I’ve known people who genuinely and seriously believed that-
I was Jesus Christ. My protestations otherwise did me no good.
He was a werewolf. This was not a stupid man. He had poor social skills and a deep-seated delusion. But he also possessed a near photographic memory and a staggeringly high IQ.
The singer Richard Marx would visit her in her room at the mental hospital every night.
Clooney was by far a better Batman than Keaton.
I am not joking, nor am I making any of this up. Do most members of the FE Society join as a joke? Sure. Are some of them sincere and crazy? I have no doubt.
It seems to me that FE society is just there for the (mostly British) eccentricity and oddness. I have met brilliant people, physicists and other scientists claiming to be members. They work hard to present plausible explanations. It is, in a way, similar to a perpetuum mobile designer group; one should believe Einstein when he wrote that for some of the designs the “bugs” were exceedingly difficult to find.
I’m not aware of the government cover-up angle ever really being that significant an aspect amongst flat earth theorists.
Certainly since say 1800, all flat earth theorists have essentially been bloody-minded contrarians who have actually been opposed to the perceived authority of mainstream science. Precisely because a “flat earth” had become the paradigm of an absurd opinion. In the 19th century, they tended to at least believe what they were, however misguidedly, arguing. It’s in the 20th century that one gets the absurdist, surrealist faction that holds the position as essentially one big joke. Which, intentionally, confuses everything.
Now neither strand of the tradition was surely particularly ever likely to trust the governments in power. But I don’t believe that any of them ever thought it was a conspiracy by governments. No, it was a conspiracy by scientists. Whom governments might mistakenly trust.
Didn’t the Nazis think there might be something to sphere-interior concept? And that there might be some chance of shooting weapons upward at distant nations?
Cyrus “Koresh” Teed led a cult that believed and preached just that. Unfortunately, the book with a chapter on him is at home.
RE The Man Who Thought I Was Christ
He got shuffled to a different agency and treatment program. I had never given him a way to contact me. I have no way (and no desire to contact him). I don’t really know what he’s up to.
I’ve seen references to Nazis using immense searchlights, and shining them up into the sky, hoping to illuminate London, above them on the inner surface of the hollow earth. I have no idea if this is true, or just an UL.
HF radio absolutely *does *bounce off the spherical sky and back to earth well beyond the horizon. For electromagnetic radiation at the appropriate wavelengths the sky (well the upper atmosphere really) has an index of refraction that works much like a mirror to reflect the signal back down. See Skywave - Wikipedia
The idea that that same behavior might work for light is not insane. It mostly doesn’t work in our atmosphere. But there might easily be planets where it does.
Mirages are exactly this effect. So it *does *work in our atmosphere to a limited extent.
More plausibly, the Germans (& the other side) did use powerful searchlights to search for incoming bombers. Once a bomber was lit up, the anti-aircraft gunners had something to aim at.
Pretty good bet that pix of these got ULed into “Nazi skybeams to light up London.” Which raises the question of what advantage the ULers claim the Germans hoped to gain by illuminating London. What’s the point?
Well, I think the answer to this is there two types of FE’ers. Those who are just seeing how far they can go with an absurd premise (the majority of FE’ers, IMO). For these, they do not really believe any governments are trying to keep people from knowing the earth is flat because they know it isn’t. The government conspiracy theroy is just a device used to explain what logic cannot.
The other type, who for respect to those with mental issues, I’ll call the unhinged, are, well, crazy. They don’t need to account for anything they claim because the reasons just don’t matter.
While I understand that you are looking for a particular bit of information, and you’re trying to be “open minded,” I think this line - which others use when talking about, say, white supremecists or creationists - is disingenuous. Some beliefs deserve ridicule. You can’t really discuss those ideas logically, and some of them are dangerous. The only way to give them what they merit is to make light of them.
Would Thomas Dolby, Musical Director of The TED Conference and member 00001 of the reconvened Flat Earth Society, troll us? Of course he would! Or not. It’s sometimes hard to tell with trolls.
Note that Christian FE belief almost always goes along with the Earth being immobile and the center of the Universe. Something that can be easily supported with many Biblical passages if your interpret them the right way. (Pretty much a universal statement.)
Once you believe the Bible is the primary source of The Truth, things like “facts” and “logic” are merely the work of the Devil which you can ignore as much as you like.