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The Flat Earthers Are Still With Us

Posted by timothy on from the until-the-end-of-days dept.

narcberry writes "The BBC reports on a scientific community still holding to flat earth theories. From their article: 'Are there any genuine flat-earthers left? Surely in our era of space exploration — where satellites take photos of our blue and clearly globular planet from space, and robots send back info about soil and water from Mars — no one can seriously still believe that the Earth is flat? Wrong. Flat earth theory is still around. On the internet and in small meeting rooms in Britain and the US, flat earth believers get together to challenge the 'conspiracy' that the Earth is round.'"

4 of 578 comments (clear)

  1. Which is worse by yamamushi · · Score: 4, Informative

    I can't decide which is worse, the Flat-earthers, or the hollow-earthers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth . I heard some guy on C2C the other week spouting out some nonsense about looking for a hole in the arctic that would prove the earth was hollow, I can't believe people still believe this crap.

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    - Aetheral Research -
  2. Re:Not Necessarily News by alexgieg · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think that the term 'News' should not apply to a 500-year old debate.

    I think you're confusing two different things. 500 years ago people discussed whether the Earth was fixed of movable, but no one had any doubt whatsoever about it being a sphere. Earth's shape, and even its rough diameter, have been acknowledged scientific facts for way more than two millennia.

    Fix your sentence to "I think that the term 'News' should not apply to a 2400-year old debate", remove your reference to the Aztecs, and your post will be in the correct time frame. ;)

    --
    Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
  3. Re:Not Necessarily News by xayide · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can prove the Earth is round by looking at a lunar eclipse. Educated people have known the shape of the Earrh for thousands of years. I have no idea why they teach us as children that everyone thought Chris Columbus would sail off the edge of the earth.

  4. Re:Scientific community? by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Flat Earth Society was created as a big joke in the first place. Most of the people posting there (myself included) are doing so as a tongue-in-cheek joke.

    Yeah, there are a few nuts in there who actually believe it, but you'll get stupid beliefs anywhere.

    --
    "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."