5 Insane Things Flat Earthers Believe (Besides Just Believing in a Flat Earth)
While I know that it would seem that it doesn't get much more insane than believing in flat earth on its own, trust me when I say that it actually gets a LOT more insane than you might imagine! Yes, this is a real thing. Despite the fact that we have a thousand years of science that backs up the fact we are all living on a spherical shaped earth, there has recently been an EXTRAORDINARY rise in people who believe in this easily disproven belief system.
While that seems quite incredible in this day and age of technology, it just keeps getting more and more incredible as you begin to look into the crazy beliefs upon crazy beliefs they have had to pile one on top of another in order to explain away the many impossibilities in their model of the earth.
There is a Vast Worldwide Conspiracy Involving Millions of People Around the World
It's not that flat earthers simply question what they were taught in school, but they actually believe that there is a worldwide conspiracy going all the way back to Galileo (really!) as a coordinated, synchronized effort by all of the countries of the world to hide the true nature of the shape of the earth from everyone.
Even Galileo Was In on the Conspiracy
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
This conspiracy necessarily involves vast swaths of government and private people alike including:
- The leaders of every nation
- NASA (their number one nemesis)
- The space agencies of all of these countries
- The freemasons
- 'The elite'
- Shipping companies and their captains and navigators
- Cruise lines and their captains and navigators
- Mapmakers and globe manufacturers
- Google, who creates Google maps, Google earth, and who hides search results from the public
- Airlines and the pilots
- Satellite dish cable companies
- Satellite manufacturers
- All aerospace companies
- All scientists, including Einstein, Newton, and Galileo
- Of course teachers at all levels
and the list goes on and on an on, in an endless spiral of nearly every sector of society necessarily having to hide something. Amazingly, even though this all began as far back as Galileo, no one since the 1600's has ever leaked a word about any of this, and no one in the history of the world has ever discovered this conspiracy until now. Making flat earthers possibly the 1% of the 1% most clever people to have ever lived, all from watching a few YouTube videos.
Satellites Don't Exist
Despite the fact that many satellites and even the International Space Station (ISS) can often be seen with the naked eye, flat earthers simply do not believe they exist! The thousands of photographs by amateur astronomers, and the fact that NASA publishes a Timetable of Where to Spot the Space Station, we have satellite phones, ships at sea have satellite internet, there is satellite imagery of the earth, and there are dozens of private satellite manufacturers doesn't dissuade flat earthers in their denial of satellites one bit.
These satellite dishes are all needlessly pointed up in the sky to a nonexistent satellite
Image Credit: Pixabay
Do you have a satellite dish for your internet that you had to calculate to position to a satellite and point at the sky? That's just all part of the conspiracy, and they fool you into thinking you actually have to point it at the sky in a particular direction in order to continue the ruse, but your internet is actually ground-based and you can point it in any direction you choose and still get a ground-based signal.
Some of the less crazy of them found it inconvenient to continue denying what people have been able to see on their own, so many of them believe that satellites DO exist, but that they are merely suspended over the top of the earth via high altitude balloons. Really, I couldn't make this stuff up if I wanted to.
Why do they believe such an insane idea? See the next section.
There is an Impenetrable Dome over the Earth
The reason they believe that satellites don't exist is because part of the belief system, for most of them, is the existence of a giant, rotating, impenetrable dome about 5000 miles high that covers the entire earth and into which the sun, moon, and stars are embedded. That is why the celestial bodies seem to rotate over us, not because we are a rotating sphere in space.
In fact, they don't actually believe in SPACE either! That's because we are completely enclosed in the dome, it is our only reality, there is nothing outside of the dome (or maybe it's fluid filled outside the dome, depending upon which flat earther you talk to), and all rockets that have attempted to leave the dome have either crashed or fallen back into the water.
How it is that:
- The moon, sun, and stars don't rotate on exactly the same pattern as each other
- The stars don't rotate in exactly the same pattern year after year, but change over time
- The southern hemisphere sees different stars that rotate in the opposite direction as northern hemisphere stars
- The enclosed atmosphere isn't pressurized
- We don't see condensation streaks down the side of the dome
- No one has ever seen it
- We get colder as we go higher instead of getting hotter as we get closer to the sun
...they haven't quite figured out yet, but give them another 2000 years and they will certainly have a model that explains all of that. They can see and feel that the earth is flat (but just KNOW the dome is there even though they can't see or feel it) so there is no need to prove anything to anyone!
There is an Ice Wall that Surrounds the Entire Planet
In my earlier article on Debunking the Flat Earth Ice Wall I've discussed the fact that they don't believe Antarctica is a continent, per se, but is a giant ice wall, around 60,000-80,000 miles long, that is the circumference of the entire planet.
Despite the fact that the Flat Earth Map is a Actually a Projection Map of a Globe, and that is where this idea comes from, this ice wall is a necessary part of their mythology that allows them to answer the question of why no one falls off the edge and why the waters don't all leak off.
Image Credit: Mine
If it's even possible, this myth gets even more insane. Not only do they claim there is an ice wall, but in order to answer the question about why someone doesn't just go there and prove it, they concocted a story that the shore is patrolled 24/7 by an entire fleet of 10,000 or more armed UN ships who will kill anyone who steps foot on it, so that no one finds the edge and the round earth deception will not be discovered! And the land has constant armed military presence... on it's entire 60,000 mile circumference?
Gravity Doesn't Exist
The last insane belief I'll talk about is that they do not believe in gravity! Their disbelief in gravity is not because they need a lack of gravity for their model, or because they have done extensive experimentation disproving gravity, but because the globe 'needs' gravity for it's explanation. Without gravity, 'water can't stick to a spinning ball' as they love to say. So, how to disprove the earth is round in one fell swoop? Just deny a long-proven law of physics, and claim Newton and Einstein were in on the conspiracy to defraud everyone! No evidence or experimentation required!
Image Credit: Pixabay
So, why don't we all float away into the sky when we jump off of a building? Density and buoyancy alone account for that, goes the ad hoc explanation. Point out that the very mathematical formulations of buoyancy and density require gravity to exist, and that you cannot even CALCULATE buoyancy and density without gravity, well, you are just a brainwashed sheeple who parrots what your 4th grade teacher told you. Or perhaps you are an evil freemason who wants to confuse everyone with mathematics!
Image Credit: TutorVista
Ask how and why things fall towards the earth, or why it's more difficult to climb up hills when you'd be climbing out of more dense layers into less dense layers, and they will just deflect and ask you why gravity is so 'selective' that it holds down all of the waters of the earth, but allows a bee to fly. Apparently on a flat earth, the concept of a force called 'lift' does not exist, and bees are able to fly because they are able to change their density? I'm not quite sure, as these are all vaguely explained differently by different people depending upon which YouTube video they watched, I suppose.
Are bees able to change their density on a flat earth?
Image Credit: Pixabay
In any case, I hope you enjoyed this article and that you learned a lot about this cult belief that is, surprisingly, exploding in popularity. I guess that being able to claim to be smarter than every scientist to have ever lived in the past thousand years is an attractive proposition for those with marginal logic and reasoning abilities.
No need for long, boring science classes, credentials from 'freemason' universities, or detailed experimentation to disprove long-established laws of physics. Just watch a few YouTube videos, put up a few memes on Facebook, and you too will have uncovered the lies and errors of Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and every scientist, physicist, and astronomer in the world; even Tesla was a Stupid Indoctrinated Fool. Now you know.
Please upvote,resteem, and comment below to encourage more science-based articles rebutting the unscientific ramblings that seem to be attracting an explosion of followers to the flat earth cult. Thank you.
Awesome post man! I'll start sending the flat-earthers who tend to show up in the comments on my posts your way in the future :'D
Absolutely. I've followed you and I'll check out your posts in the future.
That's great to hear. I must say I was taken by surprise by how many flat-earthers found their way to this corner of the internet. So with my introduction post I got spammed to the ground by quite a lot of them who then also became a mob on my following posts...
But although it's disappointing to see that such backwards beliefs still exist in 2017, it's a bit entertaining too ;)
Following you back as well. Although I've more or less decided to flat out ignore this topic (pun intended) as it just seems to dumb me down every time I need to seriously read up on their claims and produce a counter argument.
@fredrikaa Your introduction post was very entertaining, to say the least. I think you handled it really well and with stoic professionalism and patience.
I just decided I'd make some money from them. It's fun as hell debunking them now! I got the idea for this post in the middle of the night fully formed and had to get up and write it and create all the images all in one go while I was laughing myself silly.
I guess one man's pain is another man's pleasure ;)
But seriously, too, I think there are too few people with sense and scientific knowledge out there doing any debunking or explaining the science well, and there are a lot of people looking into this that might be swayed to not go into the cult if they could get some good alternate information.
So, I'm hoping to do so contests and things to create a 'project' of flat earth debunkers and science writers, so we can crowdsource good rebuttals and articles and even pictures, that make it worth the while of people that have intimate knowledge of particular subjects that might not have thought about writing any debunk or explanation articles on the topic because it seems so ridiculous.
But while I'm making money, I really hope that a project of good, easy to understand science on the topic might take shape, and we can at least sway a few people who are on the fence and just need to understand the science a bit better.
Yes, I also started collecting all the memes, youtube videos, and proclaimed "evidence for a flat earth", that they keep on spamming in their posts believing they've delivered a strong case for their positions, with the intention of doing a series of smack-downs at one point.
So perhaps I should wait for your competition then instead of making a series ;P
And yes. I also noticed that when I took them on, I just got increased traffic by people wanting to enjoy the spectacle, and got some decent upvotes on my comments + a more regular following. So it works out ;)
I was checking out some of your others posts (and upvoted and resteemed) and wasnt' sure if I should post on your post or not, since it might invite Flat earthers to argue, but I would love to see an article on how and why you are 100% sure that there are satellites and that they are in orbit above the earth.
I think those kinds of pieces would be really educational.
If you do any types of those posts, about how you know certain things about the earth or how people can check for themselves (perhaps taking pictures of the cloud formations above their house on a day when the satellite will be over them and how to compare that to the raw satellite data?).
if so, I'd be happy to coordinate and do some sort of flat earth article that would be complimentary and work your piece into my article (as well as resteeming it and posting it to Facebook) to give you more exposure.
I'm really keen to get that kind of info out there. Not sure if you want the shitstorm of flat earthers coming to your page, though!
Oh, thanks for that. :)
I'm always up for a fight. As long as there's something in it for me and I'm not just spending time and energy feeding internet trolls.
I'll have something of the sort coming up. I can't promise you when, but the essence of such a post is there in my future posts folder :P
Will make sure to keep in touch. Are you on steemit.chat or something similar? Or I guess I'll just comment on one of your posts. Anyhow. All collective work to mutually benefit good science-writers on steemit is something I'll gladly support, and your help and support too is much apprecaited.
Hah, no need to wait. Make a series! I'm also hoping to compile a really good list of arguments for people to use to do debunks. I wish that Steemit had an edit feature, as I'd put up the article now and keep adding to it. But that doesn't make sense on Steemit. YOu have to do a 'Complete List of The Best Flat Earth Debunks' after you have the list complete and not make it a work in process.
that's my one complaint about Steemit.
I'm a flat-earther and I don't support this demeaning of my beliefs - I know 'science' proves all of these things to be true, but believing in something completely redundant and ridiculous gives me a sense of self-worth and pride similar to that of someone who sleeps with his first cousin. Believing the earth is flat makes me feel better than those who got better jobs, education and genetics, and that's something worth fighting for!
i love you <3
Just dropping by to say I love your flat-earth debunking posts :)
Me too! @kerriknox posts are great!
LOL. "There's (minimally) 1,00,000 men manning the (secret) patrol ships, the (secret) ships supplying the patrol ships, manning the (secret) ports/supply depots, organizing all the logistics to keep the fleet going (secretly), etc, etc, etc.
How many pilots and navigators, ship captains and navigators, submarine captains and navigators, navigational support staff, etc, etc, etc, are there in on it?
How many politicians (every country in the world)?
The only people dumber than flat earthers are people that get lobotomized.
Dude this is crazy. Hahaha :D
@kerriknox do you have an estimate of how many flat earthers are there? It's alarming if the number is big
It's frighteningly large. Hundreds of thousands on certain Facebook pages!
:O
I'm glad. I left facebook. :D
All from the United States, I hope.
Cool awesome post as always.
Just dropping by to say I love your flat-earth debunking posts :)
How the hell can gravity not be a fact? Not even focusing on Einstein...just throw shit out the window and see what happens.
I have a question; I have been watching some of the flat earth arguments the last few months and they do have a pretty convincing argument for lack of curvature. I can't explain why we see no curvature on an ocean horizon that stretches dozens of miles to the left and right of view? If the formula for curvature is what I understand it to be (8 inches per mile squared) there should be 600 feet of curvature in just 30 miles
Just curious, but do you know what tides are? Do you see the curvature of tides? Do you doubt the existence of tides too simply because you can't see them?
Not sure if you are trolling or not. But that doesn't sound like a question. It sounds like it is supposed to SOUND like a question. I apologize if I'm wrong, but flerfers sound a lot like that when they are not actually asking questions, but thinking they 'gotcha' on something that they repeat from a YouTube video that is supposed to be a 'gotcha' simply because it says so in the video and they have not bothered to do any research on the topic themselves.
So, here's a tide chart. Tides can often be several meters from shore to open water. Do you see the curve of the tide on the ocean to the horizon? The curvature of many tides is FAR greater than the math for the curvature of the earth. So, perhaps you THINK that you should SEE something that the eye is unable to perceive, and perhaps you might adjust your expectations as to WHY you believe you should see such a slight curvature.
PS. Fact checking is fun and educational. Repeating what YouTube videos say without fact checking, is annoying and unentertaining.
"Flerfers." Priceless.
Not trolling; maybe just stupid. Not sure where you are going with the tide thing either but I would think 600 feet of curvature in 30 miles would be noticeable.
Well, tides are curved, sometimes up to 10 feet in a couple of miles, but you simply cannot see it. The ocean looks flat because the curves are too slight.
We CAN see the curve, all the time. When a building or ship disappears when you are too far away to see it, you JUST witnessed the curvature. Same with when the sun sets. But I'm not sure what you think this expected curvature would LOOK like other than that. Are you expecting to see the actual curve of the OCEAN, the curve of the horizon? Can you clarify what you think you should be seeing?
If you are thinking that you should see the curve of the HORIZON, well, that would simply be unrealistic. You don't see the curvature of the horizon until you are at about 100,000 feet, and then you still need to take a straight edge to it. You can see a horizon calculator here.
http://walter.bislins.ch/bloge/index.asp?page=Flat-Earth%3A+Finding+the+curvature+of+the+Earth
Next, if you think you should be seeing, for instance, a building behind the curve at 30 miles, well, the math is not the math that you did. You did the DROP, but not line of sight calculations. So, first of all, to SEE 30 miles, you'd have to be up 100 feet high. And then you need to have a target to measure, and then you do line of sight calculations to see how much should be HIDDEN behind the curve.
So, doing the math here:
https://www.metabunk.org/curve/
Yes, the DROP of the earth is 600 feet, but what is HIDDEN behind the curve of the earth is only 210 feet. If you factor in standard refraction, then it's only around 160 feet. You can take out a telescope and confirm buildings are below the horizon a certain amount at these distances and factoring in height.
But people say, "See, I can see these buildings from 30 miles and they should be behind the curve" but A. They don't do the math right B. They SHOW THEM behind the curve... but they didn't subtract the bottom 200 feet of the skyscrapers that ARE behind the curve C. They often don't have a verified height. So, they'll say, "See, we shouldn't be able to see this" but being up at 10 feet vs 100 feet would make a DRASTIC difference as to whether you should be able to see something or not. So, if there is no HEIGHT listed, and verfied, for instance because a specific landmark or a altimeter is in the shot, then you should always be suspect of the veracity of the claim. If they are unwilling to verify the altitude, it's probably to trick you, or maybe because they believe it and just want to confirm their belief system.
Here's a video that shows how it's actually calculated and some real life examples.
These videos tell a lot of half truths that are often difficult to discern what the reality is without some deep and intensive fact checking and understanding HOW to even fact check. Most people are simply not inclined to spend two hours fact checking each and every video or claim, and it's easy to think they sound reasonable until you do so.
Thank you for taking me seriously; I have to say you are the first person to actually give me an answer to this question.
Brilliant! Haha These loonies are great for entertainment. Did you know that the Flat Earth Society has members all over the globe? ;-) Thanks for posting @kerriknox. Followed, Upvoted and resteemed.