IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
The earth has never been flat, it has always been the earth that has rotated and orbited.
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Was Earth Flat?
- Thread starter questfortruth
- Start date
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- flat earth
questfortruth
Well-Known Member
It is illogical not to try to prove Riemann Hypothesis just because the Riemann has not proven it himself.
questfortruth
Well-Known Member
How must I be disciplined? Crucifixion perhaps? But it is sin.
PureX
Veteran Member
They had no cosmology to get 'wrong'. They only had mythology. And that worked just fine for them.
It's such a minor detail that it had no effect on humans at all for many thousands of years. It still has little effect on many of us.
The Earth is a great many things, the spherical shape of which is only of consequence in the last few hundred years.
There were no ancient cosmologies. There were only mythical creation stories and images.
It's not a denial of truth. It's a clarification. You think knowledge is advancing because it's become more "scientific" (based on physical functionality). So it's "better". But it's only better in some ways, while it's worse in others. And we should be honest about this, not blindly defensive or stupidly egotistical.
PureX
Veteran Member
You can't know that, AND it's irrelevant. Everything they experienced was that of a flat Earth. So much so that it remained that way for them for thousands of years. It's still that way for some people. It's foolish to ignore this just so we can pretend we're so smart and they were so dumb. Or worse, to pretend tat we now know "the truth" of Earth just because we figured out that it's spherical.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
No, you only claim to have proved it,. Show me an article from a well respected peer reviewed mathematical journal that ascribes such a feat to you.
And even if you did. And I seriously doubt that you did so, it would only indicate that you can apply logic to math. That does not show that you can apply logic to the real world and when you continually make the mistake of assuming that it does it only tells everyone that you cannot reason logically.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
We DO know this from scientific inquiry. We can, in fact, look back in time almost to the Big Bang.
It doesn't mean that previous generations were dumb. But you cannot deny that Science has delivered. It is the best way to inquire things about the natural world.
PureX
Veteran Member
We have no time machine-telescopes that can see the Earth 5000 years ago. It doesn't work like that. We are only presuming things about the Earth's past and future based on extrapolation from current observations, and that's fine so long as we are being honest about it with ourselves.
I think the danger is in the arrogance that we are routinely expressing, now days, because of science. We think we have reality "figured out", now. And we use that silly presumption to dismiss any and all possibilities that we deem contrary to our now sacrosanct phony presumption of what's real and what isn't. Or what could be real and what couldn't. We are closing our minds with our own arrogance, and that's not going to end well for us. Because we don't know nearly as much as we presume to.
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@PureX
This is going nowhere. So this will be my last reply to you.
To claim that the progress of human knowledge is an illusion is nothing less than irrationalism. To claim that our hard won knowledge about the actual workings of our world have no more basis in truth than iron age myth is sophistry. If you reject the notion that we can come to genuine knowledge about how our world works then there is no basis for me to continue any discussion with you because I do believe in a real world. No, there is no 'perspective' where the Earth being flat has any basis in truth. There is no 'perspective' where the sun as a four armed man riding across the sky in a chariot is actually true. There is no 'perspective' where sacrificing children by drowning really entices the rain to fall. Those ideas were and are false. We do know better.
This is going nowhere. So this will be my last reply to you.
To claim that the progress of human knowledge is an illusion is nothing less than irrationalism. To claim that our hard won knowledge about the actual workings of our world have no more basis in truth than iron age myth is sophistry. If you reject the notion that we can come to genuine knowledge about how our world works then there is no basis for me to continue any discussion with you because I do believe in a real world. No, there is no 'perspective' where the Earth being flat has any basis in truth. There is no 'perspective' where the sun as a four armed man riding across the sky in a chariot is actually true. There is no 'perspective' where sacrificing children by drowning really entices the rain to fall. Those ideas were and are false. We do know better.
Tinker Grey
Wanderer
Insulting people again, I see.
PureX
Veteran Member
See post #109
ppp
Well-Known Member
Don't sulk.
There's nothing you wrote that I don't agree with. And also nothing that addresses my post. Yes, they believed the earth was flat all day every day, and in contemporary daily life, that's usually good enough for us as well. Yes, we know more than the ancients. But why tell me that? I know that and didn't ask about it.
What you didn't do was address my comment. I didn't see a distinction then, and you didn't try to explain why you thought how things appear to people and how things are to them are different.
Creation myths are primitive cosmology when they account for the origin of the heavens and earth, and biology when they account for the existence of life on earth. Both their cosmology and biology were incorrect, a feature that myth has in common with all of the others. The Vikings and Mesopotamians had different cosmologies, also incorrect. You've no doubt seen the ancient Hebrew cosmology, the snow globe earth on a platform with pillars.
We can know many things about the past by examining the present.
Many are unaware of what is known or knowable through critical analysis by correctly interpreting evidence, and falsely claim that others are guessing because they are. They haven't learned how to interpret evidence or confirm the conclusions derived, or that this can be done. This is the Dunning-Kruger set, the people who don't know and don't know that they don't know, people who see their opinions as equivalent to everybody else's opinions because they think those opinions are guesses, too. They're simply unaware that a reliable means of knowing things and knowing that those ideas are correct exists. You see this in the anti-vaxxers. Dr. Fauci says take the vaccine before you get sick. Trump says take hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin after you get sick. Who to believe? The critical thinker able to interpret data doesn't need to believe either of them. He comes to his own conclusion and notices that the expert got it right. The critical thinker unable to evaluate the data understands to believe experts over the lay person, and so makes the correct choice as well. The D-K guy can't do either of those, and chooses badly, fully confident that his opinion is just as good as any other.
But getting back to the past. I come across a dead man on the street with two bullet holes in his head. What can we say about the past? Can we say anything with confidence or near certainty? How about that he was alive once? How about that he had a mother and father who conceived him, developed in a womb, was born, and took a first breath. We have no time machine, as you say. Are we presuming things about the man's past based on extrapolation from current observations? Yes, and those presumptions are correct. Additionally, we can extrapolate the body's future as well. It will never breathe, speak, or walk again, and if allowed to, will decompose.
The creationists are fond of telling us something very much like what you just wrote. They don't understand what observation and reproducibility are in science, and assume it means directly observing the past as with time travel ("You weren't there and didn't see it, so you're just guessing"), and that the universal expansion from a seed needs to be reproduced in a lab or we can't say it happened.
They also like to present themselves as competent judges of what is known or knowable despite lacking critical thinking skills or a robust education. If they don't know something, to them, it's not known to anybody - another manifestation of D-K.
Suave
Simulated character
Using the North Star to Measure Latitude
Once you've found the North Star it's simple to determine your latitude.
How to locate the North Star
1. First, locate the Big Dipper, Ursa Major (called The Plough in the U.K.).
2. Find the two stars that make up the far end of the "cup" of the dipper (the side opposite the handle). Draw an imaginary line from the star at the bottom of the cup, through the star at the lip of the cup. Continue this line about four more lengths of that distance, and you'll see a medium-bright star. This is Polaris, the North Star. The constellation Cassiopeia (which looks like a large "W") is about the same distance from the North Star, but on the opposite side of it from the Big Dipper.
3. As the North Star is roughly in line with the Earth's axis of rotation, it never changes position, and measurements can be taken with the quadrant at any time of the night, whatever the season. Use the sight line on the top of the aiming beam to align the beam with the North Star. Use the protractor to measure the angle between the beam and the horizon (which is 90° to the plumb line). This angle is your latitude. ,,,
Rough Science . Latitude and Longitude Challenge | PBS
I've measured roughly 41.8 degrees, meaning I'm at 41.8 degrees latitude, If you are in Washington, state, the North Star should appear higher above your horizon there than how high Polaris appears to me above my horizon near Chicago.
Where the North Star appears in the sky depends on your latitude. At the North Pole, the North Star appears directly overhead, but at the equator, it would appear on the horizon – both corresponding to the latitudes of the location.
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Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Yes, Flat Earth cannot deal with stars like the North Star approaching the horizon. The Flat Earth cannot explain all sorts of things. For example they cannot explain why the directions that stars moves around an axis flips as you go from North of the Equator to south of the Equator. The globe model can. I was only dealing with your claim of measuring the distance that you traveled and only two ponits.Using the North Star to Measure Latitude
Once you've found the North Star it's simple to determine your latitude.
How to locate the North Star
1. First, locate the Big Dipper, Ursa Major (called The Plough in the U.K.).
2. Find the two stars that make up the far end of the "cup" of the dipper (the side opposite the handle). Draw an imaginary line from the star at the bottom of the cup, through the star at the lip of the cup. Continue this line about four more lengths of that distance, and you'll see a medium-bright star. This is Polaris, the North Star. The constellation Cassiopeia (which looks like a large "W") is about the same distance from the North Star, but on the opposite side of it from the Big Dipper.
3. As the North Star is roughly in line with the Earth's axis of rotation, it never changes position, and measurements can be taken with the quadrant at any time of the night, whatever the season. Use the sight line on the top of the aiming beam to align the beam with the North Star. Use the protractor to measure the angle between the beam and the horizon (which is 90° to the plumb line). This angle is your latitude. ,,,
Rough Science . Latitude and Longitude Challenge | PBS
I've measured roughly 41.8 degrees, meaning I'm at 41.8 degrees latitude, If you are in Washington, state, the North Star should appear higher above your horizon there than how high Polaris appears to me above my horizon near Chicago.
Where the North Star appears in the sky depends on your latitude. At the North Pole, the North Star appears directly overhead, but at the equator, it would appear on the horizon – both corresponding to the latitudes of the location.
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Correct answer: We do not know. The existence of God(s) cannot be proven to exist or not exist.
Ancestral memories are based on an ancient primitive belief at the time the text was written.
Foolishness beyond any comprehensible rational or logical basic human thinking. You should be embarrassed that you actually wrote this
PureX
Veteran Member
There is no distinction until it shows up. That's my point. We think we know what the Earth is, now, because we discovered that it's spherical. And we think they DIDN'T know what the Earth is because they didn't know it was spherical. They were ignorant and we aren't. But the Earth is a huge collection of phenomena some of which we are aware of and understand and some of which we aren't, and don't. Much the same as it was for them.
It's good that we now know that the Earth is spherically shaped and revolves around the sun, and the many other things we've learned about it, too. But this does not change the fact that the Earth is a very complex and dynamic collection of phenomena, some of which we are aware of and understand, and some of which we are not. Just as it was for the ancients. Yet I get the impression from many of these comments that we think we know what the whole truth of the Earth, now, just because we have learned a few things in a few thousand years about it. And yet what we DON'T know is still so huge that it's literally an open set. Unending. Incalculable. And our arrogance in the face of that much ignorance is bound to come back to bite us.
Questfortruth, like billions of humans before him, and millions of humans even today, chooses to conceptualize the Earth as being flat. Or, if I understand correctly, that it once was actually flat; not spherical. This is extremely unlikely given our current understanding of the way physical reality functions, but the fact is that we don't know limits of physical functionality. Nor do we know the boundaries of reality: of what can and cannot happen. And the more we insist that we do, the more we are setting ourselves up for a very big fall.
Questfortruth may be wrong about the Earth having once been flat. But he's not wrong about the blinding arrogance that the near worship of science has caused and is causing in modern culture.
No, they really are not. The are the imaginary "stage set" within which the mythical story of the human experience plays out. Those people had no cosmology or biology. You couldn't even have been able to explain what these are to them, if you tried. They simply imagined the Earth originating as the way they experienced it. Exactly as we do, today. Only our Earth origin mythology accommodates a lot more complexity and specificity than their ancient myths did. Because ours can, and have to.
We can surmise many things this way. That's the corrected difference that you and other here keep overlooking.
Suave
Simulated character
"For millennia, as sailors from the Phoenicians to the Polynesians knew, the heavens remained the best way to find one's north-south position. Increasingly sophisticated devices were designed over the centuries to measure the height of the sun and stars over the horizon. The gnomon or sun-shadow disk operated like a sundial, enabling the user to determine his latitude by the length of the sun's shadow cast on a disk floating level in water. The Arabian kamal was a rectangular plate that one moved closer or farther from one's face until the distance between the North star and the horizon exactly corresponded to the plate's upper and lower edges. The distance the plate lay away from the face—measured by a string tied to the center of the plate and held at the other end to the tip of the nose—determined the latitude."
Secrets of Ancient Navigators | NOVA | PBS
"Greek and Phoenician mariners and astronomers 2500 years ago knew that the Earth was spherical, because of the way ships disappeared by sinking below the horizon as they sailed from shore. We have no idea who was the first to realize it, but the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes used observations of the Sun's angle at noon to calculate the diameter of the Earth - a computation that ONLY would have made sense if he knew the Earth to be round."
Who was the first person to discover that the Earth is round? - Answers
You still haven't addressed my point. That's not the distinction referred to in my comment in response to yours saying, "It didn't just "appear" that way to them, it WAS that way to them." Of course it it was to them the way it appeared to them. Those words mean the same thing. You're referring to the distinction between how things appear to them, or how they think things are, versus how they actually are.
Let's drop it and move on. It's not worth a half dozen more posts to see if I can get you to understand my words and discuss them.
You've got it backward. Faith is where the worship is, not science. Faith-based thought is doing the damage, not science. Science says take the vaccine. Faith says its more dangerous than the virus. Which belief led to devastation? Science says that releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will cause climatological catastrophe. Faith says hoax. Which belief led to devastation? It's the faith-based, antiscientific contingent that are the destructive presence, the ones who like to use words like scientism disparagingly.
So if I couldn't explain the concept of grammar to them, they had none?
A cosmology is an account of the origin, development, and structure and function of the natural world. In science, that is covered in Big Bang cosmology and physics. In creation myths, we learn how gods did these things. That makes it a cosmology. Have you seen the biblical idea of what the universe looks like, what it contains, and how it is structured? That attempts to do what our modern scientists have done, from Hubble to the Hubble Space Telescope, which yield maps of a vast cosmic web on which filaments galaxies of solar systems accumulate surrounding vast voids. We see a solar system of planets orbiting a star where the ancient cosmologists saw a platform on immovable stilts encased in a moving dome with holes for rain.
Biology is an account of the same things but limited to life. Where did it come from? What has its history been? What is the nature of living things and how do they relate to one another? Science gives us a naturalistic explanation for these things. Creation stories give us supernaturalistic accounts.
The difference is that the science was determined empirically rather than by faith and revelation, has been confirmed empirically, and can be used to predict outcomes. Creation myths are just stories from the imagination, but the stories attempt to do what the science does much better.
If surmise doesn't mean know, then I would go further and say that we can know much about the past beyond reasonable doubt. The analogy of the murdered man addressed that. You didn't. You didn't attempt to rebut the many things I said that we can know about that body and its history, but you did repeat yourself. You seem to be saying that what YOU don't know can't be known. I also addressed that. You didn't. My position hasn't changed. Why would it if you never addressed it, never tried to rebut it? Do I need to repeat again that in debate and in the courtroom, issues are resolved with the last plausible, unrebutted argument? I made an argument that you ignored, so the issue is settled.
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I'd like to make another pitch for dialectic, which is the process two or more critical thinkers use to resolve differences. It entails a series of rebuttals, a rebuttal being a counterargument that goes beyond expressing dissent, but explains why the rebutted argument cannot be correct. The conclusion of the argument and the counterargument must be mutually exclusive, that is, at most only one can be correct.
In a court of law, that begins with an opening statement by the prosecution and a theory of a crime. If this argument is convincing to a jury and not successfully rebutted, it's time for a verdict: guilty. But perhaps the defense can poke a hole in that theory, maybe by offering an alibi for the defendant. Perhaps there is cell tower ping data suggesting that the defendant wasn't present at the scene of the crime. If this isn't rebutted, it becomes the last plausible unrebutted argument, and the jury is ready to vote for acquittal. But then, the prosecution produces photos of the suspect near the scene of the crime, resuscitating the original theory of guilt. And once again, if this cannot be successfully rebutted - if it cannot be shown that the prosecution cannot be right - the debate is over and the jury able to convict. This is dialectic. Any other form of discussion is useless in deciding matters.
So, here's where we stand:
Me: there's no distinction between how things appear to people and how it is to them.
Your response: nothing that negates (rebuts) that. Both of our comments might be correct.
Status: Discussion ready for a verdict.
Me: We can know things about the past with a very high degree of assurance, and here are an illustrative example using a murdered corpse.
You: We can surmise many things (also nothing that negates my comment, since both of our comments can be correct: we can surmise things and we can know things).
Status: Discussion over and ready for a verdict.