There has been a strange resurgence in flat earth theory recently that is extremely interesting, and unsettling to those with logical thinking skills. Most of these people claim that they can ‘prove’ that earth is not a sphere, mainly because they cannot ‘see’ evidence of the curvature of the earth. Indeed, there have been experiments that could make you question the roundness of the earth, if only you ignored the actual math and science involved in these experiments.
As well, you’d need to ignore the several thousand years of research proving that the earth is a globe, including the fact that all GPS measurements are based on a sphere, and millions of people get around this world quite nicely every day using spheroid based navigation.
The other major ‘bone of contention’ for flat-earthers is that they believe that every image of the earth has been completely faked. Since this is sheer conjecture that would take everyone round and round in circles without either side ever believing the other, it’s easy to disprove flat earth without ever discussing or bringing NASA into the picture at all.
The Non-Sequitur of NASA
First of all, distrust in government is logical and reasonable. They have and do lie to us to further their interests. However, to say that because a government has lied that EVERYTHING they say MUST be a lie is a ridiculous fallacy. I was taught some writing and grammar in school, so if everything were a lie, I could not even be communicating with you via the written language right now. It would somehow be a 'lie' that writing can transmit information to others, according to flat earth logic.
And even if NASA were lying about EVERYTHING they have ever done, it does not provide one shred of evidence of a flat earth! Any adult with logical thinking skills should be able to understand this simple concept, yet flat earthers use 'evidence' fhat NASA is lying to us to somehow 'prove' a flat earth!
Some say that if the earth were round, why would they need to lie? But EVEN IF one could prove that everything they have done is a lie, claiming to know that their motivation is to ‘hide’ the flat earth is an exercise in pretend mind-reading. IF one could prove they were lying, their motivation could simply be to continue their funding, and faking it to make the world seem as close as possible to REALITY would be an excellent way to keep people from guessing the truth, I would think. Also, if they were lying, they could just be doing so in order to see how many incredibly illogical people would claim that the earth was flat, so they could laugh at their effective psy ops!
But I think I’ve established that EVEN IF NASA were lying, it simply does not, logically, follow that the earth is flat. It’s what is called in logic a Non-Sequitur- it simply does not follow.
Questioning Round Earth= The Earth is Flat
It is one thing to question one model of reality. We should all do it! That is how science works! And it’s understandable that someone who sees some experiments that does not appear to fit what they were taught to believe might begin to question the round earth model. That is healthy skepticism. However, to THEN conclude, based on these experiments, that the earth is flat shows a downfall in critical thinking skills and scientific thought.
So, for one thing, in order to reject a particular model that has been proven over and over for thousands of years takes more than a couple of images of the horizon. This may LEAD YOU to question roundness, but does not automatically prove flatness. The fallacy is that EVEN IF your experiments were done correctly, rejecting the sphere earth model, then ADOPTING a flat earth model SIMPLY BASED on your experiments of flatness is a fallacy. Before you can adopt another model, one needs to construct a hypothesis. In this case, the hypothesis might be something like: a flat earth better comports with reality than a round earth.
The Flat Earth Model
So, in this case, let’s do just that and compare the current spheroid or ellipsoid model of earth with that of a flat earth. The first thing one would need to do is to have some sort of model of flat earth, or at least a 'thought experiment' in which to test a flat earth. Yet no flat earth model can comport with known reality, as you'll see momentarily.
Although many flat earthers claim they ‘do not accept one single model’, but they HAVE. They have accepted a FLAT EARTH model! In order to declare oneself a ‘flat earther’, by definition, one must have accepted a flat earth model. To say that you’ve not ‘accepted any one model’ while saying you believe in a flat earth is simply a matter of a ‘cop out’ on not wanting to explain the inconsistencies and impossibilities in your chosen model, because it would then show the illogical reasoning present in having chosen a model that cannot only be shown does not work in reality, but that can actually be proven NOT to work in reality.
In fact, their flat earth model is SO incorrect, that they do not even seem to realize that all of the current Flat Earth Maps are Globe Maps Laid Flat! Think about this; in thousands of years of flat earth theory, the best map their best minds have come up with are either drawings of depictions from the Bible or Azimuthal Projection maps of a globe!
One simply cannot claim to be intelligent, scientific, and logical and reject one model of reality, because you claim it does not comport with observable reality, only to replace your model with one that comports even LESS than your previous model! Once presented with evidence that the model you’ve chosen is WORSE that the one you are questioning, then the logical and scientific way of thinking would require you to check your math, check your assumptions, create new hypotheses, and test these new hypotheses.
In the case of flat earthers, they seem to have become 'religious' or 'cultlike' about their beliefs, claiming intelligence at rejecting the round earth theory because of their observations, but not doing the same thing for their flat earth model when not only inconsistencies, but impossibilities are pointed out to them.
As such, they then hold on for dear life in maintaining that their new world view, and in doing so, they just pile on inconsistency with inconsistency and fallacy upon fallacy until their belief (it can't really be called a 'theory' since it's been disproven for millenia) is filled with ridiculous and outlandish explanations to try to explain known reality or correct for the problem they made up trying to correct the inconsistencies and impossibilities until it's become a Rube Goldberg machine of crazy add-ons that simply don't add up.
For example, some of these fantastic add-ons they've concocted that they will defend with their whole being as true are:
- Antarctica is a 100,000 km ‘ice rim’ that lines the circumference of the planet
- The world has an 'edge' but no one has seen it
- It's never been seen because planes can't fly over it and the UN patrols the entire 100,000 km
- There is a ‘dome’ that encases the planet like the top of a snow globe
- The sun and moon do not rotate, but are encased in this ‘dome’ that rotates around the earth, giving us day and night
- The moon is self-illuminated
- Gravity does not exist
- An ‘invisible’ planet gives us eclipses
- The sun ‘moves’ in the dome to a new latitude to give us seasons
- And on and on it goes with the need to add on more wild theories to explain the next problem that is pointed out to them
Reality Does not Comport With a Flat Earth
However, this article’s focus is merely an introduction to the general concept of the current flat earth resurgence, why it’s illogical and unscientific, and proofs that the earth is NOT flat. While this is just a list of known and provable observed reality that would be utterly impossible on a flat earth, I’ll not attempt to explain why each one is impossible in this article, but will eventually write an individual article providing the math, science, and logic as to why they are impossible. When each article is published, each item in this list will be linked to the more in-depth article on the topic.
But for now, the list of realities impossible, or at least incredibly impractical, on a flat earth:
- Accurate GPS navigation
- Circumnavigation of Antarctica
- Spring equinox due west setting of the sun across the entire world
- 24 hour polar days and nights in the corresponding hemispheres
- Differing star trails in the northern and southern hemispheres and the equator
- Flights from Sydney to Johannesburg, and flights from Santiago, Chile to Aukland
- Polar and Great Circle flight routes
- Mirror image sundials in the differing hemispheres
- Mirror image equatorial mount polar axis aligned telescope in the differing hemispheres
- Circumnavigation of the world using the current sailing routes
- Approximately monthly moon phases
- The entire world seeing the same face of the moon in the same 24 hour day
- The sun setting 3 minutes later at the top of the Dubai Burj Khalifa tower
Perhaps readers would like to add to this list of impossible flat earth phenomena so that our list can be constantly growing so as to force the flat earth believers to either create a working model of reality that can be used for testing against other known realities for scientific accuracy, or to give up their beliefs, check their assumptions, and do more scientific testing.