and buggy. But their “orbital periods” are not linked, as shown. The “day and night” circling over a given point on earth is 24 hours, but their other motions do not correlate. They would have to utilize three dimensional space to do the “dance” that they do. It’s gettin’ worse.

The earth is not moving, unless you take the guy who said the whole disk was accelerating upwards at a rate of 9.8 meters per second per second, thus we do not really have gravity at all. That is how they answer the gravity question and center of gravity suggested before. Oh, but it raises another. If the whole disk is going upward, pushing the sun, moon, and stars in front of it, why would we weigh less on a mountain top than at sea level? The acceleration would be equal on all points, so the “apparent weight” of the acceleration should be equal. (We will also run up against the law of relativity. Calculate how fast the disk would be going if it accelerates at 9.8 m/sec/sec. In less than 10 years, we would be going faster than the speed of light–or slowing waaaay down.) ((Hint: The speed of light is 3 times 10 to the 8th. Velocity equals acceleration divided by time. Time = 300000000/9.8 or 3543 days.)

The coup de gras is the mathematical explanation as to why the earth cannot be a sphere. A guy set up a telescope six miles from a target and could see it. Using the Pythagorean theorem he calculated that the two points, if they were on a sphere, would have a “hump” of water between them, obscuring the observation. Another guy repeated this over 23 miles and got the same, only larger of course, result. He could see the opposite shore. This was all on water, which would be flat. But it would be “curved” if the earth were a sphere.

I will spare you the spurious calculations. (Got to use “spurious” twice in the same week.) But to summarize they assumed that the earth was a box, calculated the radius of the two points on the “circle” and proved that this was wrong. Wait. What was that? They assumed that the earth was a box (flat), then proved it wrong, and claimed that it proved the flat earth? See why it is spurious?

Just in case you wonder, they discount all documents that do not agree with their floppy reasoning. Pictures and such taken from space are all a gigantic conspiracy to keep us from knowing that the earth is flat. Why is not clear. What is to be gained? But I digress. I will pass on geostationary satellites. The load of problems is getting pretty high.

One question that was asked was can I see the curve of the earth from a plane? The answer is puzzling. “No ‘they’ will not let civilian aircraft fly higher than 40,000 feet which is the minimum needed to see the curve." Since there is no curve, everyone who saw that would doubt the round earth hypothesis. Wait, if being 35,000 feet in the air is not enough to see the curvature of the earth, how can a six or even 23 mile “sample” prove that there is no curve? Internal agreement among data is another critical component of theories. Flat earth is not even consistent with itself.

If the sun and moon merely circle overhead, how can they have different motions on a yearly and longer basis? Some stars, planets really, “wander around” in the star field. Probably another artifact of the conspiracists.

Two final thoughts. In order to produce such a convoluted system, we have to propose numerous special accommodations to make it work. It reminds me of my evolutionary friends who, when explaining the process or mechanism of changes in the supposed chain of events leading from the production of life itself, to the development of homo sapiens, say that “something” changed, and they wave their hands wildly, proclaiming that “evolution proceeded to produce” the change. No proof is offered. They merely assume that something happened and “voila!” we have evolution. Oh yes, wave hands.

Second, why even both with such nonsense? A sharp fifth grader can probably point out more errors than we have discussed. Some of the flat-earthers claim a Biblical “proof” for their folderol. (Did you know that you can spell that word in three ways, according to online dictionaries? Folderol, falderol, or falderal are all given. I guess that is appropriate. It is all nonsense.But I digress.)

Their verse is Isaiah 40:22. “God is enthroned above the circle of the earth;” Taking this to mean a disk is more an artifact of translation than the original language. Henry Morris helps us here.

He starts in Job 26:10. “He (God) hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end.” Morris continues,
As far as the Bible is concerned, the word “compassed” in our text is the Hebrew khug, meaning “circle,” or even “sphere.” It is so translated in Isaiah 40:22; “It is [God] that sitteth upon the circle of the earth.” Viewed from any point in space, the earth would appear simply as a great circle, with its spherical shape projected on a plane.

If the earth were flat, all of the water in the oceans would run off the edge–unless we make another accommodation. More complications for the Flat Earth Society. (FES)

My reason for debating this is that implying that the Bible says something so patently erroneous and outrageous destroys the credibility of the rest of God’s Word. Isaiah and Jeremiah faced “false prophets” who were undermining the veracity of what God really said. Their end was not pleasant. (The pseudo-prophets that is.) But they did influence a lot of the Children of Israel to follow them, to destruction and probably perdition.

False or pseudo science can lead people astray today. The FES should “fess up” and admit that they are not protecting or supporting the Bible. They are subverting it. Lance that boil.