Flat Earth Society...

[Sneezeguard]

ummm.. that say they don't believe in evidience unless they can test it themselves,

So why don't they get a ship and find out?

 

[viranimus]

I dont really find much to support this, however the motivation behind it I am in full support of. People lie, people in power lie, people in power lie to ensure they increase their power. So its really not all that difficult to point to a "reason" for something and call it evidence. Much like the photographs from airplanes that at a long enough range begin to show curvature. Funny thing is, if you stretch a video game that is supported up to 1080 reso max across 3 screens or more, oddly it creates the exact same effect(though not as crisply due to technological limitations)

Im not saying this is right. I am saying people are stupid and belive what they are told. Even if the stories told have become infinitely more complex and harder to disprove people get to a point of apathy that they simply just accept it because its harder to question than it is to accept.

I long for the day when people stop accepting ANYTHING that they are told unless they have a means to prove and validate it themselves and actually have done so.

 

[Jadak]

I've been trying to get a sense of what they beleive. I read their faq and a few pages of the main discussion and I concluded the following: No one intelligent enough to disprove their absurd theories has the time or motivation to attempt to do so.

Not quite, it's more of a case of the people who meet that criteria are the ones creating those absurd theories in the first place, as while their may be a few true crazies that actually believe it, the site itself is more or less just trolling.

And as such, anyone who is not involved that also meets that criteria has the sense to recognize it as such and knows better than to feed the trolls.

 

[Hazy992]

I yearn for the day when people don't deny something, even when faced with huge amounts of evidence.

Hey! Us mallow-theorists don't like being insulted!

OT: Flat earth theory is just ridiculous. It's one thing to deny evolution but still believing the Earth is flat is just a whole other level of ignorance and stupidity.

 

[jklinders]

I've seen this delightful little microcosm of strangeness before. I have a few ideas about them but I really feel that this site is basically a reservation for hopeless trolls trying to get rehabilitated before they can return to the rest of the internet. When they stop trolling people with crazy weirdness about flat earth nonsense they are rehabilitated and can rejoin the world.

Frankly it looks like most of the members of that forum are like a couple of guys just typing under multiple accounts just to see if some for real fool stumbles in there looking to take the bait.

In other words the whole damn site is a lame joke. Which no doubt gets a rise out of folks by using the same circular logic used by moon landing hoax believers.

Captcha foul smelling rather appropriate really.

 

[Neaco]

The whole point of my arguement is that "evidence" would remove the purpose of having an actual solid physical universe in the first place. God's aim in creating mankind was to make "true" freinds. Not people that use god as a thing that grants wishes like some sort of genie "O god give me this, k'thnxbi!" kinda of people. He wants people who will trust in him. Trusting a god who provide proof of his existence is easy. he says "I will help you" you can count on it, there's no doubt. Doubting but trusting anyway is truely trusting. Think of this. If there was no evil then how could we have good? and if there was no good how then could there be evil?

its posts like these that make me question atheism. while i still believe its self-assuring hoopla, i respect your ability to show a humbling argument for theism and envy your confidence when (supposedly) troubled.

OT: yes well, i believe humans beings don't need oxygen to survive. why else would it be poisonous when inhaled (and nothing else) and composes only 20% of our atmosphere. it leads me to assume we in fact make cellular use of the 75%+ abundant nitrogen - from an evolutionary view. im willing to admit i might be wrong, but there you have it.

 

[Snitalvixzon]

Why, oh why? What is there to be gained?

Oh, of course when you get past the ice wall and you have an infinite plane to use! How else does McDonalds get all it's food?

Ps. Yes somewhere on their site someone said McDonalds was in on the "conspiracy".......

 

[Bouncer]

So I'm sitting here looking at this thread, a few beers later I get to the end and I have a large amount of copied quotes that I want to get to, but I don't think I can get to all of them before I pass out.

If I say something absurd, let me know, it's the drunk/tired talking.

However I feel proficient enough to make sound arguments/Compliments/Nonguments and fire instruments.

Wow, great start bouncer... great start. Heregoes!

PS: Reverse order of post

I dont really find much to support this, however the motivation behind it I am in full support of. People lie, people in power lie, people in power lie to ensure they increase their power. So its really not all that difficult to point to a "reason" for something and call it evidence. Much like the photographs from airplanes that at a long enough range begin to show curvature. Funny thing is, if you stretch a video game that is supported up to 1080 reso max across 3 screens or more, oddly it creates the exact same effect(though not as crisply due to technological limitations)

Im not saying this is right. I am saying people are stupid and belive what they are told. Even if the stories told have become infinitely more complex and harder to disprove people get to a point of apathy that they simply just accept it because its harder to question than it is to accept.

I long for the day when people stop accepting ANYTHING that they are told unless they have a means to prove and validate it themselves and actually have done so.

YOu win the internet, seriously. Countless people simply slide themselves into social cliques and categories. I am unsure if this is simply to feel accepted or because they have not been taught how to make logical assumptions on their own. "This could be true" Versus "This is true" Makes a HUGE difference in friendly debate.

I'm not sure why I copied this one, I'm guessing I just wanted to tell you that you win, everything, forever and I agree 100%

Science is the new religion.

Your post is so rife with fallacies and false claims I could spend an hour replying. Because of this little gem, I don't have to.

The moment you say something like this is the moment you show that you have no clue what science is. Science is the closest thing to a pathway to truth we humans ever had, and you are equating this tool, that is based on reason and evidence, to baseless assertions and blind faith. I hope, if you cling to this type of thinking, you at least refrain from commenting further.

First of all I was planning on replying to the post you exerpted that from with an abiguous "Does he agree or does he disagree?! This man comfuses and makes me want to shoot him" kind of post, but I have to thank you for this little gem that literally encompasses the 38.4% of my argument that I had to eventually dismiss myself because... well... because that's what I do.

You may be right on saying that these multiple buns that are sticky is wrong in her/his assumption of theism, however, what you said takes you down a thousand notches below anything s/he might have said.

Science, as a whole has many, many applications. You are right when saying that "Science" Is a pathway. It is, in fact. Science, purely, is a method of recording facts through intelligent observation (Such is my opinion.) However, science, as we know it today, The thing that people, namely on this forum, keep preaching to everyone who have a slightly unorthodox point of view of the world, isn't this pathway you've described.

In fact, today's science is more like downtown, a road littered with signs and advertisements of a little less than every possible commercial endeavour that will steal your hard-earned money next.

I may be striving a little off topic with this analogy but the point is this: While the pure definition of science is what you claim, a pathway, this isn't what buns that are sticky is referring to. What s/he IS probably (I say probably because I have no endorsement on pastries that have too much maple sirup on them's opinion) is referring to is the large amount of documentation:,, that while it's sheer mass, most of which was produced by zealous scientists who would in no way ever think of even slightly deriviating from the completely unbiased form of observation that science reveres,, is inherently victim to falsehood and misinterpretation. This is because the human senses are limited, the availability of potential observation is HIGHLY limited by how humans can only be in and look in one direction at a time.

If you couldn't follow this paragraph it's probably because it makes no sense (If that is true I apologise in advance) I will recap for your convenience.

What small round pastries coated in tasty adhesive substance is refuting is not the nature of science itself, but it's documentation which many follow blindly to the letter saying "There is proof of this" Without knowing how or why this proof was attained and even if it is true at all.

This is comparable to religion in this way: This documentation is the bible. It's so huge and expansive that very few are able to read and understand most of it. (The bible in the middle ages, in a time where most people didn't even know how to read, was deemed quite large) Those few that do understand it (For the bible these were preists) Use every possible turn of phrase to make sure that their opinion on the documentation cannot be logically refuted by the documentation. and scientists (Preists) Have a very large chain of command, from scholar to teacher to having published titles to being a known figure in the scientific community to Charles Darwin. (From preist to bishop to archbisop to pope... I don't know why are you still reading this anyways?)

I'm at a difficulty to stop trying to draw similarities between old-age religion and science. Shit alot of stuff in religion even make sense even if most of it seems completely insane by now. The point is that "Science is the new religion" Is at least 97.2% true.

(Disclaimer, all percentages in this reply are completely made up and are not subject to argument any more than they would if replaced by the words or phrases: almost none, not so much, some, quite a bit, about half, Mostly or almost completely)

Ok, so they believe the earth is flat, but what about the moon? Do they believe thats flat too, or is it still a sphere? From observation(you know actually looking at it, with your eyes) we can determin that it is round, because of the part of it thats lit by the sun. If it was flat it would not get that kind of shadow, it would either be all lit up, or all in shadow. Do they accept this evidence? And the what about the stuff thats orbiting the earth, all the satellites that let is watch tv and such, and the people that are actually up there right now, looking down on us? And then all the other evidence?

Any evidence that the Earth is flat is easily explained away by "It's a conspiracy". The moon is in a stationary position somewhere above the Earth, and only shines light on a small part of it at any time. Oh, and eclipses? They're caused by the ANTISUN.

And nothing is orbiting the Earth. It's all broadcasted from signal towers instead. And nobody's actually up there. NASA is a part of the conspiracy, and nobody's actually been in space to see for themselves, so all the pictures that say otherwise are fake.

Oh, right, the conspiracy. I forgot about that old chestnut. Here's a follow-up question for them; why? And I think the answer they would give me would be 'so they can control us'. And then I would ask them exactly how this control through disinformation works. Because I've never heard anyone say 'Oh, so the earth is round. Well, all hail the new world order then'.

Because that's not how disinformation works, Xenon. It's supposed to get underneath your very thought pattern and trigger your mind in ways that are so subtle that you wouldn't even realise it.

Absolutism in disinformation is exactly why the Nazi empire didn't work... someone at somepoint will go "Uh, wait... this is wrong"

In their defence (Which I really don't want to be doing, honestly Flatearth is retarded) If you argue that it's because the government wants to control us, it's a sound argument. Mainly because the government wants to control (Or Govern) us, it's kind of their job to do that. They wouldn't be doing a very good job at it if they didn't pull every string they could reach to accomplish this.

However, in support of your point, Xenon, The flat-earth society is just way too liberal about what can "Control us" and the only logical thing that I can think of prevailing to why such a large conspiracy could "Control us" in any way is if they didn't want us to go to space or if they were somehow trying to stack ways to refute religion... which would suggest a battle of powers is going on which is evidently plausible.

However it seems like alot of work would have to be put into this and they are WAY underestimating how many people would have to be "In on this" and with the lack of leakage of information, it seems that this whole thing would be absolutely Critical. They seem to also suggest that the knowledge that the earth was flat would cause global panic, whereas I doubt that people would ask further questions than "Are we gonna die?" Then answer being "No" To that question as well as the following "Does my car still work?" "Will my lifestyle change?" I doubt anyone would give a damn if the earth was flat or not.

While I take a good look at conspiracies before dismissing them, this one is not even worth wiping myself with.

Well that's simple. God created the world because he wants free will. If there was 100% undeniable evidence the the roles would be reversed, only the foolish idiots with no intelligence would be athists.... that's no free will at all it's just common sense.

Correct me if I am wrong but didn't Lucifer, Adam and Eve all "revolt", even though they had full knowledge that God existed? Wouldnt that mean that people still have free will when they are 100% certain that god exists?

Someone please answer this question, my knoweldge of the bible is too limited to form an actual opinion.

Here's a half-opinion though. Correct ME if I'm wrong but isn't lucifer essentially the jailer of the world that taught people who to lie and deceive and is now the guy who keeps the wicked in some sort of place that endlessly tortures people for not devoting themselves to the almighty god (Among other more appropriate reasons to be tortured?) and shouldn't we, if we are to quote the bible, also remember that god created EVERYTHING and all their properties including lucifer and his... abilities?

The revold of adam and eve, lucifer's fall... could all be part of a test god has laid out for us, blind devotion being the right answer.

A silly answer I might add but the point stands nonetheless (I think)

If you could even present a single grain of evidence for that claim I'd consider taking the idea seriously....

By the way, the universe is estimated to be approximately 14 billion years old not trillions! That's the kind of mathematical error that makes people believe the world is 6000 years old...

The whole point of my arguement is that "evidence" would remove the purpose of having an actual solid physical universe in the first place. God's aim in creating mankind was to make "true" freinds. Not people that use god as a thing that grants wishes like some sort of genie "O god give me this, k'thnxbi!" kinda of people. He wants people who will trust in him. Trusting a god who provide proof of his existence is easy. he says "I will help you" you can count on it, there's no doubt. Doubting but trusting anyway is truely trusting. Think of this. If there was no evil then how could we have good? and if there was no good how then could there be evil?

I'm not sure how many times I tried reading this over and it still doesn't sit well with me, here's why: Trusting people always gets you scammed. That's a fact, not to be refuted even if you are the lucky guy/gal who never got scammed, won the lottery five times and got struck by lightning three days after surviving a plane crash.

I simply don't understand why god would want to teach us such a crazy concept. To trust completely and 100% in something that has very little proof at all to support it to begin with.

If god did indeed create this universe, s/he has created it with such endless complexities, it would be an insult to creation to not spend one's entire life as an entire species to observing and recording every single peice of data we can aquire about creation. (I use creation as a term for "Everyting" Instead of "The universe" In respect to what I am debating, for you sillies)

With this being said, with the endless proof that god either doesn't exist or is simply a metaphor for something so incredibly complex that it probably doesn't care about us at all or simply didn't realise it has created us in such a complex manner, or doesn't care that it did. Why would god want us to worship him/her/it? If it wanted friends, wouldn't it be better to simply let us keep evolving until we reach a similar level of concience it has? Even if that isn't, strictly speaking, possible within any time constraints, isn't got infinite? Meaning it has infinite time? Why the rush? Why the threat of eternal pain?

Honestly, I don't beleive that god doesn't exist. You would have to be a fool to beleive that a higher being who is possibly intelligent that may have created us couldn't exist. I strongly beleive, however, that the image of and view you have of this god is faulty. That the being for which you dedicate your life (Or at the very least your opinion on theism) to is simply a poser, a being of immense power who has at some point altered or encouraged the natural evolution of humans and now wants your entire devotion. I can See why he'd want such a thing, if I had your entire devotion, I could make you do stuff for me... alot of stuff. I'd be cool with just one person but how many creationists would bow to this invisible figure? How many of them would ditch their lives and come work for god on tetra-hydroxide mines on pluto for no pay?

I ask this: Can you really trust god?

There are also people who deny Germ Theory, that HIV causes AIDS, that man landed on the moon, that 19 arabs hijacked four planes and crashed three of them into buildings, that there was only one shooter in Dallas on that day in 1963, that man shares a common ancestor with apes, and that the Earth goes around the Sun.

If there's a crazy idea, there's a group that believes it. If there's some long-established fact, there's a group that denies it. If it exists, there's porn of it. Whatever you think of, there's a fetish for it. Just a few rules of the internet.

who are you that you can say the moon landing was real? the government might of faked it, dont know why, but they could of.
also, the 9/11 crashes may very well have been faked. the frame of the building could not melt from aircraft fuel like they said it did , only thermite could of. and also,the states had a reason: rally the 'mericans to agree with the government to storm the arabs for their oil. i may be wrong, you may be wrong, we will never know. only the government.

if you wanted to piss off your country enough to start a war, blow up a suburb. If they wanted money they would not have destroyed there WORLD TRADE CENTRE!.

You're crazy, the world trade centre didn't keep money they kept depts... very important governmental depts that are now magically wiped clean! Somehow nobody complained... and now we're attacking shittons of countries to control their oil and their poppies.

Why blow up a suburb? Suburban people are passive, few and far-inbetween. Blow the shit out of a city building and 1,000,000 people in the immediate vincinity are scared shitless and want to rack up on guns and kill towelheads... Seriously, towelheads. Sometimes I wish I was making up at least HALF of the stuff I say, but aparently it's firmly grounded in 78,9%

Sorry for all the shits, but this shit is shitty. Sorry.

Being a somewhat "sane" variant on a creationist I feel the need to explain the theory behind young earth "science"

God, when he created the world created it in a state of "in medias res" meaning that things were created pre-aged. Science says that the universe is trillions of years old. We know that light travels at a consistant speed, that rocks age a certain way.... But if you are creating it all from nothing there are no rules, in fact you are creating those rules. When god created the stars he created the light of those stars already in motion. When he created the earth he created it to start out being millions of years old. If you are telling a story do you start with nothing? explain the character's entire boring ordinary life? No! you start at the good bit!

Now we get to the reason... why?
Well that's simple. God created the world because he wants free will. If there was 100% undeniable evidence the the roles would be reversed, only the foolish idiots with no intelligence would be athists.... that's no free will at all it's just common sense. What god wants is someone who'll love him even if it's difficult and hard to do. otherwise the entire human race would be nothing but "fair weather friends" people who just want to go to heaven when they die or only think of him when they want him to do something.

Now, back to the topic...
I think flat earth people are either really stupid or they just think it for lulz.

i honestly dont mean to troll or be offensive...but do you seriously believe that god would make the planet all ready billions of years old just to stop world peace?

ç

World peace isn't the only issue here. I can understand why god would want us to endlessly seek to kill eachother, there are enless reasons for why people who are stupid enough to coat themselves in metal and run at another guy who's coated in metal with a stick made of metal and try to hit that guy with that peice of metal to kill him before he kills you with HIS peice of metal are probably better off not living.

I think the important part is this. If god only accepts people who blindly beleive the religious teachings that specifically preach that all other teachings are false just like every other religious teaching, wouldn't everyone who go to heaven be gullible morons? If god wants gullible morons why did he create intelligence? Maybe it's the same reason he created evil and he thinks intelligence is a bad thing.

Honestly if you can't debate in heaven I don't want to go there.

1) Some people are stupid.
2) Some people don't know when to shut the fuck up.
3) Some stupid people don't respond well to proof they're wrong and run for any exit they can.
4) Current social rules make it a major faux pas to question someone's religion. Regardless of proof, "faith" remains unassailiable.

(4) and (3) combine with (2), and thus conspiracy theory is born. Frankly, I wish we were allowed to drown conspiracy theorists, but until that's permitted I'll have to go back to ignoring them.

I hate you, I hate you with a passion. I hate you more than scabs that you unkowingly pick at and they start to bleed and your fingers are covered in blood and there are no kleenexes nearby and you're working a cash register and people are all "Dude there's blood on your hands" And you kind of feel embarrassed and comfused because you don't even remember being cut there.

I especially hate people who throw a lasso out and rope all the conspiracy theorists together and brand them all idiots. You're using a term as an insult and you're just a gullible moron. You probably heard about one or two theories and thought they were crazy and went ahead and branded everything that has the word "Conspiracy" In it as a crazy lie.

Here's some knowlege for you: If me and you and Greg Bule all sat together around a table and discussed how it would be cool to change the font of Escapist to white and the background to black, that's a conspiracy.

A conspiracy is any group of more than 2 people who discuss something that is either inherently or knowingly not known by other people outside this group... a surprise birthday party is a conspiracy. A pop quiz (As long as your teacher told more than 2 of his coworkers) is a conspriracy. A conspiracy theorist is someone who goes "Well, This happened, this is what they say why and how it happened but I take evidence A and combine it with Supposition A, B, C, D, E, or F and these construct conspiracy theories.

Without conspiracy theories, we are extremely vulnerable to people cooperating to our demise. This makes us extremely easy to control lemmings. I don't know where you're from but I think that's a bad thing. You want to drown conspriacy theorists? I doubt the government want to stop you... well, that is until people get wind of your actions, then they might want to make it look like you got the death sentence so that they can keep the illusion that they want to stop criminals for another reason than because you will keep electing the regular political parties, republican or democrat (Because these are OBVIOUSLY the only choices and they OBVIOUSLY don't work together because things are SO different when either of them are in power.)if you think that they are the only ones who will pass the bills necessary for this to keep happening. Because obviously the current police force can't support itself, it needs the government... we all need the government, all hail the president!

/Sarcasm

Do me a favor, don't state your opinion on conspiracy theorists again, ever.

You don't need a diffident country
Hell Eratosthenes did it with 2 citys that are relativity close together
and he was dam close to the real value

Obviously, he was in on the conspiracy. Instead of measuring the earth, he invested his money into better and better computer technology to fake the images. You didn't know there were computers back then?

I heard the Egyptian Tec support was awful though
despite the library having wifi

Lol! Egyptian tech support was a pyramid scheme

It's ironic... the Flat Earth model comes from a pretty basic level of observation. The Earth looks flat. However, the explanations get more and more abstract.

The explanation of gravity seems pretty easy to disprove though. They claim that gravity is caused by a uniformly accelerating Earth moving through Dark Energy, I guess like a bubble through the ocean. But the constant acceleration means we'd have broken the speed of light aeons ago. That's not to mention the energy requirements.

Would be kind of fun if they were right, but that would mean an awful lot of our maths was wrong. Wonder if anyone has tried to work that theory of gravity into the Grand Unified Theory. Just for funsies.

Their theory of universal accelaration would be easily refutable if it weren't for the fact that they can easy say that the "Speed limit" Of lighspeed is an actual limitation and that light isn't somehow instantaneous.

They take and dismiss laws at their leisure so it doesn't surprise me that they might be able to make something mathematically feasible. Their Dark energy universal accelaration theory is technically possible (Although crazy) if you forget selective amounts of scientific proof.

What really gets me is how they say that gravity doesn't exist and they constantly ask non-beleivers to "Prove" gravity. I haven't been able to create an account on their forums to bash them but I thought a little about some of the stuff they said and found several very firmly standing points to confirm gravity.

1: How does matter hold togerther anyways? It's illogical that if no matter-binding force exists that matter would hold itself together at all.

2: How do you explain magnets? How is it that their feilds are so similar to the way gravity works on a much more concentrated scale?

3: Compasses (I forgot my argument here and they say something about someone, somewhere tricking all the compasses in the world or that they are somehow pointing to somewhere that makes it look like it's always pointing nort... orsomething. but still doesn't really explain the relation betweent the earth's magnetic feild and the compasses orientation.)

4: Why did planets clump up into spheres? I can't reproduce a life-size solar system but I can do this. Take a glass of water, stir it until you got a vortex going. Pour sugar (Or anything that dissolves in water) until the water is saturated, keep pouring... what's that? the sugar accumulates in one spot? It forms little clumps? But we created a chaotic environment it should disperse? Why not? Aliens

...Er... I mean... gravity....

5: Dark matter is your go-to "A wizard did it" Argument and I hence claim that for anything in the flat earth theory to be, even in the slightest, feasible; You need to prove that dark energy exists. I don't know what it is but I saw it referenced many times and figure it's like darkmatter where it's completely theoretical and is not valid in any logical argument.


FIN!

PS: I promise I will come back tomorrow and read this over when I am sobre

PSS: Maybe tomorrow