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The following material is quoted from an UNRELIABLE website which caused my computer to do multiple blocks of pop-up ads, and so I recommend you DO NOT go to this site if you don't have adequate antivirus software in use or if you don't want to be fighting malware or grayware or malicious code ---
https://mic.com/articles/183523/flat-earth-theories-total-solar-eclipse-2017#.lv2m8WL2d.
On Aug. 21, a portion of the United States will be plunged into darkness as the moon blocks out the sun — the first total solar eclipse in 99 years. But astronomers (both professional and amateur) aren’t the only groups excited for this once-in-a-lifetime event. Another, more controversial community believes the upcoming eclipse could provide overwhelming evidence to support their cause. These people are flat Earthers, and they believe the solar eclipse will prove once and for all the Earth is not a sphere.
I spoke with four flat-Earth truthers about the 2017 solar eclipse. Though they didn’t all agree on what, exactly, we might see on Aug. 21, they all believe there’s something fishy happening.
To many flat Earthers, two key aspects of the Aug. 21 event are irrefutable proof the Earth is stationary.
No. 1: the eclipse’s path. Flat Earthers say the path of totality across the United States — from west to east — means the Earth isn’t spinning at all. If the Earth is rotating west to east, as science says it is, wouldn’t the moon’s shadow pass across the surface from east to west? A 23-minute YouTube video by the channel Flat Earth Talk explains this theory in much greater detail.
No. 2: the shadow. The other aspect of the eclipse seen as flat-Earth proof is the size of the shadow the moon will cast on the Earth. An object’s shadow can’t be smaller than the object itself, flat Earthers argue. So how can the moon’s shadow be smaller than the moon?
Proof of flat Earth during the eclipse
If your head is spinning trying to comprehend these arguments, you’re not alone.
I asked a Chicago-based truther named Charlie Flowers, who says he’s a former schoolteacher, to explain more.
Flowers believes we’re living on a flat plane covered by a big glass dome — the “firmament” frequently described in the flat-Earth scene. The sun, moon and stars are all inside the firmament, he said, and there are no planets besides Earth.
Flowers’ theory is based on Biblical interpretation. The Book of Genesis describes God placing a “firmament” over the Earth and placing lights in it.
“The sun is a light,” Flowers said in a phone interview. “They’re all lights. The sun and the moon are the same size and they spin above us and it’s a battery.” He went on to explain that when we see the moon waxing and waning, what we’re actually seeing is the moon losing and gaining electrical charge. “It’s a battery system. The moon is the negative and the sun is the positive.”
“They’re all lights. The sun and the moon are the same size and they spin above us and it’s a battery.”
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If you read such descriptions of their "explanation for the total solar eclipse" and come away asking "But how does any of that explain the eclipse," then you might realize you're onto something. As they say, "Something is fishy."
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Indeed, something is highly fishy, something like how do flat-earthers claim to be explaining the eclipse when they don't explain the eclipse?
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Perhaps they're devotees of Benedict XVI's
hermeneutic of continuity, in which he basically says you can have A and NOT A at the same time, and that's fine, because it's "continuity" that's important. Never mind that A and NOT A are discontinuous in the extreme. Never mind that detail. Everything's gonna be fine......... F-I-N-E.
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Now for the errors.
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The above quote is full of objective falsehood.
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The Aug. 21st solar eclipse is not
"the first total solar eclipse in 99 years." There have been several in the past century, the one closest to this being in 1979, which passed along the Colombia river in Washington/Oregon. I know for certain because I was there and I witnessed it first hand..Next, while the flat-earthers hoped the eclipse would prove "once and for all the earth is flat and not a sphere" came to naught, because it in fact proves just the opposite, that the earth is not flat but is a sphere..Then they jump topic and start going on about how the eclipse "proves" the earth is stationary. Never mind that it is impossible to "prove" absolute movement or non-movement anywhere in the universe. Scientists have been trying to do so for hundreds of years and come up empty. But it's a straw-man argument because whether the earth moves or not (the Church has weighed in on the non-movement of the earth, in the Galileo case, with little effect on the world's concern), that doesn't explain what is happening in the eclipse..The direction of the moon's shadow over the earth is a product of the relative motion of the sun, moon and earth. For us to understand what's happening we ought to PRESUME the earth is stationary because that's our point of reference. The problem with most educators trying to describe this scene stems from them changing points of reference from earth to moon to sun but they don't bother to explain that's what they're doing. The REASON they don't explain it is because if they did so, they would have to say, "Imagine that from the point of view of the earth not moving, the sun is moving across the sky and so is the moon,..." etc. You see the problem? They would have to ask their students to consider thinking about the earth being stationary. THAT WOULD RAISE QUESTIONS, such as, "But I thought you said the earth is orbiting the sun -- now you're asking us to think the sun is orbiting the earth," and so on. Not wanting to open that Pandora's Box, with all the consequences that ensue, they switch points of reference from watching the sun and moon, to watching the earth and moon from the point of view of the sun. This changing points of reference causes the viewer to invoke a reversal of movement, from left to right, toward right to left. But they only accomplish confusion by doing this, sometimes without explaining what's going on..To make matters worse, the flat-earthers quoted above suddenly jump topic again to saying the sun and earth are positive and negative lights and they're a "battery" that is charging and discharging. This is utter fantasy, never heard of before, and without any evidence or description of where the "electricity" is or how it flows, or how it can be measured or you-name-it.
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Like they say,
"If your head is spinning trying to comprehend these arguments, you’re not alone.".Now they only have to stop and consider that it's their own description that is causing everyone's head to spin..
Topic: How do Flat Earthers explain an Eclipse (Read 27858 times)