Imagine that you’re walking out on a nice day and see the road sprawling straight and evenly in front of you. The trees and buildings stem out of the ground that is flat for as long as you can see. The sea spreads out flat even beyond the straight horizon. This is something you realize all day, every day. So, if it looks and feels so flat, wouldn’t you say the Earth is flat?
The Society for The Planet
Societies that hold the belief that the Earth is flat have existed for a long time. The Universal Zetetic Society was the precursor of the International Flat Earth Society founded by Samuel Shenton in 1956. The society gained immense media coverage and around 3000 members but fell through around the 1980s.
However, it was revived as The Flat Earth Society (TFS) in 2004. The society was officially restarted in October 2009, with a new website, featuring a public collection of flat Earth literature and a wiki, which is an information repository for all curious minds. As of July 2017, over 500 people have become members. According to the Flat Earth Society’s leadership, its ranks have grown by 200 people per year since 2009.
Their Ground Belief
Flat Earthers, tend to differ in their thoughts and beliefs. Most believe the Earth is a flat disc with the Arctic Circle in the middle. Some believe that the circle is under a dome, above which there may or may not be an expanse of water; others believe the Earth is shaped like a diamond, and others believe the Earth exists beneath four cosmic rings within a giant egg-shaped universe.
But on a general level, they believe the Earth is not round but a flat surface. They propose a flat disc-like surface with the continents aligned like they would be on a map with the North Pole at its center, on the outer edge by a 150-foot high ice wall that is Antarctica. The model that they have built for this concept is similar to the logo of the United Nations.
Then, why no one has ever fallen off the edge? In 1959, almost all major powerful nations of the world signed the Antarctic Treaty to not let anyone go into Antarctica unless they are designated observers, or are accompanied by authorized personnel under strict surveillance. Planes aren’t allowed to fly over this Arctic zone either. No entry policy perhaps was the real intention to keep people from falling off of the surface.
The Evidence on the Table
The Flat Earth Society of Canada calls themselves “planoterrestrialists”. They claimed a prevailing problem of the new technological age was the willingness of people to accept theories “on blind faith and to reject the evidence of their own senses.”
The evidence for a flat Earth is derived from many different facets of science and philosophy. The simplest is to rely on one’s senses to discern the true nature of the world around us. The world looks flat, and the bottoms of clouds are flat, these are examples of your senses telling you that we don’t live in a spherical heliocentric world. This is called an empirical approach, or an approach that relies on information from your senses.”
They tell us to look around and see it for ourselves how flat like a plane our planet is. They propose one of the oldest experiments of flat Earth proof: the Bedford Level Experiment. It was a nineteenth-century experiment that was performed many times on a six-mile stretch of water that proved the surface of the water to be flat.
Spotlight Effect In Action
Flat Earthers also have an explanation for how day and night, and sunrises and sunsets occur. They call it the Spotlight Effect, which states that the Sun shines directly on the Earth like a spotlight. The area of light is limited to an elliptic area upon the Earth like the light of a lighthouse is limited to a finite area around it, and isn’t infinitely lighting up the whole space.
This means that only certain portions of the Earth are lightened at a time, so day and night occur at different places at different times. The apparent view of rising and setting are caused by perspective, they claim, just as a flock of birds overhead will descend into the horizon as they fly into the distance.
The book Earth Not a Globe by Samuel Rowbotham has several more experimental proofs and explanations for flat Earth. In the book, Rowbotham argued that the “Bible, alongside our senses, supported the idea that the Earth was flat and immovable and this essential truth should not be set aside for a system based solely on human conjecture”.
The experimental evidence section of the wiki of TFS also has enough to get you into real thinking.
NASA Is Controlling Our Minds
Modern flat Earthers tend to not trust observations they have not made themselves, and often distrust or are critical of the apparent universal truths. They are huge fans of conspiracies, especially about why major institutions such as governments, media outlets, and airlines all assert that the world is a sphere and how they benefit from this.
Flat Earth Society has been seen to recruit members by speaking against the US government and all its agencies, particularly NASA. They believe in evidence such as satellite photos of Earth as a sphere, to be fabrications of a “round Earth conspiracy” orchestrated by NASA and other government agencies.
YouTuber Jerid Dawson said that all images we have of outer space, the Earth, and so on is given to us by NASA only. These images are perhaps the most solid pieces of evidence anyone has of Earth being a sphere. But these pictures themselves are under scrutiny as they are not real. Since the Earth is massive, images are taken from varied angles and the ultimate image that we receive is a composite one.
There are several instances where it seems photoshopped like certain cloud patterns that repeat several times. In an interview with a lead NASA data visualizer, it was revealed that yes, images do have some CGI elements to them and parts of it are photoshopped. Add that to the already speculated Moon-landing hoax, and you get a bunch of people boarding on distrust and disbelief.
NASA has claimed to have lost the original footage of the moon landing, so is the footage we have fake? In a world where we have retained mummies from ancient Egypt, our most trusted space agency had managed to lose the records of one of the most pivotal moments in mankind.
They have even destroyed the technology used for moon expeditions so what really is going on with NASA raises a lot of eyebrows. This mounting skepticism on this prestigious and only agency that has access to vital information about space that is beyond the reach of any human on this planet.
This disbelief and questioning stem from science in general. Science finds a base in research and theories, but these are just systems of ideas that propose an explanation for an event. The propositions or ideas which we so dearly adhered to like our gospel truth, such as the Big Bang theory, the theory of gravity, and the theory of evolution, all come under speculation and start to be discredited.
Why We Go Round and Round?
The guns are pointed straight at governments and institutions all around the world. Their greed for power and control is what Flat Earthers believe to be the reason why the Round Earth theory is so deeply propagated by these power structures of the world.
Let’s think about the world that we live in. We have lives in which we go to learn in schools, then take up jobs that pay us enough to buy the things we need to live and some more. Then, we grow old and retire, and at last, death comes knocking.
So, life really is learning about things you don’t know from books written by men you have never met and you take their words for the truth. Also, materialism really is the driving force of mankind. We put in blood, sweat, and tears to buy things, to be richer, to seem more important.
Companies and governments all around ensure this process too, where commercials are everywhere, social status is based on the things you own, and machines literally listen in on you and tell you what your next purchase should be.
The Earth alone can sustain simple lives from the seeds that grow out of its soil, the materials it provides for shelter, the water it provides for hydration and sanitation.
Then, why is materialism so dominant? This is the mass deception scheme that lets the people in power control us as we slowly and unconsciously submit to them. Jerid Dawson stated that while psychedelic drugs like marijuana that actually expand the mind are shunned, things that are actually harmful to us like cigarettes and alcohol are still widely commercialized and sold.
“They want to dumb us down and just make us robotic,” he said. They want to make our lives seem almost coincidental, like a small race living small lives on a rock that is hurtling through space. We are made to feel insignificant and are taught things that are deceiving and probably untrue, but also unquestioned.
The Role Of the Bible And The Firmament
One of the strongest footings of the flat Earth belief comes from the Bible. The Bible talks about the Earth as created by a Supreme being. It talks about the Earth being a flat surface that is covered by a dome-shaped structure called the firmament which holds the stars and the Sun. Above it, lies heaven.
Now, think of this world. A world like this that are created deliberately to sustain lives like ours, but we have a purpose. The flat Earth ideology lets us believe that the apparent Big Bang didn’t just happen and this planet that supports life and has water wasn’t just coincidentally formed and evolution didn’t just occur, leading to the birth of a kind that just happened to make inventions and discoveries.
The Flat Earth theory has led many to discover a more meaningful life. A Flat Earth means a planet that was intelligently created by some divine being with a purpose in mind. Everyone on this Earth is as significant and important as the Sun.
You have value and this life is your chance to do something, and not just waste it away watching movies and buying things. It rejuvenates a sense of spirituality and connection with the Universe or maybe just connects you to yourself. It gives a sense of awakening.
Do You Conspire?
At first, when stories of the Flat Earth Society started to surface, it was ignored as a stupid trend created by ignorant people. But as one gave into a video about what this conspiracy really is, one’s world was changed forever.
What one likes about this concept is that the shape of the Earth is just the tip of the iceberg. Whether the Earth is round or flat or a square is a small concern in this theory while it discusses and questions a wider globe of issues. It’s a concept that leads you down a spiral that questions everything you have ever believed it.
Personally, we are yet to be convinced about the Earth being flat. This theory led us to believe that perhaps governments really do push opinions down our throats without us even knowing it. It has started an introspective cycle inside me and frankly, this is what we have always loved about conspiracy theories.
Question everything. Make your own truth.
