Yes, I know this question is akin to asking Conspiracy Theorists or Creationists to look logically at the evidence, but really, how can anyone in this day and age hold such a completely loony theory? I mean surely you could disprove the beliefs of the Flat Earth society simply by taking a round-the-world cruise or (better still) flying? Yet I read in my paper this morning that there is still a bastion of these lunatics (in America, naturally). What’s the explanation?
“The Earth is flat because it says so in our Holy Writings. Don’t try to confuse us with easily-observable facts!”
Hey, I resemble that remark 
Are you sure they exist? I Googled and found this Web site for the Flat Earth Society, which seemed serious at first but turns out (I’m pretty sure) to be a straight-faced joke.
Looks like the Flat Earth Society had 3,000 people at most in recent years, which out of the whole Western world ain’t that many:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society
And here’s a pretty good, interesting, poignant article about the most recent leader, Charles Johnson:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/fe-scidi.htm
It more than anything gives a good overview as to the mindset of these few looney toons. (There are probably many more people “hearing voices” than people that believe the world is flat, if that helps you put it in perspective.)
Why shouldn’t there be flat earthers? The earth certainly looks flat. It’s shape is only determiniable by some fairly sophisticated geometric inferences. I think a strong tendency is to adapt the point of view that is directly observable rather than that which is arrived at only after a lot of logic.
Because there’s nothing for them to fall off of, after all.
Sailboat
Fair enough, I realise the human capacity for self-deception is infinite, but what if we were to take one of these Earters in a cross-polar plane flight (traversing the world from pole to pole on both sides). From the images in the article you linked to, that would surely undermine their cosmology?
Well, the earth might be an infinitely-repeating flat surface, so if you go pole-to-pole-to-pole, you’re actually at a different-but-identical pole than the one you started out with. This would hold true for any other location you might leave from and return to. Identical locations, identical people, etc.
As far as photos from space are concerned . . . well, it might be just a space-warping illusion.
Because most of them stay away from the edges!
Tris
You do not need fancy geometry.
Go flying…from altitude the curvature of the earth is observable. I’d even say a trip up a very tall building will let you see a sublte curvature (at least so I thought last time I was at the top of the Sears Tower…might have been hallucinating).
Or go to sea and note that you can see the mast of distant ships before you can see the hull of a distant ship.
Then of course there is the issue of just looking up and seeing our very globe shaped moon or look through a telescope at any other planet or our sun. I suppose they could say the earth is somehow “special” and flat unlike everything else in the universe but you have to be seriously closeminded to let that keep your faith in a flat earth.
Most of the FE guys are just in it for the Bud Light.
Well, I think you are interpreting what you see on the basis of a spherical earth assumption.
I remember reading that the late president of the Flat Earth society was married to an Australian ironically enough. She told him that despite what the globes show, she never remembered feeling upside down there. That is good enough for me.
What other explanation could there be for the observational phenomenon that the horizon curves? From that you can’t necessarily say the Earth is a sphere, but you can say at the least that it’s a comparitively shallow conical shape at which you are at the “point”; you could keep going to different places in order to show there’s no place at which you can look up at the Earth, although the weakness with that is you could say the earth is flat with many different conical “points” coming up from it, far enough away from each other that they create the illusion of sphericity. Either way, though, it’s certainly not flat.
And if it’s not a physical phenomenon, but mental (i.e. something within us is incapable of seeing the true flatness of the Earth) then their position is as equally flawed as round-earthers; if we are “tricked” by our brains into thinking the Earth is round, then who is to say that flat-earthers are not equally “tricked”?
I’m sure it could be written off as some kind of optical effect - not necessarily with any legitimacy, but that would be entirely beside the point when we’re talking about a philosophy of denial.
On Venus (which is a sphere, orbiting our flat Earth), the atmosphere is apparently so dense that the observer would perceive the horizon all around him to be raised; as if he’s constantly sitting in the bottom of a bowl - this is because of the refractive index of the atmosphere, which is a function of its density; now the Earth’s atmosphere is considerably less dense, so the ‘bowl’ effect is not only negated, it is slightly reversed and the observer perceives himself to be atop a shallow dome.
See?
On the earth when you are standing on the deck of a ship at sea it appears that you are standing in a bowl.
I don’t think those who believe the earth is flat waste much time trying to explain various clues to the actual roundness. Locally, it looks flat and so it is flat is QED to them.
To which I would say, “Prove Venus is a sphere, or capable of being a sphere”. If they can do that, then they’ve also gathered information that would suggest Earth is/is capable of being a sphere, too.
Anyway, I addresed that in my post; i’d consider than a “mental” effect (we’re unable to see it for what it really is) then at the very least our position holds just as much legitimacy as theirs; if we’re wrong because we can’t see it for what it is, how can we trust any of their observations, which are equally flawed?
It has that appearance but how do you explain being able to see the masts of a ship (or high points if you prefer) before you can see the rest of the ship?
If the sea was flat you’d see the whole ship as soon as it was in range to see it.
Cecil has a column related to this:
Some people are just contrary. They like doing stuff like believing, or saying they believe, in a flat earth. Just like some Dopers will go to see a movie like The Da Vinci Code just to annoy certain people, they enjoy annoying others by insisting the earth is flat. It’s possible that this contrariness is something Americans enjoy doing more than others, but I don’t know.
You can see Venus with a telescope and observe that it’s spherical; you don’t even need a telescope to see the Earth and it’s plain to see that it’s flat.
But really, this is a pointless exercise; flat-earthers (if any sincere ones still existed), along with other people determined to hold firm to assorted absurd unreal views, simply cannot be reasoned with.