The Earth is round.......maybe

Discussion in 'Philosophy' started by Oni~, Feb 18, 2015.

  1. #1 Oni~, Feb 18, 2015
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 18, 2015
    I've been recently obsessed with this topic so I'm curious what the rest of the stoner community thinks.


    Our species has for millenia KNOWN that the Earth is flat.  Generation after generation were born and died under the set knowledge that the Earth is flat and you can fall off of it if you travel too far.    This is important to honestly consider.  Entire lives were birthed, developed, matured, and died, under the understanding that is is a flat plane.   This isn't stoner thought, but sheer historical fact, that our species went through generation after generation of fielding new people after new people who fully believed in a flat Earth. 
     
    This makes me ponder our current reality.  Again, not as stoner pondering, but actual anthropological fact.   How tangible is our perception of reality - logically speaking.     We are obviously evolving into more sophisticated levels of thought but who's to say we are not just advocating the next   "flat Earth" theory?      How does one make a stand on their perception of reality without truly acknowleging the massively catastrophic mistakes of perception of those who preceded us?     If they have been so badly wrong, what makes us so certainly not wrong?  Sure, we are not commiting their mistakes, but are we not commiting new ones? 

     
     
  2. Big bang theory is the new flat earth IMO
     
  3.  
    Care to elaborate?   Has the scientific or amateur-scientific community been questioning the BBT more lately or?
     
  4. I would love to! You want me to post it here or pm?
     
  5. Post here please, I want to hear :) I agree with the OP. It's all a big unknown, and in the mean time we just work to further prove or disprove a theory.
     
  6. the scientific method wasnt nearly as robust even so recent as aristotles time. our understanding of the world around us has increased exponentially with time, only really taking off in the last few hundred years. the idea of a flat earth is something that was accepted in the context of very little scrutiny, as its mostly an irrelevant notion predating the common era. its hard to say what people believed in times predating recorded history, but certainly what may have been considered fact then is worlds apart from what fact means today.
     
    what im saying is that theories today carry much more weight than ideas of the past, especially in the time frame youre talking about. a prehistoric notion of a flat earth and theories of today are hardly even comparable. 
     
  7. For starters ill point you toward

    Smallness problem

    Flatness problem

    Coincidence problem

    Dark matter (made up to save the model)

    Dark energy (made up to save the model)

    Cosmological constant (made up to save the model)

    Black holes (i would say its been falsified over and over but they keep changing what they actually are to avoid being falsified)


    Less technical

    http://bigbangneverhappened.org/index1.htm

    Technical

    http://bigbangneverhappened.org/p27.htm

    Technical

    http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/BB-top-30.asp

    Less technical

    http://m.phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html

    Creationists invented the BBM now the scientific dogma wont let it go, its both hilarious and maddening.
     
  8. Gotta say I think you're a pretty dumb ancestor if you lived by the coast where you could see the horizon and thought the earth was flat...it's got an arc. The moon....round. stars and all those dots..round.
     
  9.  
    Very few cultures actually believed the Earth was flat. The idea that the majority of ancient people believed it was flat was more of a modern fabrication. Like how people think Columbus set out to prove to everyone the Earth wasn't flat.. not true. It was a lie fabricated by one religious group to make another religious group look dumb.. then popularized by Washington Irving and other writers. Once that idea was set, pretty much anytime someone looked back at an artistic representation of Earth as the ancients knew it, they assumed they believed the Earth was flat. Many cultures had depictions that were mixed with their religious belief and what they knew about it all.. and even if they wanted to draw a sphere, it's still going to look like a flat circle.
     
    That said, I am sure there were a few cultures who truly believed there to be an edge of the Earth that you can fall off of.. but the idea that the majority of our ancestors believed the Earth to be flat is inaccurate. Our ancestors had the exact same intelligence potential as we do.. it's just our knowledge base is much greater, thanks to them.
     
  10. I wondered about that assumption (that it was common to believe the earth is flat) i just didnt feel like spending the time to find the answer.
     
  11.  
     
    [​IMG]
     
  12. Earth isn't round. It's geoid.
     
  13. I think Mantikore is right about everyone believing the earth was flat being a myth. Also, I agree with the general principle you're getting at with the OP. We act so certain about our accepted theories, as if it is not true that one discovery we haven't even thought of or given context to could totally change everything about what we think we know. Also, as for the thread title. I would say that earth being round is not so much in question at this point, since we can literally go into space and photograph it. 
     
  14. And this little gem i just came across.

    http://ph-news.web.cern.ch/content/planck-mission-releases-first-cosmology-results

    " Cosmologists are now
    facing an interesting dilemma: on the one hand, the standard model of cosmology is still the best way to describe the CMB data, although it includes elements that still lack
    solid theoretical understanding such as dark matter, dark energy, and inflation. On the other hand, the anomalies seen by Planck highlight that the model should be at the very least extended, if not radically modified."

    Its on its way out just like the flat earth.
     
  15. I have more i can post or pm if you'd like
     
  16. Teegeeack is actually more apple shaped than it is round.


    Sent from somewhere in Canada.
     
  17. Cool info, thanks!

    The big point for me regarding this was that if we look back in time, historically recorded time,  we find so many various "certainties" our species held on to in terms of reality definement.  Even the major world religions themselves statistically say that give or take, the remaining 2/3 of the planet are wrong about what's going on.    I used the planet example to point out how even about the obvious scientific topics that affect all our lives, like what shape this thing we're surfing is, the species is constantly evolving and outgrowing previous beliefs, scientific or spiritual.
     
    My point being:  If we have already recorded that we have made now laughable seeming mistakes in the past, then how strong can our claim on awareness and grip on "reality"  possibly be, compared to a human even who's some 500 years down in the future?  (We are, for this purpose, assuming a prosperable 500 years of actual growth and development, not a postapocalyptic world of misery and societal regress).
    In today's world, for example, we already scoff and roll our eyes or downright laugh our asses off on some practices of even as late as 1960.  What will the kids of 2065 mock and despise us for?  The kids of 2165  "won't be able to imagine what that was like"  when referring to things we consider common place today.

    I'm having a "tiny speck in time"  moment on a good but ponderous week off.
     
  18. As a scientist, I believe what is observable, testable and repeatable. Sure, our perception of reality could be completely off. It may be one big illusion. I completely agree with that. I'm a skeptic of everything, but in order to stay sane, there are some things - based on scientific evidence - that I guess I just have to have faith in. It's ironic since I'm an atheist, but there's no way of really knowing anything. We could all be nothing more than a computer simulation. 
    These are unfalsifiable, and IMO, it's a complete waste of time to continue worrying or thinking about. 
    We've landed on the moon, we've lived in low Earth orbit. The census is: It's round. That's good enough for me.
     
    There is also a huge problem with the flat earth theory. Since it's flat, and assuming gravity still works the same, ... well I'm no expert, but I'll link a video by a really intelligent youtuber who can explain it much better than I.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNqNnUJVcVs
     
  19. #20 iAmBetty, Mar 6, 2015
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 6, 2015
    Everybody is wrong. We're on a cube. Smoke more weed and you'll get it.
     

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