So the one glober argument I find online is that it's due to "atmospheric scattering". Problem however is that the rays are scattered only around an axis that so happens to be right beneath where the sun appears to be. Odds of that happening are a trillion to one, that it would only scatter right there. There should be atmospheric scattering all over the place, but this phenomenon is only seen underneath where the sun is. Otherwise, I should be able to see the sun, say, on my left, and then turn to the right and occasionally see the same "scattering" phenomenon over there. But this phenomenon always happens to be right under the sun.
Then there's that high-altitude balloon footage showing a clear hotspot underneath where the sun is. So the one argument presented here was reflection. Same problem applies there. This reflection just so happens to be directly underneath where the sun appears to be ... and nowhere else. Otherwise you'd be able to see random "hotspots" all over the place, not just always right beneath where the sun appears in the sky. There is an optical phenomenon out there where if you see the sun lower to the horizon, you can see a trail of light coming across the water directly to your position. It's not really there, but it has to do with the light hitting your eye at that angle. But this cannot explain the hotspot, because the hotspot is directly under the sun and doesn't come toward you (it's not an issue of it hitting your eye). And if you look at those pictures, you can gradually see the tops of the clouds getting dimmer and dimmer as you look farther away from the hotspot. With the aforementioned phenomenon, you only see the light beams that appear to be coming toward you and your eyes, and you never see the same ray of light going somewhere else.
Same applies to the old "refraction" argument with regard to videos demonstrating that we can "see too far". Magically the refraction would have to perfectly follow the curvature of the earth, over and over again on the thousands of pictures that have demonstrated this phenomenon. Then of course, the laser distance experiment was performed by Dr. John D BI-DIRECTIONALLY from many miles away. In order for this refraction to follow the curvature of the earth, it would have to encounter a continually increasing density gradient (in the same layer of atmosphere by the way). But then in the other direction, the beam would encounter a continually DEcreasing density gradient and would cause the light to refract upward and not be visible. But the laser was seen from many miles away ... in BOTH directions.
Of course, whenever flat earthers show these pictures and videos, the globers throw out the magic deus ex machina term "refraction". Yet when they find one video or photo of something appearing to be cut off by the water line, they throw it out there as proof. Suddenly refraction goes away and couldn't possibly have been a factor. Also, the globers never give numbers. They don't indicate where they are, how far from the object, what the atmospheric conditions are, what type of photo/video equipment they're using (even these have limits depending on what you're using) ... all of which are critical to assessing what it is that you're actually seeing. And of course the other deus ex machina argument is "gravity" that magical force which drags everything around the planet at 1,000 MPH (at the equator) as if they were attached to the earth by an iron rod but then has no effect on airplanes trying to, say, land on north-south runways, or having to consume extra fuel when headed West (because they'd be swimming upstream). So this magical force, gravity, has one effect when they need it to and then the opposite effect when it's inconvenient.
If the earth were rotating West to East, then you would expect the jetstreams and winds to move in the opposite direction, but they don't. So the explanation for that is that these winds actually move faster than the earth rotates, OK, so winds in excess of 1000 MPH, which is 3 times higher than the windspeed of the fastest tornado ever recorded. So planes travelling East to West would encounter headwinds of 1,000 MPH plus. Everybody knows a plane cannot fly under those conditions.
One could go on and on for hours with the various proofs for Flat Earth, and not the least of them is the fact that globers tend to be dishonest. That means that they're clinging to their belief system for psychological reasons rather than letting themselves follow the evidence. Anything that might SEEM to support their position they hold onto with an iron clenched fist, but they don't look at it critically.
I do this with various issues, a thought experiment. I imagine that I am completely agnostic and don't know and don't care one way or the other. Then I put myself in the position of having to debate each side. I would pretend that I'm trying to PROVE the globe side first, then the FE side. I've done this with evolution, with SVism & RR, with BoD and other subjects. I remind myself that I'm only seeking the truth, whatever it is. When I put myself in that mindset, I find that I cannot convincingly argue the Globe position. [Of course, due to NASA's total lack of credibility, I consider them inadmissible as evidence.] I did similar with this phenomenon depicted in Matthew's picture. I pretend that I'm a glober and that I am trying to explain this phenomenon arguing against a Flat Earther. I can't think of any credible explanation for it. I thought, well, perhaps it's happening due to an opening in the clouds that's scattering the light. But I can't prove this and don't find it convincing. Why does it only ever happen right beneath where the suns happens to be? If I were a glober clinging to my position, I'd throw something out there LIKE that without caring whether it's convincing at all ... because I'd already be pre-convinced of the globe. In order to honestly pursue the truth of this issue, we have to stop doing that.
That guy who runs the Taboo Conspiracy FE website talks about how he came around. He was initially trying to debunk FE and started a thread, and he noticed that the glober arguments were dishonest, facile, rooted in confirmation bias, and clearly coming from people who had already made up their minds. So he started anti-FE and became FE. That's the same place I was in and the same place Matthew started from. Matthew actually buried FE into one of the ghetto sub-fora so the threads would not be visible. But I kept digging and digging, and this is where I ended up. I still recall the day that I became 100% certain that the earth is flat, and it was a bit jarring and shocking to me. We've all been so thoroughly programmed about this issue that it's hard to accept and downright shocking. And that's a programming that many pro-globe folks here on this thread are incapable of breaking through.
I'd like to have a real debate, so I try to debate myself. I take both sides of the issue. I was used to this because I was on the debate team in both High School and college. Often you had a topic for each debate season, and you would have to argue both sides, randomly. I think that in future posts, I will lay out a point of "evidence" and present BOTH sides of the issue and explain why I find one more convincing than the other. I will therefore anticipate a lot of the objections up front instead of just having them repeatedly thrown out there.
Topic: Photo I took tends to prove Flat Earth (Read 5931 times)