flat earth people

The earth is flat.

That is a fact.

Reference: The Internet.

:sushi:

LOL!!

I think not

Here, 11 flat earths to gaze at :wink:

I have heard this before (from a smart person in a radio interview), not in context of flat earth, just someone speculating on what gravity is. But I concluded against it (and the flat earth explanation thereof) due to this: when I jump off a high-dive, according to these understandings above, I should feel nothing. I’m just suspended there until the earth (water) comes up and hits me. Well, the fact is, I can FEEL myself accelerating. I don’t think it’s just wind resistance. I can feel it in my belly. My body’s telling me that I’m moving, not being still with the earth coming up to meet me. I admit I can’t totally explain how I sense this, but the sensation of ‘zero gravity’ is not immediate, and increases until impact. I can’t prove, but believe that I would feel this even if I were in a self-contained sphere being dropped with no wind resistance.

I have often wondered however, if there is an objective, unmoving ‘grid’ (as it were) of space around us. The way I was taught relativity, if 2 objects are changing in distance, it’s arguable which one is actually doing the moving. The planet is ‘hurtling through space’… but is there an objective grid of space we are specifically moving through. And, if so, does moving through this space faster cause any effects on its own? Because as I was taught relativity [maybe overly simplified], if no other object around you is there to move relative to yourself, you’re not moving, you’re just standing still. But I wonder if that is really true.

On Flat Earth itself: the FAQ was quite unsatisfying, in that they did not even ATTEMPT to discuss if there was a 3D nature to their model. “What’s on the flip side??”. They only discuss the TOP of this disc. Are they proposing that there is an opposite side to this earth? If so, what’s on that other side, or can we get to it? I’d think even they’d say there’s thickness to this disc. How thick? They make it sound like a 1-sided object, but don’t quite say that. The closest they came to addressing it was that Antarctica surrounds our world, and implied it was some kind of impenetrable barrier or something (may be wrong, I didn’t quite get the implication). I believe in being open to any idea, no matter how absurd, as I’ve found there are many things our general society, and/or other societies, accept which are totally bunk, or even ravagingly violent, cruel, or destructive and yet it’s just accepted. Genital cutting/amputation, which I refer to in my signature, is a perfect example of this. We have a long way to go in our understanding of things. Pretty much everything science has declared as truth, at some future point has been proven false. We are arrogant to think we’ve gotten to the point where that has stopped. It hasn’t. So instead of ridiculing to make myself feel smug or superior or separate from some other group or belief system, I just ask questions which seem obvious.

This is a good, funny thread! I think we should give Joshk a prize…

Maybe an Aspheric lens?

:smiley:

It’s turtles all the way down.

Hmmm. Let’s assume you stepped off of the high diving board instead of jumping off. Using the accelerating spaceship equivalence, stepping off the diving board is the same as shutting off the spaceship engines - you cut off the acceleration. So instead of being pushed back into your spaceship chair due to the acceleration of the engines, you are suddenly in a free floating state. But since your body isn’t a solid object, your body parts will feel this change from an acceleration state to a free floating state. You stomach would briefly crash into the side/front/rear of your body (depending on which way you’re facing) and bobble around a bit until it adjusts to being in a free floating state.

So when you step off the diving board, the feeling of “acceleration” you’re feeling should actually be your body adjusting to suddenly being in a free floating/free falling state. It might visually appear to your eyes that you’re accelerating, but try stepping off the diving board with your eyes closed.

Yep, think about the term free-falling. When you are falling there is no sensation of acceleration (weight) because you are keeping pace with gravity’s acceleration. This is why astronauts do zero-gravity training in airplanes as they nose-dive toward earth. It makes you weightless.

this thread makes me want to vomit

In fact its Unicorns and Dodos

Very interesting, eyeballfryer. I’m such a wimp though, I think I only step off the high dive, not jump! Interesting thoughts to consider! I know I don’t like the zero-grav feel. It definitely has its own feel. Something that might make me tend to contradict what you said, is this bad ‘feeling’ SEEMS to get ‘worse’ (or better, if you like that thing) the more I accelerate. Maybe I’m wrong. I haven’t spent a lot of time freefalling, unlike some people I’ve known.

[Unrelated: the following is a diversion, but this whole thread is a diversion, so if you (the reader) are not up to some stimulating/challenging, if long, reading, skip it instead of complaining, I’m not forcing you to read.]

You can make fun of them if you want, but your confidence doesn’t mean you know more. The way evolution is most-commonly taught, is not backed by actual scientific evidence. I say this with no religious dog in the race. Actually the commonly-understood understanding of Evolution seems like a religious dogma, the way it’s insisted with vehemence, fear, conflict of interest, group pressure and negativity, to compensate for lack of physical evidence. It’s such a badly-formed idea, that they had to create out of thin air, the so-called “Theory of punctuated equilibrium” to actually explain away the need for evidence for their “theory”—and it’s not a theory, not what they’re prognosticating. Evolution may happen, but not the way it’s currently taught/understood/accepted. The way it’s taught today could be a hypothesis, yes (the bar for being a hypothesis is very low, which is why they don’t want to label it that). Theory? No. BUT… the so-called “theory of punctuated equilibrium” is even more flimsy, it’s just a creation out of whole cloth. It’s a so-called “theory” which says that the reason there isn’t physical evidence of actual morphing of one animal to another, is because a specie spends eons not evolving, but— but— then, when it DOES evolve, it’s SO fast, it’s just too fast to leave a findable fossil record! It’s literally a ‘theory’ which says ‘we don’t need physical evidence for this other thing to be a theory’. So, a theory is supposed to be based on physical evidence, but since it’s lacking, it can’t be a theory, only a hypothesis. So they introduce ANOTHER theory, which has even LESS physical evidence—NONE, to be exact, to prop up the previous theory. Make sense?

So, ‘my theory doesn’t have enough physical evidence to support it, so I’m going to create another theory, which uses zero evidence, which says that my theory doesn’t need physical evidence to be true.’ So I’ll play by their own rules: the “theory” of evolution is not supported by evidence. You DO have a very obvious ‘connect the dots’ in the fossil record. But that’s the problem: it’s a bunch of quite well-defined, SEPARATE dots. Lots of this type discovered, and lots of this other type discovered, which looks similar, but not a smooth, continuous morphing. Just a bunch here, and a bunch of the others there. If it were the way it was claimed, we couldn’t have this well-defined, common specie and that well-defined common specie, they’d all be in their own smooth, infinitely-variable state of evolution. But that’s not what we see from the fossil record. So, they try to get you to believe these species are all morphing from each other, when in the evidence just isn’t there, it’s something else. It MAY still be true, but it’s NOT supported by evidence enough to be a theory as widely- and emphatically-insisted upon as it is (methinks they do insist too much), and certainly not to be considered “fact”, as you will commonly hear from sources of wisdom like TV show “South Park”.

I’m not saying nothing’s happening, I’m not saying each specie got created individually along the timeline by some metaphysical Creator. What I’m saying is that the dominant model purposely leaves out evidence due to bias. This so-called theory of Evolution has been weaponized to destroy people’s belief in God. I’m not saying that from my standpoint: that is how it IS used, and they make sure college kids take the courses so they lose their faith. And it works; I know several people who became atheists, at least for years, as a result specifically of their college course in Evolution. I actually recently concluded that this was one of the major reasons kids are so encouraged to go to college, even though it teaches very little and does not seem to give most people a professional or salary advantage anymore (and certainly not in my experience). The thing is, the people I referred to who became atheists, didn’t realize that they weren’t being told the whole story. I also don’t necessarily think their belief in God should’ve been restored just upon realizing that they were essentially lied-to or given a slanted viewpoint in that class, but I’ve noticed that’s what happens too. So, this whole evolution “thing” is a very powerful idea, even if wrongly so. This is known, so it is used for political purposes.

Prognosticators of current evolution hypotheses also gloss over the obvious question if a specie evolved into another, why are there still fish in the ocean, why are there still algae, why are old, original, or ancient species still here, if they’ve evolved beyond that? If it’s better to be an animal than a plant, why are there still plants? HOW the hell did an animal evolve out of a plant? How many animal-plants are there in the fossil record?

But above all, the biggest lie spun is that all evolution is done by random mutation. I don’t know if that is more of a whopper than life was created by sheer random chemical reactions or not—I won’t go into the creation of life itself, but religionists due to their interests have covered that area pretty well, even from a mathematical chance perspective (which I don’t necessarily espouse, but found very interesting). I don’t have a personal interest, I just want things being taught without bias; that doesn’t happen.

The biggest thing they leave out is that the specialness of DNA. They will not touch the topic that DNA appears to have intelligence of its own. That is too problematic, which is why they dogmatically say that ALL changes in lifeforms are by mutation (the superlative itself invokes suspicion, and risks weakness). Basically: everything by accident, not on purpose. In my opinion, it’s a spiritual message being sent, and one I believe is false, which is why more lies and obfuscation are needed to “support” the idea.

It’s very clear to me that life can adapt with a purpose. I don’t know about evolving into a completely different life form, but DNA (or some essence of the organism, but it does mostly appear to be DNA) does appear to be able to change itself on on purpose. I don’t know how it knows; that’s not the question though. The question is, does it know. In other words, are changes in DNA code made from ANYTHING other than mutations. I say yes. And it’s clear that DNA has some kind of awareness of its own. And it would logically or at least apparently have to, if it ADDS INFORMATION TO ITSELF. Where is it even getting that information from? How does DNA know how to counter a problem and write new code that’s a solution for it? I mean, think about this. DNA is SELF-WRITING CODE, which comes up with answers to problems, using information for a solution that we can’t explain how it would have access to (or even ‘what’ information it would be accessing!). We have code, but do we have code like that? I mean, to borrow an Einsteinian term: it’s spooky, but they want to say it’s just random mutations.

This should be studied. But it’s mostly ignored, due to bias/embarrassment/closed-mindedness… which are all unscientific. But science to me resembles religion to me, now more than ever). It’s my understanding this is the whole concept behind Intelligent Design. Not that a god did it, but that DNA (or something relating to it) is capable of deliberate, purposeful changes, and has some kind of awareness or intelligence. You don’t need any esoteric belief for this, but staunch atheists tend to run from it or be reviled by it, due to their own bias, because of what the implications (somewhere in their psyche) might be, even if those implications are not necessarily true. Similar to how atheists seem to feel a need to believe that consciousness does not survive death, because they seem to think that that would prove or support the existence of God, when it doesn’t, necessarily (though it certainly doesn’t hurt that concept, either—and therein lies a beginning the problem). An atheist will conveniently solve the problem by just insisting that consciousness does not survive death, and then use that somehow as evidence that God doesn’t exist, which would be a logical fallacy.

DNA is, quite obviously, code. We all know what code is now in the context of computers, but this concept wasn’t even around 200 years ago. DNA is obviously code on its face, it even resembles binary. But it’s not:it’s trinary. More advanced, easily argued, than binary. DNA even has its own error-correction mechanism! Telomeres, and I believe other aspects which bear a striking and obvious similarity to parity data or cyclic redundancy checks in computers. It becomes difficult, at least to the point of straining credulity, to argue that “evidence supports” the concept that nature created self-correcting trinary code/language all by a series of mis-steps or random happenstances, with no deliberateness or intent anywhere.

The more you learn about it, the more it doesn’t seem this way. You start seeing the fingerprints of… something, someone, I don’t know. I don’t take a stab, because really, from the evidence-based model we don’t have enough info, we haven’t even passed “Go” yet; so we should focus on “what”, not “why” or “who”.

But this is, to my understanding, really all “Intelligent Design” is trying to say. That message, however, is warped, mischaracterized, and lied-about by the religiously-oriented dogmatic, biased, conflicted-of-interest atheist wing which has effectively taken over the educational system in the US and plenty of other places, and won’t allow these ideas to be taught or even considered. Did your Biology teacher ever describe DNA to your class as code? None of my teachers did. That would open up too many undesirable questions… which could risk defeating the purpose of the lesson (which wasn’t really about biology). And on the concept of Intelligent Design (the way I understand it), it’s obvious it must be mischaracterized and lied-about in order to justify suppressing it. If I’ve not perfectly expressed the main concept of Intelligent Design (I’m not sure anyone has a lock or ownership on the concept), I’m sure I at least characterize it better and fairer than the pro-evolutionists.

There are animals with very specialized capabilities and body parts, which would only begin to be functional when that part is fully formed. The way mutations work, that part would not keep mutating and mutating until it was a totally working, amazingly specialized part. Along the way, according to the dogma, such an animal, or line of animals, would not be as successful in mating, while carrying around a gimpy body extention which will someday become a very specialized body part but is now just dead weight. An extra set of wings. Or wings at all, for instance. That is not something that’s just gonna grow out of a whole line of animals for no reason, and then on top of that, in the meantime win the Darwin ‘mating game’ race of highest reproduction rates while carrying around all that useless weight, until those parts finally (and supposedly randomly) become functional. If this were true, species would be carrying around all sorts of tumor-like protrusions, virtually all of which would never form into anything useful, and which would also hamper reproduction.

Something I’ve also thought about is chromosomes. You don’t hear anyone talk about this one. At what point does a lifeform go to a completely different number of chromesomes? Who’s the first one to pop out with extra (or fewer) chromosomes? Does just one baby animal one day, pop out with an extra or fewer pair? Or does a whole species one day just start being born with a larger or smaller number of chromosomes than their parents? The ridiculousness becomes obvious quickly, because we see no evolution of just part of a chromosome. How would a whole set just appear or disappear anyway? There is no smooth morphing when it comes to a chromosome. It’s either there, or it’s not.

Let’s suppose it’s possible for a single organism to reproduce an offspring with a totally new set of chromosomes. How would that organism then be able to reproduce with its like kind—or anything else for that matter? Because there’d be a different number of chromosomes—by definition, the genetics would be different. And let’s say even that would happen. How would it then become persistent? There are too many obvious problems here, which you just never hear raised.

So the question is how a whole group or specie just suddenly has an extra (or less) set of chromosomes. To challenge people who think they are educated who like to use their belief in the hypothesis of evolution as a way to make themselves feel superior, I sometimes ask people how many chromosomes a chimpanzee has. Of course, they don’t know. The answer is 48. Then I ask them how many chromosomes humans have? This one, they should know. I’ve never met someone who does, though. So, I tell them to guess. They usually guess something equal to, or greater than 48. The answer is 46. Everyone’s always surprised. So at this point, someone out there who knows a thing or two about genetics will say that humans have a chromosome where the 2 analogous chimp ones have been stuck together, as if with glue. Yeah, that’s part of my point, and that in itself leads to interesting places. So you don’t hear that one taught a lot either.

I’m not an expert, but I have looked into this. The more I studied the human genome, visually looking at sections of the human chromosomes—this is more esoteric, but it was visually evident to me, especially upon discovering junk DNA, that “someone has been here”. I could not escape the obviousness. And I didn’t (and don’t) want it to be true. There are large sections of the human genome which, visually, clearly, quite clearly, have just been “flattened”. That’s the best word I have—you have to see it visually—it’s impactful. I subjectively get the distinct impression that code, lots of it, used to be there… and now nothing of value is there. It actually visually reminded of me of when I’ve digitally edited things out of an image by using a virtual paintbrush, using a mouse. This was not the result of bias; in fact, like I said, I had bias in the opposite direction… won’t go into that here. I mean, I remember the moment, visually looking at that… you own wisdom says (mine did, anyway), someone has been here and flattened this. It’s been removed. Deliberately. I don’t know what that was, why it was done that way, but that is my opinion and until better information comes along, that is my belief and sense of it. And you will note I distinctly differentiate between evidence, opinion, belief, hypothesis and theory. I try not to use the word “fact” much, as the word is so loaded and carries an air of superiority which I’ve learned should trigger suspicion. And in my experience, what is considered a ‘fact’ is unfortunately quite subjective. But what is an opinion/belief/evidence/hypothesis/theory is more solid.

Evolutionists claim to be rooted in science and that all science should be based on physical evidence, but they do not hold themselves to the same standards they vaunt. If science were less religion-like, less dogmatic, more open-minded, we’d be a lot farther along in discovering who and what we humans truly are. I think the answers, if the questions had a chance to get questions, would lead into esoteric areas which would contradict religious/dogmatic sensibilities. I see atheism as a religion and include it in that religious/dogmatic description, but the ‘religionist’ side is also greatly at fault. Above all, in my observations of people, I’ve found that conflict of interest is extremely pervasive: almost but not quite universal influence. Those who really do pursue the truth at all costs, usually get squashed or at least quite fought-against, not to mention the derision of the superior people who don’t even realize how inferior they really are. I really hate Normalcy Bias (obviously). All that stuff is intellectual and spiritual weakness. Real smarts isn’t about who can most-successfully suppress new ideas and evidence in a university department, or who can deride an individual or group with the most venom for not fitting into an accepted cult of science. Or who can agree the most with the current, most-accepted model, as if it’s a contest to get some seal of approval for conformity or compliance. Real intellect, real smarts, or let’s say “the truth”, is a lot more subtle than that. And harder to achieve.

If I had to guess, that “bad feeling” might be due to your body parts - muscles, organs, stomach acid, sense of balance, etc - not being used to being in a free fall / free floating state with no defined up and down direction. So it all feels weird and possibly nauseous, especially the longer you’re in that weightless state.

Something else to tickle your brain with: when you’re in a car, bus, train, jet, and the vehicle accelerates, your body parts should be able to feel the DIRECTION of the acceleration, even with your eyes closed. Your head tilts back, your stomach feels like it’s been left behind, etc. When you step off the high dive - with your eyes closed and ignoring the feeling of the wind - can your body feel and determine the direction of the acceleration?

If the world was “flat”, then there would have to be some land/sea zones defining the edge. This means if you take a flight, there would be a very prominent “abrupt turn” needed to keep the aircraft from flying out of Earth orbit.

All you need to do is travel in an airplane and go half way around the world to witness the curvature… and how the curvature is constant throughout the flight.

You pose this argument to “flat Earth” believers and they’ll scoff… with no credible response. You can’t win an argument against someone who refuses to accept known facts and reality. Just like those idiots who think the moon landings were faked, or 9/11 was some massive conspiracy. Some of these imbeciles create or promote conspiracies for their own entertainment. You can actually make some decent coin if your YouTube video goes viral. This is what drives many people to create this time wasting chaff, where the idiots and gullible fall in line to believe that crap.

Here’s a new physics question: If I hold a rifle level and fire, and at the same time my friend drops a bullet from the same height as the barrel, which bullet hits the ground first?

What if the earth is neither flat nor round?

What if we are all just living in a giant virtual reality simulation.

Technically it is neither. It’s not really a sphere either. It’s a slightly flattened sphere. emphasis on slightly

Haw! The dropped bullet because the curvature of the earth falls away from the shot bullet?

Nah. Much simpler than that. Which hits the ground first depends pretty much completely on the terrain in front of the rifle.

Exactly. This is why politics still exists.