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Anyone been paying any attention to the whole flat earth theory and the recent trip to Antartica? I've been paying attention for about the last 6 months. If you're not aware flat earthers believe that the earth is flat and Antartica is basically a glacier wall that rings completely around the earth and holds in the oceans water. It's been well established and agreed to by both flat earthers and globers that there's a 24 hour sun (meaning it never sets) in the North in the summer, but flat earthers have maintained that doesn't happen in the south in the winter (because it can't with the flat earth model) while globers insist that it does because it's just the opposite of what happens in the North and is further evidence that the world is a globe. A guy with some money decided to resolve the dispute he'd pay for 1 flat earther and 1 glober to go to Antartica with him during the winter to see if there's a 24 hour sun in Antartica and document the experiment. If you're interested here's a link to check it out. The fallout from the experiment has been fun to watch to say the least.

https://www.the-final-experiment.com/

I have a suspicious feeling that nobody is really a flat-Earther.  There are a few people who are legitimately mentally ill and maybe a couple of people so deep in the weeds that they think this.  But, the vast majority of this movement is trolls and grifters.

For the most part I agree that there is a large contingent of trolls and grifters, but they can't all be grifters because there has to be someone to grift, you're not going to grift the other grifters. There are a couple groups of people that do truly believe the earth is flat and they make up a large part of the movement.  They generally fall into these 3 categories in my opinion.

1) Religious slant. Some are convinced that the bible says the earth is flat and therefore it must be because the bible is the word of God and cannot be wrong no matter what evidence there is to the contrary. This is not really all that surprising as there's no evidence God exists either but many believe so regardless. These people have a general disdain for the scientific community and believe they are liars.
2) Conspiracy theory slant. This is closely related to #1 but slightly different in my opinion. Many don't believe what anyone of authority says and believe they know better. The "authorities" are lieing and since the "authorities" say the world is a globe, it cannot be. Why else would NASA go to so much trouble to fake the shots of earth from space if the earth is really a globe? These people don't just believe the earth is flat, they don't believe that space exists, they don't believe the US put men on the moon in the 60's etc, etc, etc.
3) If I can't see it with my own eyes, I don't believe it. Many just won't believe something they can't see for themselves. The earth is too large to actually see the curvature of the earth while standing on the earth so they don't believe it. There's also a general misunderstanding of the direction "down". They reason that water needs something to "hold" it so there must be something that encircles the water to hold it into place. If the world were a globe the water would fall away from the earth. Again this is closely related to the others but again slightly different in my opinion, but it's also pervasive in the flat earth community.

There's also one more very important trait that makes up a large part of the flat earth movement for all 3 categories, arrogance. These people aren't dumb or mentally ill, just the opposite in most cases. They are highly intelligent and so sure of themselves and their own beliefs that no one can convince them otherwise even when presented with tons of evidence to the contrary. Before the recent trip to Antartica for instance many of the flat earthers stated emphatically that if you went to Antartica which they believe the government will prevent you from doing, you would find there is no 24 hour sun. As the trip started to become a reality many flat earthers changed their stance and started to say that a 24 hour sun in Antartica wouldn't disprove flat earth theory. Since these 7 people went and clearly documented the existence of the 24 sun in the Antartica, some of the flat earthers have now recanted and admit there is a 24 hour sun in Antartica but have come up with a variety of new reasons to explain away that fact despite the fact that their existing model doesn't support any of it. Others have come up with tons of new theories of how the 24 hour sun in the Antartica could have been faked. These are all thought out theories and conjecture for the most part (although completely wrong), but the question you have to ask yourself is why is it so important that the earth NOT be a globe? Why not just accept the fact that it might be a globe rather than put so much effort and thought into disproving that it is? Again it comes down to they have their opinion and YOU are not going to change it no matter what.

Not to derail, but it's not a coincidence that politics and religion works this way as well. Confirmation bias is a thing, mix that with a bit of sunk cost fallacy and indoctrination from a young age and you have people that won't budge no matter what facts or proof or logical arguments they are presented with.

Also, just because it's the way it is, doesn't mean intransigence in the face of overwhelming evidence isn't a mental illness. It's very much a psychological one.

Anyone who reads to the "ends of the earth" and takes away that it means the world is flat is reaching. It means the farthest reaches of the world, signifying that God's power and influence extend everywhere.

As far as God not existing ... I think Pete Holmes explained it in the simplest of forms for the non believers to understand.
https://youtu.be/qJguU6sLR-8?si=iAoARibPh25cyxTp

The truth is there is a ton of evidence of the Bible and Jesus. Archelogy continues to prove it as well as Atheists who try and prove it is made up.  The former award-winning legal editor of The Chicago Tribune Atheist-turned-Christian Lee Strobel, who got his legal degree from Yale Law School, is a perfect example of someone who looked into it on his own. His book "The Case for Christ" is his evidence he discovered trying to convince his wife that Jesus was make believe. He was upset by her "new life" and went after it as if it was a legal case to be tried. It absolutely changed his life.

"Based on scientific evidence, I became convinced that there's a Creator of the universe; and based on historical data, I became confident [in] Jesus' claim to be the Son of God. - Lee Strobel

CF, you're really bad at taking one person's anecdote and trying to use it as evidence.

That guy you're referring, who gives a shit?  He's a pastor since 1987 and writes religious books.

You seem to fall back on "See?  This liberal supports Trump!"  "See?  This atheist is now Christian!" as if any of that means fuck-all.   It's like logical fallacy 101.

Saying the archeological evidence for jesus exists is like someone 2000 years from now having an archeological dig in new york city and claiming that as proof that spider man existed

That's exactly how it works.   ::)   There is a ton more evidence for Jesus Christ than Julius Caesar so I'm guessing you don't believe in him either.

I'll give you the biggest proof to me that Jesus is God. Jesus' followers all hid when he was crucified as they were definitely afraid. After the "supposed" resurrection they all died horrible deaths claiming Jesus was God. That is except for the one disciple who stayed with Jesus at the cross. No one knows what happened to John after he wrote Revelation. They were jailed, tortured, boiled and crucified ... some of them for over 30 years but ALL claiming Jesus is God and not one ever recanting to save themselves. This is documented outside of the Bible as well. So the question of life and death is .... what changed all of these men and some women into someone willing to suffer and die for many years just to tell a lie?

Also ... why did Saul the Pharisee go from killing Christians, including the first Christian martyr Stephen, to writing what would become 2/3rds of the New Testament? He also endured over 30 years of torture before he was finally killed. Doesn't seem like a great idea to switch teams to me unless you know its truth.

I'm not a flat earther or one who reads the bible, but I believe the section they are referring to says the "circle of earth" or something along those lines however it doesn't actually say the earth is flat either. A circle is merely a 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional sphere. You get a sphere by rotating a 2 dimensional circle on a 3rd plane. The Bible is also a translation into English so it's possible that the translation should have been sphere rather than circle, sometimes meanings in different languages don't have an exact match and could lead to ambiguity. So the bible doesn't actually say the earth is flat nor does it say it's a disk which is the flat earth model. What was originally meant by that reference could be interpreted in different ways in my opinion so the bible doesn't really answer the question one way or another.

Yeah, I was just generalizing and not making any specific claims. That's a whole other discussion that I don't want to get into in this thread. My point was that religion tends to be an area where people have very strong opinions and are not really open to claims from the scientific world, right or wrong. This is true for more than just is the world flat or a globe?

No, its an example of a very well educated liberal guy actually looking into the facts and not just pretending there is no God. No one can force you to do it but the Bible says whoever seeks God will find Him. I've seen that so many times in real life with some of the biggest non believers out there. It's very cool to watch when it all clicks.

BTW ... a non believing coworker found that book on the side of the road and gave it to me. I've given it to numerous people. Some read it while others don't. I've never seen one person read it and come away saying it was all BS. I have to believe that if someone is willing to read it then God has already started working on them.  

Since some of you seem interested I'm going to link one more video of a person who I find highly enlightening. This guy is a glober who's been arguing with the flat earth community for some time, but I must say he tries to maintain a decorum when discussing the subject as best he can. He doesn't insult people at least not intentionally, it's hard to argue with someone without them feeling attacked in some ways, but he tries his best. He's also very intelligent and does a great job with using examples and such to try to explain the science as there is quite a bit of science to understand to fully appreciate the world as a globe. Below is a link to one of his videos from prior to leaving to go to Antartica. He's had a couple of videos since then some while in Antartica and some after they all returned trying to explain and debunk any misinformation, just go to his youtube page and look for his recent videos. His dog's name is Rusty. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSU-DHNhUdg

After watching the following video, maybe I was giving flat earthers more credit than they deserved. I was under the impression there were some pretty intelligent flat earthers after hearing the debate but perhaps they really have a lot more trouble with simple concepts than I realized because some of the folks in this video are pretty clueless when it comes to math, geometry, geography, modeling, etc. Maybe they are just really good at making themselves sound smart by regurgitating the basics of the flat earth model but when really pressed on things or get them out of their comfort zone, they really struggle. This video does a great job of showing this. I got to admit I was pretty shocked that some of them couldn't understand basic geometry or geography or even that words can have multiple definitions like the word level. Whitsit's explanation of a new moon and a full moon was mind boggling. I had no clue what he was even talking about. I think he was making up words to be honest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh4ze5bWLcI&t=90s

I think if you are truly a flat-Earther, you lack serious reasoning skills to the point of being either unintelligent, disabled, or mentally unwell.

There is a certain amount of faith required to believe in anything that you can't, yourself, test -- so I have to believe that things like, pictures of Earth are actually pictures of Earth and not a grand conspiracy, having never, myself, flown to space.  But the amount of faith that it would take to disbelieve in those photos is much, much, much greater than the faith to believe in the general system that humanity is on the up an up with things like basic truths.

When you reject evolution, reject climate change, and reject vaccines, rejecting a spherical planet is super easy.  Go outside and look at the ground!  It's flat.

There are factions in this country that have been pushing anti-science rhetoric for decades, and we are simply reaping the rewards.

The people you claim do nor believe actually do believe in some evolution and climate change but just not like you would want us to. Hell ..... climate change was around waaaayyyy before the Industrial revolution. We can't pay our way out of that.

Outside of the paid doctors who are pushing them, the shot stuff being dangerous gets proven more and more each week with more proof negative side effects were suppressed. Its why Fauci got a preemptive pardon. Innocent people do not get pardons let alone preemptive.

A hit dog will holler.

The people some claim do not believe actually do believe in a round earth but just not like we would want them to.
They do know the planet is round... but like a disc, not like a globe.

But the globalist establishment has too much money to make off of their scam, spending billions of dollars on fake "satellite missions" to planets that don't exist.  NASA feeds the public these obviously fake CGI images of "Jupiter" and the paid-off media tells you they're real.

CF, you have precisely demonstrated exactly how we got to the point where flat-earthers abound.  Thanks.

Your glorious orange emperor just pardoned over a thousand of your insurrectionist buddies.

Hahahaha while I disagree with Trump to some extent .. its really hard to take criticism from a group who supports the thousands of people Biden pardoned including family members. He also used the never before used pre-emptive pardon to try and save all his buddies. This means any president moving forward is legal to have people do whatever he wants and he can just pardon them. Not a great precedent if it is upheld.

I suppose now you'll tell me Elon is a Nazi when every major Democrat has video of them doing similar things. Hahaha Hypocrisy never gets old for you guys does it?

No, that's moronic af

I watched a documentary called behind the curve last night and found it very interesting. It's basically about the flat earth community and the recent flat earth movement and how it started. According to the documentary one of the main proponents of the recent flat earth movement is a guy named Mark Sargent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Sargent_(flat_Earth_proponent)) who was turned onto the idea of a flat earth in 2015 after initially trying to debunk it. He's sort of the current flat earth movement's messiah. I honestly think he might have some doubts now, but he's so revered by the community he couldn't possibly walk away from this even if he wanted to. He sort of alludes to that in the documentary.

One of the interesting things is that one of the proponents of flat earth theory in the documentary is a guy named Jeran Campanella. He had his own website and had a ton of followers and in the documentary he had proposed an experiment to test the curvature of the earth by shooting a laser across a lake that was several miles wide. His experiment failed and he couldn't figure out why (spoiler, it was because the laser was hitting the water in the middle of the lake and the refraction of the laser off the water made it impossible to see the laser on the other side of the lake). Well the reason this is interesting is because this guy happened to be one of the participants in the final experiment. After going to the Antarctica and seeing the 24 hour sun for himself he's changed his mind about the flat earth. I wouldn't say that he now believes the earth is a sphere but he does admit that the model that most flat earthers use is fatally flawed since it can't explain a 24 hour sun in the Antartica and it does exist. He's taken a ton of backlash from the flat earth community because of this and he's pretty much dropped out of the flat earth movement for the time being. Many are saying that he was a plant before going, but this documentary was released in 2018 and Jeran had been a proponent of flat earth theory even prior to that so he would have had to have been playing his part for the last 6 years at the very least. That's some commitment.

Dave, I'd be interested to hear your take on this. Do these people have serious mental issues or just really sure they know better than anyone else what they are talking about? I'm not really sure this is much different from a lot of people's take on religion or politics or any number of other issues. People believe what they want to believe. You can call that a mental issue if you want I guess, but there's enough of them to suggest that even pretty "normal" people can have these views.

Behind the curve (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8132700/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_1)

I can't believe we are giving these people any attention.

That's actually talked about in the documentary. That perhaps we should just ignore these people and their ideas as they are inconsequential, but are they? Don't ideas have consequences even if they are invalid? The flat earth movement is growing in strength. More and more people are actually coming to the same conclusions about our earth and much of it is being fueled by the internet and social media. Don't we worry that the internet and social media could have an impact on society as a whole as time goes on? Perhaps an even bigger impact on society than science and education at some point? What then? Is it possible that these ideas could out grow the traditional beliefs of science and education to a point where more people are convinced the earth is flat rather than a globe? What would that mean for society? For Science? For Education? No one is saying that we should embrace the ideas of flat earth theory, but we shouldn't ignore them either. We should try to understand the ideas and why some people have them and try to educate them. Rather than shun them, we need to pull them back into the generally accepted beliefs and help them understand where their understanding is flawed. That's what science and education tries to do. Just because it's failed for these individuals doesn't mean we should quit trying otherwise we run the risk of moving backwards rather than forwards. That's what the final experiments are attempting to do, to convince the flat earth theory folks that their ideas don't have merit by understanding their arguments and countering them with real science and education. Even if we don't convince those who already believe, it's important to counter the ideas of the flat earth community and slow down it's spread and acceptance by others. That's more or less the goal of the documentary.

The flat earth society has members around the globe.

I see what you did there.

I'm not qualified to diagnose someone with mental illness, but yes....something like that.  I think that otherwise smart people can compartmentalize beliefs and have them turn off normal logic or skills about one thing.

For a lot of us, that's sports -- we root for a team so we find a way to think something is fair or foul based on our biases.  ...sometimes that politics, where we allow something for our own side that we'd never allow from the other.  Religion is definitely one -- people believe absolutely indefensibly crazy, fantastical things that they would never allow themselves to believe about something else.  And for some people, that falls into conspiracy, whether it be flat Earth, cryptozoology, chemtrails, government conspiracies, whatever.

I'm a human that is susceptible to all the same kinds of things, but I really make an effort to check myself when I support an idea and ask myself if I'd feel the same way if it was coming from an opposing position.  I think I'm pretty OK at it, but it's something I've actively worked towards for decades.  Whatever belief I have, I would like to believe that new facts and information would allow me to change my position.

That said, I'm just not interested in conspiracy stuff like Flat Earth because I don't think that the people who hold those beliefs are coming through reason and I don't believe that (in most cases) there is anything to gain in engaging them.  In order to have a conversation about something that is meaningful, you both have to start with a shared set of facts.  I don't share those with conspiracy theorists, so I find them dull.  "How can we know anything?" is inherently destructive of sharing ideas.

I agree with you for the most part there's nothing to be gained by engaging with them, but on the other hand I find it fascinating to try to understand their shared delusion. I'm not quite sure why the Flat Earth conspiracy in particular strikes my interest. Maybe it's because it's so demonstrably false. I think most conspiracy theories are at their core fairly hard or impossible to disprove for one reason or another, but the Flat Earth Conspiracy on the other hand really has very little going for it in that regards. Scholars, scientists, mathematicians, lay people etc have all pretty much been in agreement for a very long time that the earth is a globe, but there's a fairly small group of people that hold steadfastedly onto this theory despite that for whatever reason. I find that interesting. Of course at one time it made some sense to believe in the theory, back when it was an actual theory and not actually proven to be false, but today? It defies reason.

Unlike you I can't chalk this up to mental illness or mental defect. Many of the people that were once staunch supporters of flat earth have left the flat earth community. Did they suddenly get well? Did they simply see the error of their ways? Have they bilked as much money as they can from the community or perhaps had a change of heart as to whether this is something they wish to continue to do? Personally I don't see it. Some of those that have left were quite prominent folks within the flat earth community when they left and have taken quite a bit of abuse from those that remain in the community, so I doubt they would consider doing so lightly. They haven't just had a change of heart, they have had some sort of enlightenment. Whatever caused them to walk away, it took quite a bit of courage and a complete rejection of what they once believed so strongly. That doesn't fit the image you are portraying for these people in my opinion.

There is the possibility of the Dunning-Kruger effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect) which makes a lot of sense and I believe there's at least a bit of that in play here. Perhaps after being in the community long enough you have actually learned enough about the subject that contradicts your beliefs that you finally can no longer hold onto the beliefs you had initially. It's like there is a breaking point and some people just haven't yet hit their breaking point perhaps because their beliefs were so strong initially or perhaps because they've been in the community so long now it's harder to walk away? I honestly think Mark Sargent is at that point. I honestly believe that he no longer even believes in the movement that he started, but because he started it, he can't simply walk away anymore. To do so would be devastating to his identity, so he simply keeps up the charade for fear of what would happen if he didn't. That's just my opinion, but he has said some things in videos that make me believe that to be the case.

There's also a financial cost, I guess.  There's a lot of money in grifting and selling people bullshit.

So I've switched gears from flat earth conspiracy theories to moon landing conspiracy theories because it's a bit more prominent with recent events. There's not much new going on with flat earth theory, but the moon landings are heating up again. Many of the same people that believe in a flat earth also don't believe that humans were able to land on the moon.

Below's a recent video from my favorite youtube personality Dave McKeegan debunking someone else's video. Just listening to the guy whos video he's debunking it's quite clear there's a Dunning-Kruger effect in play here which is basically the idea that the less you know about a subject the more confidence you have in your knowledge of that subject. He's obviously spent some time thinking about this, but he's barely even scratched the surface of what it takes to actually travel from the earth to the moon and back so he gets a lot of things fundamentally wrong. Basically he doesn't know what he doesn't know which is a fatal flaw to his arguments. It's not really surprising that it took a LOT of really smart people to figure out how to actually get a rocket to the moon and back in the 60's, what's surprising is that guys like this think they know better than all of the combined scientists and engineers at NASA in the 60's.

Disproving the moon landings with a spoon? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGQxXatuWUY)