The Flat Earth Conspiracy Question

[Clashero]

Frankly, if the Earth were round, then all the compasses in the world are bullshitting us, since there would be no North. Just Rimward and Hubward. (100 points if you get this reference)

 

[Destal]

No, the compass would still work, it just point to the center of the earth, not the "top". This is one of the worst consipericy theories I've ever heard of though...just wow.

 

[DigitalSushi]

Spoiler

A few days ago I followed a link a fellow Escapist posted and found the Flat Earth forums. I read thier FAQ I was afraid. For those of you who may not know they believe the earth is flat and at the edges are big ice walls that prevent everything from falling off. And Nasa with the governments of the world have conspired against us regular folk by doctoring photos from space.

So here is my question. WHY? What would anyone have to gain from hiding this fact? Every other conspiracy theory has an end game. They are trying to accomplish something. Aliens have landed and the government is hiding it. Why? Because if the public knew there would be panic. Or the country with the alien could gain an upper hand in the technology race. Faking the moon landing so America could give Russia the finger. These all make sense. So what would anyone have to gain from this? Can anyone offer a logical explanation?

-snip on the rants of an idiot-

Wow way to be an illiterate D-bag. If you had read the post you quoted you might have seen that I don't believe but just happened onto the site and out of a quest for knowledge actually read through it. I wouldn't expect someone like you to understand a concept like that though.

How dare you Squid, how dare you believe the Earth is round, I mean thats blasphemy, is that what you will teach our next generation of children? the Earth is round.

I for one am disgusted by your antics, I can say your "stupid" (air quotes even though they aren't air quotes) theory of the Earth being round and spherical in shape is completely wrong!, it in fact an oblate spheroid.

huh, some people.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

I don't think you'll ever find any written historic evidence that anyone thought the world was flat.
The belief people from ?olden times? thought the world was flat is a myth.

This. Actually, the whole "Flat Earth belief" thing was made up by the author of a 19th-century anti-catholic pamphlet called, if memory serves me right, "Beliefs of the Church Fathers". It basically contained a lot of malarkey about how the early Christians and medieval theologians were a bunch of idiots with no knowledge of the world around them. The "Flat Earth" thing then got popular with American journalists during a period of anti-Irish sentiments, and that's how it entered popular consciousness.

In fact, the "Flat Earth" thing was never believed by any serious scholar ever since someone climbed a mountain and looked around. Or even earlier than that. I mean, the only thing you have to do is notice that stuff progressively disappears below the horizon as you get further away from it.

Frankly, if the Earth were round, then all the compasses in the world are bullshitting us, since there would be no North. Just Rimward and Hubward. (100 points if you get this reference)

Remember Turnwise and Widdershins, mate.

 

[dwightsteel]

Seriously. I was in the worst mood this morning, and then I read that site's FAQs and now I'm kind of bubbly. This is awesome. So incredibly awesome.

 

[sneak_copter]

Nothing. It's A MADE-UP CRAZY THEORY FROM A TIME WHEN PEOPLE COULDN'T EXPLAIN THE WORLD..

Fixed

 

[dwightsteel]

There is a point in the FAQs where there is a question that goes something to this effect:

Q: No one could possibly pull off such a conspiracy successfully.

They then answer it with a link that says:

A:Actually, they can [http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=13012371429f2ee6358371c7ec92f2fd&topic=6308.0]

As you can see, the link leads to one forumite's opinion on how they would need only a little money to keep the 3 or so dozen people that need to be in the loop, monetarily happy, and thus silent.

This same opinion also assume that the highest echelons of power have no idea of this conspiracy. By his logic, a few of the not-very-high-ups can contain a conspiracy that would change every man, woman, and child's view of the world? And that every country that has a space program (or at least the few that contributes to that few dozen) are totally down with pushing this conspiracy forward.

This is the entirety of the answer they provide for the cover up of this conspiracy. The ramblings of a paranoid teenager...
This just gets better and better.

 

[Kubanator]

The Greeks knew the Earth was round, and actually knew the circumference of it. They would put a ship on the horizon, and then knowing the height of the ship, and the angle between the top of the ship and the bottom, would measure the distance. Then using magical trigonometry, they found out the circumference of the Earth. Also, the Mesopotamians had batteries.

 

[Baby Tea]

I don't know if anyone else has really been to the site, but I found some gems of information.
Well... not so much 'information' as hilarious misunderstandings of science.
Check this one out:

Once again, picture in your mind a round world. Now imagine that there are two people on this world, one at each pole. For the person at the top of the world, (the North Pole), gravity is pulling him down, towards the South Pole. But for the person at the South Pole, shouldn't gravity pull him down as well? What keeps our person at the South Pole from falling completely off the face of the "globe"?

Absolutely hilarious. Or how about this enlightening bit of info:

In the Efimovich model, the planet Earth is supposed to be a large, spherical shaped ball of rock flying through space at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. But how could the Earth continue to move at the same speed for as long a time as the "round Earthers" say that it has existed for; namely, several billion years. If outer space were a vacuum, then there would be no problem. But space is not a vacuum, it is instead filled with ether. The earth would have to have been pushing its way through the ether for all those billions of years. Shouldn't it have slowed somewhere along the line? What would keep the Earth from grinding down to a stop at some point on the Efimovichian timeline?

*sigh*

You know, some people are freaking crazy and hilarious all at the same time.

 

[Abedeus]

And they don't see that their model of a flat Earth is... compressed like hell? Or why maps show the North Pole from all sides? Or why they are retarded?

Damn, people are stupid on the Internet.

 

[knottingam]

Can you provide a link?

 

[A Pious Cultist]

Couldn't they have gone with something semi-plausible like gasses and space dust (which DOES exist in the vaccum)? Such amateurs.

 

[TheSentinel]

I don't know if anyone else has really been to the site, but I found some gems of information.
Well... not so much 'information' as hilarious misunderstandings of science.
Check this one out:

Once again, picture in your mind a round world. Now imagine that there are two people on this world, one at each pole. For the person at the top of the world, (the North Pole), gravity is pulling him down, towards the South Pole. But for the person at the South Pole, shouldn't gravity pull him down as well? What keeps our person at the South Pole from falling completely off the face of the "globe"?

Absolutely hilarious. Or how about this enlightening bit of info:

In the Efimovich model, the planet Earth is supposed to be a large, spherical shaped ball of rock flying through space at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. But how could the Earth continue to move at the same speed for as long a time as the "round Earthers" say that it has existed for; namely, several billion years. If outer space were a vacuum, then there would be no problem. But space is not a vacuum, it is instead filled with ether. The earth would have to have been pushing its way through the ether for all those billions of years. Shouldn't it have slowed somewhere along the line? What would keep the Earth from grinding down to a stop at some point on the Efimovichian timeline?

*sigh*

You know, some people are freaking crazy and hilarious all at the same time.

Wait, did these come from the forum itself? Now I just want to join to point out the hilariously bed science involved.

 

[Abedeus]

Oh GOD, they really do believe in this shit...


Okay, I have tons of arguments as to how Earth and every single planet in the universe is a globe - How did the Japanese get to America without being noticed in Russia, Europe, Africa and EASTERN America!?

Jesus Tapdancing Christ...

 

[dwightsteel]

Can you provide a link?

This is the link [http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=13012371429f2ee6358371c7ec92f2fd&] to the FAQs section of their forum. It's pretty crazy.

 

[Dupeo]

http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm

Here's another site for the good ol' FES. I remember reading this about a year ago with a friend and I found a line somewhere that said something like "We will achieve our goals with supreme dedication and no care for the lives of our members." That's when we decided it was a joke site and the creators did not actually believe in what they were saying.

 

[Sevre]

According to QI the world has been flat since the 13th century, so these people are as stupid as your normal conspiracy theorists.