Is the Earth flat?

[AlterEgo]

We are like toddlers born and brought up in a windowless room with plenty of bricks and sand to play with. We are bright kids and get to know a great deal about the geometry of bricks and the properties of sand, but we have no idea where they came from or what is outside the room.

I like that analogy.

 

[The_Engineer]

Stephen Hawking spent a lot of time trying to derive it

It's most interesting that Stephen Hawking, one of our greatest scientists ever, when asked WHY the universe (and therefore we) exists said: “If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God.”

In his later years he found it "deeply troubling" that he could not answer the "why" of existence. Science provides the "how" to our curious minds, but not the "why". As an engineer/scientist myself (unworthy to tie the shoelaces of Stephen Hawking) it gives me great pause to think........

 

[Up_Tilt_390]

PLOT TWIST: The Earth is made of LEGO! (Just kidding, we'd go insane with constant pain in our feet)

On a more serious note, some conspiracy theories aren't entirely unreasonable to so much suggest as an alternative. I mean Watergate was just a conspiracy theory, as was Operation Northwoods, as was a few things that turned out to be true. But the flat earth? Seriously, what would be the benefit to telling us that the earth is a globe? What would world governments gain by telling us the earth wasn't flat? I mean every other star, planet, moon etc. in our galaxy is spherical, so why would our world be flat and what good would it do to try and hide it's real shape?

Flat Earth is just one of those conspiracy theories that exists solely to sound intellectual and portray the individual as a free-thinker who is immune to being indoctrinated by scientific facts. They are just on the same level as creationists and anti-vaccination groups who can't accept that either the earth is a globe, that man did evolve from a distant ape relative, and that vaccines are mostly safe and do not cause Autism, ADHD etc. But the thing to remember is that these people THINK they're correct and intelligent free-thinkers, so there's no point arguing as much as they need to know the truth.

 

[The Ham]

Sounds like Erich von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariots_of_the_Gods%3F . I've read it; among other things he believes that the Ark of the Covenant was a radio given to Moses by aliens to send him advice and commands.

I am agnostic and scientifically minded, and one aspect of the scientific mind is that it should be an open one and not form firm opinions about things that cannot be proved or disproved by experiment. God's existence (or that of any other gods of the biblical type, rather than of the shoulder-rubbing Greek style for example) can be neither proved or disproved in the scientific way. Certainly the God as styled by some religious sects can be dismissed as nonsense, because people have their own agendas and claim God is on their side, and shape Him accordingly.

There are many things beyond science, either for now or for always. For example science cannot at present explain time, despite the fact we take it for granted (a layman would ask why it even needs to be explained) and can use it in technical calculations like dynamics; we don't know how time came to be manufactured, along with matter, by the Big Bang and whether it existed before then. The explanation of how the four fundamental forces* of nature relate to each other, and to time, is still awaited (currently referred to a bit jokingly as "The Theory of Everything"); Stephen Hawking spent a lot of time trying to derive it and concluded that it could not be done - ie no matter how much we understood each of those entities individually, we could not link them all to each other https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything.

We are like toddlers born and brought up in a windowless room with plenty of bricks and sand to play with. We are bright kids and get to know a great deal about the geometry of bricks and the properties of sand, but we have no idea where they came from or what is outside the room.

* Gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong atomic forces.

A fair and balanced post with some very good points.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

The earth is a cube

The Earth is indeed spherical*, but the twist is that we're all on the inside of it, not the outside.

*= well, spherical-ish.

 

[Starmill]

Just to confirm, Dave did indeed say, on his way to Muir of Ord:
"I'm not even sure the world actually is flat, I just mainly do it for the attention to be honest!"