# Flat earth clowns! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 17, 2015, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934 "2015-10-17T20:37:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/41 "2015-10-22T15:16:41Z")
Ah, well, maybe she has a good personality. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/42 "2015-10-22T18:51:22Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > It doesn’t take a lot of effort to look up a single Bible verse. Indeed. I looked it up and it made your statement seem silly. I was wondering if there might be some strange translation from which this conclusion might seem a bit less far-fetched. > [@](#): > > it’s the bit where the Devil takes Jesus to a high tower, from which he can see all the nations of the earth. Not possible on a globe. Nor on a flat earth - especially one that’s provided with a normal atmosphere. The notion that this amounts to an “official” declaration of a flat earth is something that you can imagine a flat-earther might pretend to believe, but not a rational human. ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/43 "2015-10-22T19:10:12Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > She’s not flat. I could’ve spent some time doing an in depth exploration of her Olympus Mons. Back in the day. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/44 "2015-10-22T19:43:29Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Back in 1983 or so, I joined The International Flat Earth Research Society – the one run by Charles K. Johnson. I was hoping it would be fun. It wasn’t. The poor bonehead was absolutely without any sense of humor or grace in any form. His newsletters were mere rants, and he did not allow members of the “society” to contact each other. All correspondence was solely through him, and he blanked out our names when he published our letters in his news page. I seem to recall sometime in the 80’s or early 90’s, the man’s house burned down, taking all of his membership records with it. Because they were all on paper, nowhere else. But possibly I’m confusing them with another luddite hoax society. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/45 "2015-10-22T21:21:56Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > The notion that this amounts to an “official” declaration of a flat earth is something that you can imagine a flat-earther might pretend to believe, but not a rational human. I was stating it from their point of view. But do note, these people do think of themselves as rational and the rest of us are idiotic non-thinkers. Interpretation of the Bible is all over the place, one person’s clear, logical, rational interpretation of a passage is another person’s grounds for for tying them to a stake and having a BBQ. I don’t believe in the “my interpretation is right, yours is wrong” concept being applied in this area. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/46 "2015-10-22T22:45:15Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > I seem to recall sometime in the 80’s or early 90’s, the man’s house burned down, taking all of his membership records with it. Because they were all on paper, nowhere else. > > But possibly I’m confusing them with another luddite hoax society. I believe that is correct, and was Charles Johnson. Another interesting group was the “Tychonian Society,” who morphed into “Biblical Astronomy.” They accept a spherical earth…but it doesn’t rotate. Instead, the whole cosmos goes around and around. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/47 "2015-10-22T22:47:28Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > Indeed. I looked it up and it made your statement seem silly. Have a nice opinion. > [@](#): > > The notion that this amounts to an “official” declaration of a flat earth is something that you can imagine a flat-earther might pretend to believe, but not a rational human. A rational person doesn’t believe the Bible as a source of knowledge about physics or astronomy. Nevertheless, at the time of the earliest Biblical writings, the people who wrote it believed the world was flat. That’s as “official” as you can get. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/48 "2015-10-22T22:56:05Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Have a nice opinion. > > A rational person doesn’t believe the Bible as a source of knowledge about physics or astronomy. Nevertheless, at the time of the earliest Biblical writings, the people who wrote it believed the world was flat. That’s as “official” as you can get. Eratosthenes was calculating the circumference of the Earth (quite well) 200 years before Jesus was around. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2015, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/49 "2015-10-22T23:45:56Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I think there was another group that was tongue-in-cheek, but the group linked to earlier in this thread is the continuation of Charles K. Johnson’s efforts, and as serious as a broken vertebra. Has anybody considered this is an example of deeply Kaufmanesque performance art? That Johnson and a few of his followers are taking the joke as far as they can go and meticulously avoiding anything that looks like a wink to the public? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/50 "2015-10-23T00:30:24Z")
Naw… That works for places like Landover Baptist Church, which plays brinksmanship with Poe’s Law, but Charles Johnson’s Flat Earth Research Society wasn’t even close to clever or funny. It was dead serious, and dead stupid. Even Westboro Baptist Church has elements of raw farce. You know how some paleontological gift shops sell copralites, fossilized dinosaur dung? Kinda clever, kinda cute. Something every dinosaur fan ought to have one of. Charles Johnson was just a piece of lizard dung. No fossilization, no rock-polishing, nothing even clever. [Here is an archive of his newsletters. No whimsy, no irony, nothing clever.](http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/cms/index.php/flat-earth-library/newsletters) Just hate-filled and awfully sad. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/51 "2015-10-23T01:35:36Z")
Johnson may have been both nuts and nasty, and some of the current crop are more of the same, but others seem to be having fun by taking a clearly nonsensical hypothetical and making it work, sorta. It’s pure mental gymnastics, exercising your brain by pulling it in unnatural directions, like the contortions of Yoga exercise your body. I may join, if I can find a postcard. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/52 "2015-10-23T02:33:08Z")
Playing it as a game – that’s FUN! It’s like pretending Sherlock Holmes was a real person. (“What do you mean ‘pretending?’”) (Also P.D.Q. Bach.) ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/53 "2015-10-23T12:11:48Z")
> [@NDP](#): > > Has anybody considered this is an example of deeply Kaufmanesque performance art? That Johnson and a few of his followers are taking the joke as far as they can go and meticulously avoiding anything that looks like a wink to the public? A real-life version of Poe’s law. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/54 "2015-10-23T12:50:20Z")
I’m at work and for some reason the DoD doesn’t want me looking at the Flat Earth Society’s website (:dubious: Conspiracy! They’re all part of it! ;)). What do they think is on the other side? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/55 "2015-10-23T16:28:33Z")
> [@DCnDC](#): > > I’m at work and for some reason the DoD doesn’t want me looking at the Flat Earth Society’s website (:dubious: Conspiracy! They’re all part of it! ;)). > > What do they think is on the other side? Oh my god, it’s full of elephants! (from Sir Terry). ---
**Author:** ![tonyfop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/85f322/32.png) [@tonyfop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tonyfop)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/56 "2015-10-23T16:55:27Z")
I know that I have posted this before, but during my first cruise on an Aircraft Carrier, I was able to demonstrate to people that the Earth was round, and not have to fly to do it. We were sailing in formation with other ships from the Battle Group. There was a frigate on our starboard side. From the hangar deck level, you could only see the top part of the ship. We ran up to the flight deck, and there was the entire ship. Back down to the hangar- half a ship. You can actually observe, and measure, the curvature of the earth with your naked eye, a clear view to the horizon, and a hill or platform 50 feet(15 meters?) tall or higher. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stainless_steel_rat/32/5727_2.png) [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/57 "2015-10-23T17:35:55Z")
Don’t mean to be a spoilsport, tony, but the ancient Greeks hit upon the same notion 3,000+ years ago, by seeing that the body of the ship would disappear while the sails were still in sight. Still, it was a neat little demo for folks who are, after all, not ancient Greeks (not to mention getting some PT/aerobic exercise in the bargain…) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2015, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/58 "2015-10-23T20:16:28Z")
Charles Johnson, in one of his newsletters, claimed he’d gone out to the Salton Sea (in California) and done exactly that experiment, trying to observe the “hull down” effect on sailboats. (This was back when the S.S. was a pleasure resort; now it’s just a big dead sewer.) He claimed that there was no such observable effect. Hmph. I took my own little telescope and tripod down to the south end of San Diego Bay, and looked at sailboats up at the north end, and the “hull down” effect is clearly visible. Either Johnson was an incompetent observer, or a… Well, now. (“Pants on fire” from a Flat Earther. Great surprise!) ETA: Of course, even if the effect is visible, the hard core denialist can say, “It’s an illusion due to waves and choppy water in the bay.” Hard core true-believers never give in, no matter how much evidence you present. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2015, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/59 "2015-10-24T20:40:48Z")
> [@tonyfop](#): > > I know that I have posted this before, but during my first cruise on an Aircraft Carrier, I was able to demonstrate to people that the Earth was round, and not have to fly to do it. We were sailing in formation with other ships from the Battle Group. There was a frigate on our starboard side. From the hangar deck level, you could only see the top part of the ship. We ran up to the flight deck, and there was the entire ship. Back down to the hangar- half a ship. You can actually observe, and measure, the curvature of the earth with your naked eye, a clear view to the horizon, and a hill or platform 50 feet(15 meters?) tall or higher. But Flat Earthers have an answer! Note that on some days you can actually see a ship over the horizon due to air layers at different temps bending the light. Ergo, what you saw was merely the opposite effect. These people are True Believers, they can deny anything, invent their own Physics and still claim to be rational. ---
**Author:** ![guitario](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3d9bf3/32.png) [@guitario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guitario)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2015, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934/60 "2015-10-25T01:06:56Z")
I’d like to know if they believe the earth to be flat like a rug, or more a cube shape - so flat, but 6 sides of flat. If it’s the former… what do they think happens when you reach the edge? If it’s the latter… what the hell do they think happens when you reach the edge? And if they can explain that, they earn my respect. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/flat-earth-clowns/734934.md?page=4)