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I'm sure they have some rational explanation why I can never see the Southern Cross from Minnesota?

The flat-earth morons attempt to explain it, but you can tell their heart's not really in it...

https://www.theflatearthsociet...

The Flat Earth Society publishes a membership register. You can check for yourself: there are members from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

they didn't land on the moon either and the earth is really flat, here are a few sites for you to feed on, http://www.theflatearthsociety... http://listverse.com/2012/12/2...

I can see that as being every bit as successful as conservapedia

There's an eye-opener (pun on faceglory unintentional). I liked the entry for Evolution - well, I would have if I had a Fffacebook account.

I'm guessing the FaceGlory crowd will have a banner sharing agreement with The Flat Earth Society (when the in-fighting between the various "true" FES groups ends), and Christian Porn (you know - the good stuff).

"These Christian Fundamentalists want to get creationism taught in our science classes. I would have been all for it when I was in high school. - easy credits. “OK class, God created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh. See you at the final exam.” ~ Bill Hicks

again, the only, THE ONLY source for this idiocy is a well known psuedo science website that hosts nothing but discredited BS.

I appreciate Joel's reasoned criticism (you could have just posted a link, but it appears you don't like to reference any of your claims), but it seems all you can come up with is bullshit ad hominems.

claiming that the excess CO2 in the atmospere is the result of "ocean outgassing".

The Earth has had much higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere before humans were around. And there is certainly plenty of CO2 (and methane) present there, which also makes it into the atmosphere. Clearly there is currently a lot of anthropogenic sources of CO2 today. So I'm not sure what you're referring to that the "authors" said, or why you think it's wrong.

Here, this is their membership page, you more than qualify: http://theflatearthsociety.org... [theflatearthsociety.org]

What a fucking jackass tool you are. Stop posting on the Internet. You're making the whole thing dumber by your presence.

There are many opinions and many products out there, and very many of them could be classified as unwise to partake of because there is much better to be had. Championing less knowledge for people about to make potentially life altering decisions is a viewpoint that makes no sense to me. Be that as it may, as you say there's a place for just about everyone. I wish only the best for you, your children, and your many grandchildren.

Saying drive-in theaters are dying is like saying faith in the flat earth is dying.

Off-topic, but interestingly faith in a flat Earth saw a resurgence in the 19th century. It was reaslised in about the 6th and 5th centuries BC that the Earth was spherical. It is a myth that the flat Earth model dominated the middle ages. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth Instead, flat Earthers started to appear in the 19th and, freakishly, persist today: http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/

Regardless of the merits of their arguments ...

Translation: I don't care if they're right or wrong.

Wake me when the electric car skeptics agree.

Wake me when the Flat Earth Society disbands. You're never going to convince the "skeptics", and if by some miracle you did, they wouldn't be skeptics anymore.

... there's really no scientific consensus about this. It's entirely irresponsible to report this as though it were an unchallenged fact. We need a more "fair and balanced" approach to the topic. We really need to hear from experts from the Flat Earth Society to provide a counter point.
http://theflatearthsociety.org/

there are still Flat Earth believers.

Come on, don't abuse the Flat Earth Society as an example for idiocy and denial. That website is brilliantly done. They say (in their FAQ) it's not a joke site, but that only means they're trolling you with a straight face. If you look closely enough, you find more than enough hints that the whole society is part elaborate hoax and part intellectual challenge for its supposed "proponents". The same page, the FAQ, has this gem, for example:

Q: "What is underneath the Earth?"
A: This is unknown. Some believe it to be just rocks, others believe the Earth rests on the back of four elephants and a turtle.

I rest my case.

If they weren't currently out of t-shirts I would have bought one.

CJ

First of all, the shape of the Earth was never a controversy

... among non-idiots after about 300 BCE. That's precisely my point: Even though modern humans have had every reason imaginable to believe the Earth is an oblate spheroid, and pretty close to complete proof of the idea by about 1550, there are still Flat Earth believers. That's why idiocy and denial are the last refuge of a stupid idea.

Same story with the development of life on Earth. Evolution was widely accepted scientifically by about 1880 or so, but surveys show a solid 30% or so of Americans still believe that life was created by God 6000 years ago.

The Earth is flat.

http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/

Teach The Controversy

Do they have a leg to stand on ?

There are also people that still believe the earth is flat and we're not talking about them. The earth has crazies... why care what they say? Ignore him and he will go away.

I'm glad you brought up the flat Earth theory; I'm sure most people here have heard of the Flat Earth Society. I think they are particularly relative in this thread since they take the unpopular side of an argument that most people don't even bother challenging. At first you'll think "jeez, are these guys really serious?" But really, can you prove them wrong? You quickly find out how hard it is to prove the most widely accepted model of the planet, and (hopefully) come out with a healthier skepticism of those things that everybody assumes to be true.

Actually, there are people who STILL think that the Earth is flat.

There are still people who believe that the earth is flat. They think that the world being a globe is a big conspiracy by NASA and the world governments. It's quite humourous.

This is a myth. Humans have known the earth to be round since at least the Greeks.

Not all humans.

What does the claim that 17% of the population believe in a geocentric earth mean? Even assuming that there's no one in that population that is simply saying that for kicks, it seems probable that a large part are simply answering that way because they don't know anything either way and are just guessing. At some level that's not as bad as having people who actively believe in geocentrism. But at another level, that means that one should expect that around 34% are really ignorant and have of them just got lucky when asked. That's not good. However, I suspect that some of these answers really are just people messing with the polsters or not bothering to thing.

But one thing to note is that many of the geocentrists are religious. Not only is geocentrism common among Christians but there's a substantial fraction of ultra-Orthodox (charedi) Jews who are affirmatively geocentrist. This is especially common among the chabad chassidim who are often geocentrists because their guru, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, made pro-geocentrist comments and because they want to preserve the word of Maimonides as inerrant (of course some of these are the same sort of people who refuse kidney transplants because the Talmud says that one kidney is the seat of your good instincts and the other is the seat of your bad instincts. So we're not talking about highly enlightened individuals). There are however, some very disturbing studies by Alexander Nussbaum showing that even among modern Orthodox Jews, anti-science views are disturbingly common. See for example http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v12n03_orthodox_judaism_and_evolution.html .

However, one thing to note is that although the conference in question in the top post is Catholic, affirmative geocentrism is not nearly as uncommon among evangelical Protestants as one would hope. Indeed, it is common enough that Answers in Genesis, one of the world's largest young earth creatonist ministries, feels a need to have essays that talk about why Christians don't need to be geocentrists. http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v15/i2/geocentrism.asp . Incidentally, There's some evidence that anti-Copernican sentiment actually started in Protestants and only spread to Catholics a few years later. Thomas Kuhn discusses this in his excellent book "The Copernican Revolution" although my understanding is that more modern historians disagree with him on this point and many don't think that there is a strong case for anti-Copernicanism as an originally Protestant ideology.

Finally, note that there are still some flat-earthers out there although they are very rare. They aren't as uncommon in the Islamic world. See for example this segment on Iraqi TV http://haha.nu/interesting/iraqi-tv-debate-is-the-earth-flat/ . In the West there is still some flat-Earthism but it is often more conspiratorial than religious in nature. See http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/ although some of the people there are trolls, some are quite sincere.

And if you consider that many of these so-called 'independent' studies are in fact paid for by fringe anti-science groups, then perhaps their results are aren't as unbiased as they would have you believe.

That seems strange - I'm having trouble imaging what an anti-science directed study would consist of. And how unbiased would they have you believe their study is, if it's anti-science by definition? It seems like they would want to show off their own maximizing of bias if it's really anti-science.

Check with the people behind these sites for some excellent examples:
http://www.creationstudies.org/
http://www.creationbiology.org/
http://www.icr.org/
http://theflatearthsociety.org/

On a more serious note, though, about Fox News. Closing your eyes to one perspective, can only diminish you.

On that note, might I interest you in an alternate scientific perspective on the nature of the Earth?

What information consumes is attention. I prefer to focus my attention on news sources that have not proven themselves to be deceptive.

I'm not sure if all the posts are still there (the site went down many years back and I haven't looked since), but you can poke around the flat earth society website. There was at least one true believer that had counter-arguments for just about everything. They also have a FAQ

Before reading through their posts, I didn't really understand how one could think the Earth was flat. This map was enlightening. I also liked their model for the sun and moon. Basically the arguments in the thread (which was many hundreds of pages long) came down to two camps. One is the ability to trust what somebody else tells you (astronauts landed on the moon, so-and-so city is XYZ miles away from you, etc). The other was to bend science just a little so that it was technically true but meaningless. For example, [in their model] gravity is actually caused by the flat plane of the Earth accelerating. To which, somebody might ask, "Wouldn't we accelerate to the speed of light?" Well, no, because acceleration is asymptotic in their reference frame. What they don't answer is, "Wouldn't you need infinite energy to keep accelerating and where does this energy come from?"

A question I never did see asked and answered was, "If the map is as you say it is, why are plane flights from the tip of South America to the tip of Africa not excessively longer than those from NYC to London?" (I suspect the answer would be, "How do you know it isn't? Have you traveled both by plane and timed it with a stopwatch?")

Overall, they have bad science backed up by paranoia and distrust. The Electric Universe people are in the same category.

I'm not sure if all the posts are still there (the site went down many years back and I haven't looked since), but you can poke around the flat earth society website. There was at least one true believer that had counter-arguments for just about everything. They also have a FAQ

Before reading through their posts, I didn't really understand how one could think the Earth was flat. This map was enlightening. I also liked their model for the sun and moon. Basically the arguments in the thread (which was many hundreds of pages long) came down to two camps. One is the ability to trust what somebody else tells you (astronauts landed on the moon, so-and-so city is XYZ miles away from you, etc). The other was to bend science just a little so that it was technically true but meaningless. For example, [in their model] gravity is actually caused by the flat plane of the Earth accelerating. To which, somebody might ask, "Wouldn't we accelerate to the speed of light?" Well, no, because acceleration is asymptotic in their reference frame. What they don't answer is, "Wouldn't you need infinite energy to keep accelerating and where does this energy come from?"

A question I never did see asked and answered was, "If the map is as you say it is, why are plane flights from the tip of South America to the tip of Africa not excessively longer than those from NYC to London?" (I suspect the answer would be, "How do you know it isn't? Have you traveled both by plane and timed it with a stopwatch?")

Overall, they have bad science backed up by paranoia and distrust. The Electric Universe people are in the same category.

I've been called a pedophile, a rapist, and a distributor of child pornography. Despite this being illegal, I've found it to be impossible to fight. The post is still there, available for anyone to read.

So I don't think it's alive and well and thriving. People shouldn't have to pay several grand to defend themselves per defamation. Since it's so easy to do, and so risk-free, I expect to read about Britney's bad mothering, and Jennifer's depression for a long long time.

Slander isn't an opinion. This article is not about someone's opinion, nor about the freedom to express an opinion. It is about the ability to slander without fear of consequence. Well even more than that, it also extends to the difficulty for someone to protect themselves from online abuse like this.

Imagine someone posted that you were a pedophile, that you hoarded large quantities of child pornography, and that you raped young children. What do you do after the hoster of this content ignores your request to have it removed? What happens if the poster of this content ignores your request to remove it? What happens when your lawyer says you can only seek punitive damages?

I'll tell you what happens, it stays up, for the whole world to see.

Oh have *you* not been to the Flat Earth Society Forums lately.

It was amusing for a period of time, then painful, to see that much bad logic thrown around.

Pug

No, the sky is black at night, the earth is flat, and U2 has multiple platinums.

I did not imply, or rather, was not trying to imply we need to teach this to the children. It was more about the fact that publishing guesses as "leading edge theories" is just bad. It wouldn't be so terrible if it weren't for human nature to loose parts of the message along the way and then before you know it, it is in the text books. I am saying that this practice is clouding the facts and not adding any value to the already steep task of passing on knowledge to the next generation. More importantly, and more to my point, passing on the ability for the next generation to help solve these problems.

Case, point: If we used to teach children that "we kinda think the earth is flat but have no evidence" then there is a STRONG likelihood that this notion would have been dispatch a long time ago. Instead, it was publish to the world as fact, and as such, there are still people who think the world is flat and won't accept any evidence to the contrary, because that is what they where taught in school.

FSM theory is consistent with heliocentricity, which we all know is correct now.

Oh, really?

I thought the guy behind Notice for Newbies post on their forums, "Professor Gaycunt" was also a bit of a giveaway.

I thought the guy behind Notice for Newbies post on their forums, "Professor Gaycunt" was also a bit of a giveaway.

From what I gather, the Earth is accelerating at 9.8m/s^2. This is what causes the movement of things towards the Earth. It has been accelerating at this rate for a long time (i.e. throughout history), but the acceleration is not constant. The Big Bang occurred around 4.5 billion years ago.

The fact that at 9.8m/s^2 we would accelerate to faster than the speed of light in under a year has yet to be accounted for in that thread. They mentioned something about special relativity so maybe that's it.

By my calculations if we assume a mean acceleration of 4.9m/s^2, the Earth is traveling at c2.25e09m/s. FTL!

Source: http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=21147.0

In their fabulous FAQ, http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=a1f7f3fc005b90c85c7385afa7ee25d1&topic=11211.0 :
Q: "Why are other celestial bodies round but not the Earth?"
A: The Earth is not one of the other planets. The Earth is special and unlike the other bodies in numerous ways.

Brilliant! Myself, I was wondering why the world is revolving around me. They just gave me the answer.

Sorry, this one's much better...

I belong to another discussion group who says that antartica is a govt conspiracy and does not exist. I am not one of the disbelievers however. I posted links to three articles about this to the board and also this discussion. http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=19756.0

Even all the idiotic Creationist/ID and young earth believers believe in heliocentrism now...

The problem is that is exactly what is going on, despite a very clear consensus in the scientific community.

For every respected scientist that comes out in favor FOR global warming, there is another respected scientist that comes out against it..

That you say that means you aren't really paying attention. Can't totally blame you given the false equivalence the media has allowed, but that is still wrong.

Again.. I haven't decided which way I believe. Give me some real, unbiased facts, and I'll maybe make a decision. But if there's any hint of bias, I will see it and disregard said report.

As I point out almost every time this topic comes up, there is still no meaningful debate amongst the scientists. There are always a few crackpots (Flat-Earth Society anyone?), but amongst real scientists publishing in quality peer-reviewed journals, the debate is not whether anthropomorphic global warming is happening, but how much and how quickly.

What bothers me, as a scientist, is that even this article gets used in the he said/she said argument, when even the scientists it is discussing say, "I've no doubt that global warming is occurring..."

-Ted

Global warming is caused by increased solar activity, and scientifically proven ozone depletion has nothing to do with it.

Consider a meteorologist who is a sincere member of the the Flat Earth Society. Occasionally during his presentations he'll mutter an interjection such as, "According to this satellite photo --- yeah right, like there are 'satellites' which are in 'orbit' --- we see clouds moving northward..."

Now, do we "censor" this individual? Is that really the right word? Because global warming is close to being on par with the "Round Earth" theory. Furthermore, the future of mankind more than possibly depends on achieving public consensus on this issue. One could even say that we have a moral obligation to oppose such disinformation.

I wonder what their take on the earth's curvature in those pics would be

So if you take the bible literally, then you must believe in a flat earth.

It seem that's what these people believe. I wish this was another joke site, but they appear to be dead serious.

Just check out the forums.

of course it's flat ;-)