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I’ve heard all of my life about “Flat Earthers,” but I hadn’t really encountered any of them until the Artemis II mission began to get news coverage. Now, though, I’ve seen several of them popping up online, and I’m still recovering from the shock of learning for myself that such people do actually exist — although one that I noticed was perspicacious enough to acknowledge that the evidence on the subject is, as he put it, “mixed” and indecisive. He apparently also believes — of course! — that the Apollo moon landings were faked on a soundstage somewhere, that the seven astronauts aboard the Challenger space shuttle survived the “explosion” that “destroyed” it in 1986 and are living under assumed names in a kind of NASA witness-protection program; that Lee Harvey Oswald was framed by the CIA; that the COVID pandemic was really a “plandemic,” and that the anti-COVID vaccines were part of a plot to . . . do something or other. (I begin to zone out, sometimes.) I’m not sure, but I think that the fact that President Nelson and other leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints received the COVID vaccine is what took him out of the Church; he probably realized at that point that the Church is just one more part of the vast global conspiracy. And, oh yes, he’s an anti-Semite.

I find myself wondering what it would be like to live in his world. I can easily imagine that it might be very terrifying. But it’s also, I suspect, deeply gratifying for him to know that he’s one of the elite few who know what’s really going on.

My brothers and sisters, as followers of Christ, let us follow Him by forgoing contention and by using the language and methods of peacemakers.

DCP wrote:but I think that the fact that President Nelson and other leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints received the COVID vaccine is what took him out of the Church

drumdude wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 10, 2026 2:39 pm

Any day now we will find the edge of the earth, just like any day now we will find some Nephite pottery.

Physics Guy wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 10, 2026 12:41 pm

I'd say that Flat Earthers are farther out on the wacko spectrum than a lot of other things, but that there isn't as comfortably wide a gap as one might imagine between them and more respectable believers. In fact there are some big points in favor of Flat Earthism, the first one being that the world sure seems pretty flat when you just walk around on it. There's a horizon, but unless you're on a seashore or a wide plain, the horizon seems just to be due to hills or buildings or trees or something blocking your view.

If you do have a clear view across water or flat desert or something, things like mirages and heat haze are real optical effects that one could imagine might somehow create a horizon illusion. And there's something that can easily seem like decisive proof that the world is flat, if you aren't quite good at three-dimensional visualization: if you travel out to where the horizon seems to be, then when you get there, the surface around you still seems very flat. You don't notice any kind of edge or slope.

That's a basic but arguably profound fact about what geometric curvature is like. Every line is locally straight, in the sense that it has a tangent, and every curved surface is locally flat, having a tangent plane. You have to have quite a sharp peak or ridge or valley for curvature to be noticeable. A gradual curvature looks locally just like flatness.

The only direct, visible evidence for the Earth being round is that elusive horizon, which is by definition impossible to reach—how convenient! Most of the time, in fact, you can live just fine by operating as though the world were flat. Over 25000 miles, the curvature of the Earth is enough that you'll have traveled completely around it—but who ever keeps going straight for 25000 miles?

Fence Sitter wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 10, 2026 3:18 pm

Except everyone that has ever sailed at all knows another ship sailing away from view appears to sink into the ocean.