LOL.  So I started listening to this at 1.5 speed (to get through it quicker as I usually do), and he's playing DuBay at 1.5 speed, making it impossible for me to hear what DuBay is saying.  I'll go back and listen later.

DuBay is not exactly the intellectual heavy-hitter when it comes to FEs, but has more of a popular appeal.  There are some really bright guys on the GlobeBusters program that it might be good for him to debate.  There's that Nathan Oakley guy, but I don't care for his style, plus he uses a lot of profanity.  He uses the same style of ridicule and mockery that, oh, Non-Professor Dave uses.  It's an unhelpful tactic.  Oakley is very bright, but the style is very off-putting.

I really don't care for these video exchanges.  It makes for one-sided debate really.  DuBay isn't around to rebut the criticisms of his points.  Dr. Sungenis is saying that by playing DuBay's video, the FE side is being heard and fully represented, but I would disagree.  You're getting a high-level view of the narrative in the popular style of DuBay that glosses over a lot of the detail or fact behind his arguments.  Another good one to debate would be Dr. John D, who is a scientific heavy-hitter.  Unlike DuBay, however, he's not super popular because he has a very dry style and he does dive very deep into his scientific analysis, taking painstaking measurements, laying out the analysis.  Dr. John D might take 2 hours to make an argument that DuBay would summarize and gloss over in 2 minutes.  This is why DuBay might get 2 million views, while Dr. John D gets 15.  Dr. John D has a PhD in spectrometry, so is highly qualiified to debate the issue.  But he's "boring".  Really the only place you see him represeted is through other more "popular" Flat Earthers who then summarize his videos.

21:38 - 35:50

Second Argument:  Fake Photographs
Conclusion:  DuBay and FE

Dr. Sungenis arguments were terrible.  1) FEs don't have a picture of a Flat Earth.  Well, his buddy Neil de Grasse Tyson says you can't see curvature at 120,000 feet.  Since the highest amateur balloons can go is about that altitude, how are FEs supposed to obtain a picture of FE?  Of course Neil de Grasse Tyson was lying ... to explain away the 120,000-foot amateur balloons that clearly show no drop in the horizon line, where it should be very noticeable at that altitude.  2) Sungenis tries to explain away the obvious Photoshopped repetition of identical cloud patterns as due to the difficulty of stitching together strips of satellie data from multiple passes ... ignoring the fact that some of the identical clouds appear halfway around the "globe" and cannot be explained.

Here Sungenis doesn't even go into the main argument of his book, where he conceded one instance of NASA Photoshopping but said that this doesn't prove that NASA lies about all photos (also a fallacious argument).  Here he's  claiming (in so many words) that the NASA photos are all real and legitimate (and argument he can't win).  So which one is it?  What he said in his book or what he's saying now?  He gratuitiously asserts that the one or two (in the history of space programs) photos that claim to be direct picture of globe earth are real, but these have all been debunked as fakes.

So the elephant in the room that Sungenis tries to skirt is WHY NASA would create all these fake photos.  That's really the crux of DuBay's point, but Sungenis never actually addresses it here.

In point of fact, there's tons of photographic evidence, including from J Tolan, who put together tons of infrared photos (and he could see "too far" in every single one of them) and ran them through photogrammetry software (which is known to be highly accurate), and the software produced a perfectly flat earth from the input images.  So there's PLENTY of photographic evidence out there in support of FE, which Sungenis doesn't really address.  In fairness, he doesn't have time here to go into every one of them, but his arguments are weak and simply assume that they're all real (or that the vast majority of them are real) when the opposite has clearly been proven by FEs.

In the OP live video, Robert Sungenis begins with the shape of celestial objects by saying that it is common sense that since all celestial objects are spherical, the earth must also be spherical. Firstly, all stars are not spherical, as anyone with a decent camera can testify. Not even close.
Sun and moon do appear round, but even if they are round like balls, that cannot prove the shape of the earth by any stretch of reason. Sungenis' argument is like saying that since all the balls on a pool table are spherical, that the table must also be spherical.  This is not common sense.

Sungenis says the form of a ball takes the least amount of energy to hold together, as if that is a proof earth is a globe. But to what degree? To the degree that everything has to be ball shaped? This ridiculous lack of common sense in order to support a theory is embarrassing. Furthermore, his idea of gravity commonly held, is widely disputed, even in scientific circles, and it remains unproven, so it cannot be used as a proof for any kind of "common sense".

Sungenis thinks it is common sense to believe that a drop of water is proof earth itself is also spherical.  Because water forms a sphere when it's the size of a drop does not apply to water in larger amounts, ever. Water never, ever, ever, forms a ball in larger amounts and this is known in ordinary science and understood through common sense. Again, Sungenis makes us wonder about the validity of the prefix to his name.

Regarding the southern stars, you'd naturally see more and in some cases, different stars in the southern "hemisphere" than you would from the northern regions because of perspective on a land mass the size of earth, but Sungenis doesn't seem to know the realities of perspective nor does he understand the extent of visibility of objects on a plane. He never even attempts to address this problem but assumes you are as ignorant as he is.

Sungenis is either lying or so enamored of his own view that he can't see how transparent he is. If you're going to write a book on a subject, you'd better understand your sources and reproduce the truth when citing them. It is proven over and over in these discussions on Cathinfo that 100% of the Fathers who taught anything about the shape of the earth, not those who expressed a personal belief, but the ones who actually taught about the shape of earth, described and/or defended the flat earth and based their observations on scripture. Not even one Father (or saint) taught that earth is a ball, let alone did he base his argument on scripture. Many of the Fathers further expressed knowledge of a flat earth through types, comparing the shape of the earth with the shape of the ark, the ark of the covenant, the temple, even to a two story house, and earth's shape is also reflected in traditional church architecture. Never once, has any Father of the Church attempted to prove the land mass of earth is a globe. As far as I can tell, it makes more common sense to listen to the Church Fathers themselves than to Sungenis making wild claims about what he wishes they said.

Sungenis actually has the nerve to say that Lactanctius was wrong to defend the Christian belief that men stood upright simply because that's what the Psalms say. Why does Sungenis call into question the veracity of scripture as well a Father of the Church? Call me crazy but defending what scripture and a Father says is common sense and debunking scripture and a Church Father is moronic. Sungenis actually says that Lactanctius "took God a little to literally" and then he scoffs that men have their head above their feet. Well, I choose Scripture, Lactanctius and common sense because Sungenis obviously keeps his head somewhere below where it should be. Sungenis then stammers on about what is up and what is down and doesn't seem to be able to discern the difference. Then he mocks Eric Dubay for not explaining why up is up and down is down.

Sungenis accuses Dubay of giving only one side of the argument, but in a fit of mockery tells us that he'll forgive him. How can we forgive Sungenis when he does the same thing he accuses Dubay of, especially when a Catholic should know better?

The next proof Sungenis attempts to tackle is eclipses. His explanation is shameful. He actually says that an eclipse of the moon could only happen if earth is spherical. Where are his experiments to prove this claim? Has he read anything beyond his own writings?  He should know that it is physically impossible for the earth to cast the shadow on the moon during an eclipse. I won't go into the particulars here and now, but this has been explained and proven, to the moon and back, here on Cathinfo and elsewhere. Not only is he not dealing with any proofs against his personal belief in celestial fairy tales, Sungenis proves again that he's doing what he accuses Dubay of doing.


I'm only 17 and 1/2 minutes in and got pretty wearied by Sungenis' first grade attempt to hijack an audience to whom he hopes to sell his book. Eric Dubay is a nothing more than a pagan, yet he has more common sense in his broken existence than the supposedly higher educated Robert Sungenis is able to begin to understand.

I didn't go into detail about his pro-Globe "common sense" arguments.  Most of them have been and are easily debunked.  But from the perspective of "common sense" (an amorphous term), maybe he's right to a point.  I don't like the "common sense" argument because it's highly subjective.  In many cases, what he's referring to is in fact "popular misconception due to programming people's minds", but this is so subjective an assessment that it's not a winable argument by either side.  Each point he raised is able to be refuted with logic and scientific evidence (such as what Tradman laid out), but that's more a scientific rather than a "common sense" perspective.

I don't really follow this stuff and the following my seem stupid, but why don't globeearthers do an experiment by flying a jet due east (or west) at a certain latitude and keep going - stopping for refueling - east (or west) at the same latitude and see if they end up where they started . . . or someplace less desirable?

The one that FE supporters throw out there is a flight over the "continent" or circuмnavigating the coast of Antarctica. As that would definitively prove the rotundity of the earth. Yet, civilians are absolutely forbidden from even approaching the frozen "continent".

But wouldn't any flat earther be afraid to risk time and treasure on such a project since if you have a positive result, the GE global conspiracy will destroy you.  And if a negative result, the FE side will disown you and accuse you of being a part of the conspiracy.  You really can't win.

That's a valid point. I could certainly see that happening given that some are so attached to the conspiracy that anyone who could come out against it is a "shill." But there's also many who do set out to make these kinds of experiments for the sake of truth, such as Dr. John D whom Lad mentions frequently.

I don't really follow this stuff and the following my seem stupid, but why don't globeearthers do an experiment by flying a jet due east (or west) at a certain latitude and keep going - stopping for refueling - east (or west) at the same latitude and see if they end up where they started . . . or someplace less desirable?

You don't need your own airplane, just view a real time flight tracker.

Of flights moving predominately east or west, those above the equator will exhibit an upward arc flight path as the flat map can't properly depict the circle that is Earth. These flight paths are consistent with both Flat and Globe earth. Those flights in the southern hemisphere (so below the equator) exhibit a downward arc which is only consistent with a globe. A Flat earth model like the NASA logo would still need flight paths to arc up and the distances/flight durations would be impossibly longer.

I have a screen shot of a flight from JNB to SYN but someone will have to tell me how to post it.