Flat earth vs. God

[older]

Our astronomy club sets up our scopes once a month at an outdoor shopping mall so the public can look at the Moon and anything else that’s interesting and visible.

 

Last Friday night man came up for a look and we got into a conversation about someone he knows who insists that the Earth is flat. We both agreed that this friend ignores the overwhelming evidence, claiming that the flat earth is proven by various psudeoscientific theories, optical illusions, or fakery. The man I was talking to was rather strident in his contempt for such a preposterous position. 

 

I replied that I was trained as a journalist and one of the unwritten rules for checking any source making an important claim is to verify said claim by checking with at least two other sources who are not connected to each other. I also said that in some cases the journalist needs to look for tangible, testable, independently verifiable evidence.

I can’t remember the exact thread of the conversation but within a few sentences of my saying that I’d want tangible, testable evidence, he said something about if that applied to God. The way he said it I knew that he was a believer.

 

I said that in my career in photojournalism I have seen photographs that the public will never see that show levels of human suffering beyond the most extreme imaginations of anyone, and that those photos prove to my satisfaction that the god described by Christians cannot exist. No allegedly omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, loving god would allow such things to happen. He then asked me if I’d read the Bible. “Yes,” I said, “Enough to know that it can’t be true.” He didn’t challenge me beyond that and we ended the conversation.

 

I find it rather amusing that he could rebuke his friend’s beliefs, pointing out how they are in opposition to the facts, yet embrace another set of beliefs that are just as ludicrous. I wish I’d known at the time about Samuel Rowbotham’s book, Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe, written in 1865. I would have asked him if he’d read that book.

[◊ Weezer ◊]

9 minutes ago, older said:

 

Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe, written in 1865. I would have asked him if he’d read that book.

 

What is the gist of the book?

[pantheory]

14 hours ago, older said:

Our astronomy club sets up our scopes once a month at an outdoor shopping mall so the public can look at the Moon and anything else that’s interesting and visible.

 

Last Friday night man came up for a look and we got into a conversation about someone he knows who insists that the Earth is flat. We both agreed that this friend ignores the overwhelming evidence, claiming that the flat earth is proven by various psudeoscientific theories, optical illusions, or fakery. The man I was talking to was rather strident in his contempt for such a preposterous position. 

 

I replied that I was trained as a journalist and one of the unwritten rules for checking any source making an important claim is to verify said claim by checking with at least two other sources who are not connected to each other. I also said that in some cases the journalist needs to look for tangible, testable, independently verifiable evidence.

I can’t remember the exact thread of the conversation but within a few sentences of my saying that I’d want tangible, testable evidence, he said something about if that applied to God. The way he said it I knew that he was a believer.

 

I said that in my career in photojournalism I have seen photographs that the public will never see that show levels of human suffering beyond the most extreme imaginations of anyone, and that those photos prove to my satisfaction that the god described by Christians cannot exist. No allegedly omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, loving god would allow such things to happen. He then asked me if I’d read the Bible. “Yes,” I said, “Enough to know that it can’t be true.” He didn’t challenge me beyond that and we ended the conversation.

 

I find it rather amusing that he could rebuke his friend’s beliefs, pointing out how they are in opposition to the facts, yet embrace another set of beliefs that are just as ludicrous. I wish I’d known at the time about Samuel Rowbotham’s book, Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe, written in 1865. I would have asked him if he’d read that book.

 

To date, there have been hundreds of astronauts from all over the world, plus maybe millions of photos of the global Earth from space -- China, India, Russia, U.S. England, Germany, Japan, Canada, UAE, private companies,  etc. etc.-- and they are all colluding together ???? Any flat-Earthers today are like ostriches, they have had their head in a sand hole where the sun don.t shine, all of their lives -- to  put if politely

 

cheers my friend

[older]

19 hours ago, Weezer said:

What is the gist of the book?

  

I haven't read it but it is intended to prove that the Earth is flat.  Here's a Wikipedia article on the concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_beliefs