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Does Anyone Know The Flat-Earth "Conspiracy"?

TBLman has posted umpteen threads here asserting that the Earth is a flat disc stationary in Space, with no gravity, and the other celestial bodies (presumably) orbiting it.

He has not invented this. So don't blame him.

There are assorted videos, blogs or whatever on t'Net pushing the idea as dogma that Shall Not Be Questioned, and he's apparently gained his ideas from these. They can be nasty, the people making these, too; calling anyone who questions them, a liar or an idiot; or using a trick common in the form of domestic abuse called in law, "coercive & controlling behaviour"..

Their common theme is that only they are telling the truth and we have all been taught a gigantic lie about spherical planets and the heliocentric, Solar System... but why would we be; and by whom?

The geocentric model was pushed for centuries by the Church, for their power; but ironically it was a model devised by a pagan (in their eyes) - the pre-Christian, non-Jewish Classical Greek, Aristotle, whose own religion was of a soap-opera pantheon. Its attraction was of simple arrogance, placing Man (literally and figuratively, 'man') at the centre of the Universe. Eventually the Church of Rome conceded Galileo and his contemporaries were right, though it took it 400 years to swallow its pride and apologise to their memories. The Vatican even has it own observatory now.

In FE-ist eyes, the heliocentric and gravity model is heresy, designed as part of, or supporting a mysterious "conspiracy"; but a conspiracy of what? Not itself because that would gain nothing for the conspirators - apart from ridicule.

TBLman told me the conspiracy is extremely complicated, but not what it is, suggesting as many explanations as adherents. It would have to be complicated to have originated in centuries past, yet still be maintained around the world even today; with no evident purpose or beneficiaries.

(As guide to age, Renaissance paintings sometime show globes. These were mapped, though not ever so accurately, by the early mariners who set forth from European countries to "discover new" lands... usually so their own countries could conquer them.)

One present-day example is a certain Eric Dubay, a yoga instructor, who calls his version "The Atlantean Conspiracy". At least he is civil about it, but his long list of images and short texts to show only his basic lack of geographical or simple physics, knowledge.

A 19C example was a grocer, later hotelier, falsely pretending to be a "professor", in the Dakota spa-town of Hot Springs. I'd name him but, sorry, I have lost the reference. His very strange model depicted the known world as not itself flat, but as a toroidal dish, like a roulette wheel, in the middle of a huge, square slab of rock. He did not seem to pretend any conspiracies but claimed Biblical "proof", and made money from selling his pamphlets about it! There is a Wikipedia entry about him, with a facsimile of his cod-Renaissance drawing of Planet Roulette-wheel.

''''

So probably no single, cohesive, coherent FE model, and probably no single, coherent "conspiracy"..

Yet they go to such lengths to call all the rest of us, fools and liars!

The supreme irony of these anti-science types though, is that they use the Internet to push it.
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UKNaturist · M
There's hundreds if not thousands of them out there who believe in this and the fake moon landings and the chemtrails and fluoride keeping us all under control. 😳
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@UKNaturist I would not be surprised if some of them pick and choose ideas to suit their own version of the dogma.

It's rather like a cult, although without a dominant central commissariat or Beloved Leader.

It all seems part of a general fashion for taking all the benefits of modern science and engineering, while at the same time calling it "lies" or "hoaxes".

Yes, we can think of things we would rather not have been discovered and exploited, but those are the minority. A lot of it may stem from a growing mistrust of any governmental body or scientific institution, especially (but not only) in America where anything not tied down under an aluminium-foil tea-cosy is politicised or commercialised to within an inch of its life.

Yet, although we can understand even if not agree with arguments over pandemics or climate-change, the FE dogma appears to serve no useful purpose to anyone.

They may as well say, as Arthur Conan-Doyle infamously did, that "fairies" exist. Why? He said they do. He had seen the technically flawless photograph of the miniature winged ballerinas, in a garden in 19C Cottingley. He did not stop to think and ask a little more deeply about the logic - though nor did the Kodak staff who examined the camera and print.

'
At least the FE idea is harmless; even really rather funny! There is a 15C parallel having its own recent development of "new technology" - printing - enabling spreading a particularly poisonous fantasy, just as the Internet is so misused today.

This was the book Malleus Malificarum; by a German priest. Despite being criticised by leading theologians of its time as immoral, it became a sort of operating-manual for persecuting so-called "witches" throughout much of Europe for the next three centuries.

Not much new, is there... although I gather burning at the stake for having ideas contrary to someone's assumed dogma, is no longer legal.
UKNaturist · M
@ArishMell - some conspiracies are interesting as they have at least some semblance of fact about them but some are downright ridiculous. The recent 5G / COVID one being a case in point. Everyone needs to have a choice but everyone needs to use their common sense.
spjennifer · 61-69, T
@UKNaturist One of my oldest friends has tinfoil over all his windows to keep the 5G signals out 🙃🤪