DV82XL said:

It beggars the imagination how people like that can function on a daily bases with that sort of mind-set.

Yeah I just don’t know. It’s so far beyond any reasoning its not even worth trying. I’m not sure how anyone could be so dense but people are. it takes all kinds

        Micah said:

Man, you guys have no sense of humor.

The flat earth folks don’t actually believe that… it’s a game. Performance art. Whatever. Go to their websites and you’ll see that the whole thing is an elaborate joke.

I don’t know about that. There may be some who are joking but there are definitely at least a few who take it seriously. Some of them are verifiable bible thumping extremists who oppose evolution nearly as much as they do the “round earth theory.”

There aren’t many but some have just been invested in it all for it to be a joke.

The next posting on this actually talks about the problem determining a joke from real beliefs people take seriously.

        Colin Goudie said:

Does anyone know what Flat earthers actually think the reasoning is behind this ‘conspiracy’?? I can somewhat see moan hoaxers reasoning’s (e.g. America wanted to be first) but what do we get out of a round earth if it was really flat?

Profit for the big aerospace companies? Well, aside from that it seems that it is a combination of scientists afraid to admit they are wrong, the establishment trying to suppress the true word of god.. and I don’t know what else. Similar to the anti-evolution conspiracy claims.

Like their reasoning behind the idea, most of these claims are not exactly logical and coherent.

Maybe if I do a Fourier analysis on the rectangularized granite, and then ran the results through a Fibonacci number filter?

Or, maybe they are just idiots. Could go either way, I guess.

        Tako Nigiri said:

I read somewhere (can’t remember where right now) that the flat earth idea started in the middle ages. I’m not sure of the veracity of that. Just thought I’d mention that.

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that a certain theologian who lived early on in the Christian era proposed a flat-earth model of the cosmos to be promoted to the masses as it was the best fit for scripture, even though he knew quite well that the earth was known to be spherical. But I don’t remember his name, or where I read it.

Of course, flat earth cosmologies were the earliest ones, and held sway for millenia, but the earth was known to be spherical at least from the time of Eratosthenes, probably earlier.