Is the World Flat??

Proteus wrote:

Phoenix Vidensia wrote:

Ariane wrote: Anyway sorry if that is offensive it appears anti-christian which i am not, but people believing the flat earth thing is a modern myth.

Uh... no it’s not. There actually are people who believe the world is flat in 2019. No, I’m not speaking of trolls or those just in it for a lark. Try engineers, teachers, pilots, and plenty of other professionals. I’m not saying they are right, just that they do indeed exist and they have sound arguments for many of their claims. However, sound arguments exist for some truly bizarre things. So...

I'm interested in these professionals who have this belief, mainly because the modern day movement of flat earthers is proven to be a result of failures in the education system. Flat earth beliefs are known to be derived from a fundamental lack of understanding in basic physics and math, resulting in the person not being able to explain a basic phenomenon. Combined with the Dunning-Krueger effect this results in them not being able to recognize their own ignorance, much less be willing to accept it, and instead redirect their focus on conspiracies to say some authority has lied to the world in some way.

So I would be very interested to meet an engineer or a teacher who believes the earth is flat, as I am curious how they gained the credentials to go into these fields with said lack of fundamental education.

Are you serious or is this a sarcastic response? How about accredited PhDs in astrophysics and geology that believe the earth is only 6000 years old? They exist as well.

VixensVengeance wrote:

Proteus wrote:

Phoenix Vidensia wrote:

Ariane wrote: Anyway sorry if that is offensive it appears anti-christian which i am not, but people believing the flat earth thing is a modern myth.

Uh... no it’s not. There actually are people who believe the world is flat in 2019. No, I’m not speaking of trolls or those just in it for a lark. Try engineers, teachers, pilots, and plenty of other professionals. I’m not saying they are right, just that they do indeed exist and they have sound arguments for many of their claims. However, sound arguments exist for some truly bizarre things. So...

I'm interested in these professionals who have this belief, mainly because the modern day movement of flat earthers is proven to be a result of failures in the education system. Flat earth beliefs are known to be derived from a fundamental lack of understanding in basic physics and math, resulting in the person not being able to explain a basic phenomenon. Combined with the Dunning-Krueger effect this results in them not being able to recognize their own ignorance, much less be willing to accept it, and instead redirect their focus on conspiracies to say some authority has lied to the world in some way.

So I would be very interested to meet an engineer or a teacher who believes the earth is flat, as I am curious how they gained the credentials to go into these fields with said lack of fundamental education.

Are you serious or is this a sarcastic response? How about accredited PhDs in astrophysics and geology that believe the earth is only 6000 years old? They exist as well.

For the record, it isn't that I don't believe they exist. It's that it's amazing that they do.

Kobos wrote: Understandable reasoning, I do tend to on things I am researching or looking into more than a casual glance. It is part of confirming information for me. But in presenting that information to someone else "infotainment" as you put it may be more effective for them as opposed to how I process information and research into writing. Laziness in this sense is in the eye of the beholder, not everyone enjoys digging through documents and text books like I do.

Much Love, Respect and Peace,
Kobos

If one desires knowledge and understanding of something, Ii's not always about liking doing the research, it's about being accurate with it. Furthermore, laziness isn't in the eye of the beholder at all. You're either being lazy or you're not. In the case of watching YouTube videos and calling that thorough research, it's just lazy.

Ariane wrote: It's funny that the same question of what happens at the edge of universe. Like those sailors who couldn't answer the question of the what happens at the edge of the Earth. Compelling people to circumnavigate the globe. Scientists believe the universe is flat...

Some do. If it is, then the jury will be out on that indefinitely.

At any rate, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, we are dealing here with an equivocation on the term "flat". Where in flat earth flatness refers to the actual curvature - or lack thereof, as it were - of a two-dimensional surface, the flatness of a flat universe relates more to flatness as defined in geometric algebra. There is no evidence suggesting even remotely that the universe has a finite or bounded volume, let alone that the shape of that volume is anything like a disk or any kind of flat layer bounded by planes on either side. Flat here just means that (broadly speaking, possibly over-simplifying) Euclid's axioms apply.

Experimentally there is hardly any reason to doubt that the universe is indeed flat in that sense. However, we are talking about a mathematical condition that would fail if the real value of the "curvature" is anything other than exactly none, and absolute statements like that for measurable values are not possible to substantiate in principle. Thus rather than say that the universe is absolutely flat, caution pulls us back to say that it is flat only as far as we can tell, i.e. to within ever shrinking margins of error.

VixensVengeance wrote:
Are you serious or is this a sarcastic response? How about accredited PhDs in astrophysics and geology that believe the earth is only 6000 years old? They exist as well.

... and those who believe the sun revolves around the Earth.

I think a lot of people just assume that if someone is highly educated, they can't possibly believe in something like the world being a circular plane. However, like in your example, plenty of highly educated people do hold what we would call irrational beliefs, like the world being younger than one-million years old. The thing is, these beliefs aren't irrational to those who hold them and all those who hold them aren't unintelligent or damaged, just because they hold them, much less in general.

Here are some enlightening sources for why the Earth is round and what the Ancients did to calculate it.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eratosthenes

https://www.loc.gov/collections/finding-our-place-in-the-cosmos-with-carl-sagan/articles-and-essays/modeling-the-cosmos/ancient-greek-astronomy-and-cosmology/

There are ways to know that the world is round without advanced technology. This isn't like the Climate Change debate. This also isn't unique to Christians as one can see. Flat Earth is a religious doctrine, however. It wasn't brought about with experimentation as other disputed ideologies..

Uzima Moto wrote: Here are some enlightening sources for why the Earth is round and what the Ancients did to calculate it.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eratosthenes

https://www.loc.gov/collections/finding-our-place-in-the-cosmos-with-carl-sagan/articles-and-essays/modeling-the-cosmos/ancient-greek-astronomy-and-cosmology/

There are ways to know that the world is round without advanced technology. This isn't like the Climate Change debate. This also isn't unique to Christians as one can see. Flat Earth is a religious doctrine, however. It wasn't brought about with experimentation as other disputed ideologies..

Religious doctrine? What about Atheist flat earthers? They exist. Why exactly would a flat world necessitate the existence of a deity?

Also, if it’s that easy to know the shape of this place for certain, FE shouldn’t even be a thing, especially not among PHDs.

By the way... that guy you sourced? Plenty of counters for that exist. Look into it.

Phoenix Vidensia wrote: Religious doctrine? What about Atheist flat earthers? They exist.

Therefore what?

Why exactly would a flat world necessitate the existence of a deity?

Why exactly would a religion necessitate belief in one?

Also, if it’s that easy to know the shape of this place for certain, FE shouldn’t even be a thing, especially not among PHDs.

Why not? Where is the connection here? Sure, if it's hard to find out, one would expect there to be some controversy on the issue, but that doesn't mean that there couldn't be any if it isn't. You cannot follow the antecedent from the consequent. Education does not immunize against all silly beliefs as you acknowledged just a few posts further up. And that's assuming that nothing could motivate a person of fine education to profess garbage like that despite knowing better.

Judging by evidence gathered through observation, whether the earth as a whole is closer to a disk or a globe is not in dispute. Neither is whether its age is closer to a few thousand years or a few billion. Even the rapid change of global temperatures since the industrial revolution and particularly the last half a century or so, and immediate consequences of that are, too, not an open question judging by the evidence. The fact that you can find people with credentials, fake, fictitious, or genuine, who will still for reasons of political affiliation, religious faith, other personal commitments, generous compensation, or an honest ignorance, mischaracterize accidentally or on purpose the current state of our knowledge on these matters does not render these issues open questions again. Why would it? The evidence speaks for itself, no matter who tries to shout over it or how much of an authority anyone is selling them to be.

Gisteron wrote:

Phoenix Vidensia wrote: Religious doctrine? What about Atheist flat earthers? They exist.

Therefore what?

Why exactly would a flat world necessitate the existence of a deity?

Why exactly would a religion necessitate belief in one?

Also, if it’s that easy to know the shape of this place for certain, FE shouldn’t even be a thing, especially not among PHDs.

Why not? Where is the connection here? Sure, if it's hard to find out, one would expect there to be some controversy on the issue, but that doesn't mean that there couldn't be any if it isn't. You cannot follow the antecedent from the consequent. Education does not immunize against all silly beliefs as you acknowledged just a few posts further up. And that's assuming that nothing could motivate a person of fine education to profess garbage like that despite knowing better.

Judging by evidence gathered through observation, whether the earth as a whole is closer to a disk or a globe is not in dispute. Neither is whether its age is closer to a few thousand years or a few billion. Even the rapid change of global temperatures since the industrial revolution and particularly the last half a century or so, and immediate consequences of that are, too, not an open question judging by the evidence. The fact that you can find people with credentials, fake, fictitious, or genuine, who will still for reasons of political affiliation, religious faith, other personal commitments, generous compensation, or an honest ignorance, mischaracterize accidentally or on purpose the current state of our knowledge on these matters does not render these issues open questions again. Why would it? The evidence speaks for itself, no matter who tries to shout over it or how much of an authority anyone is selling them to be.

I don’t consider young earth, flat earth, or geocentricism to be “garbage”. Unlikely, sure... but that’s just because I’m not convinced by the available evidence. However, I’m a human-caused climate change denier. What would I know?

It really isn't important what anyone in particular thinks of them. The evidence on the shape and age of the earth and the most parsimonious descriptions of its position in the solar system or how its climate has been developing in recent decades (I didn't bring up the man-made bit anyway) is not ambiguous. It's not a matter of whether you or I find some models to be garbage or not, it's whether or not the predictions they yield match observation, and some of them predict observations pretty much all of the time, while the others contradict observations almost all of the time. It doesn't matter who rises up to a pulpit to preach their opinion or what that opinion is. That's all I was saying.

Now, granted, none of it is a matter of mathematical certainty either. We "only" know that earth isn't flat about as well as we can know anything at all about it. That may be a fair nitpick in philosophical discussions, but a petty one in scientific ones (not to say that this is where you were going with the "unlikely" bit, but still). No synthetic claim can be evaluated with analytic absoluteness. And no such absoluteness is being claimed. We are only as certain as we can dare to be about anything. The jury isn't out, the verdict is made. In some logically possible world it may turn out to be a false one after all, but until we can visit said world or confirm that it is our own, we are rationally justified to take account of the earth's curvature when we build bridges or fly rockets and we would be positively irrational to neglect it for such applications.