Is The Earth Flat?

You may be surprised to know that the notion of a flat Earth is actually quite modern, only going back about 120 years. The Greeks started to confuse all of us around 300 BC by claiming that we lived on a giant spherical object. That idea took hold among all the ancients and was believed by each successive generation so, unlike what you may have heard, Columbus thought he had a pretty good chance of hitting India.

I started getting interested in the idea of a flat Earth after hearing some politicians compare me (or anyone who wants even a debate on the effects that man has on our climate) to people belonging to the Flat Earth Society. Since I am diametrically opposed to almost everything those politicians are for it occurred to me that maybe there is something there.

The first thing I did was to check out the beliefs of the Flat Earth Society, all easily found on the web. At flatearthsociety.net you will see listed the top 3 reasons they believe the world is flat:

A flat Earth is socially more responsible

Removal of geographic bias in Politics

Newton's laws of Motion and Einstein's Relativity
(an extensive discussion which seems to boil down to the fact that gravity is an illusion)

They also list what they don't believe:

Ignoring Evidence - A Global Conspiracy - That the Earth is on a Turtle's Back

As you can see, this is heavy stuff. It got me thinking deep thoughts. For example, if the diameter of the Earth is about 26 thousand miles and it actually does rotate once a day then the Earth must be spinning at over 2 thousand miles per hour so if I was in an elevator and jumped up while it was going down my body should logically slam into the elevator's side. But it doesn't, does it?

Intrigued I checked out Wikepidea and saw that Flat Earth News had articles with these interesting (and actual) titles:

Whole World Deceived - Except the Very Elect
Australia, Not Down Under
Sun is a Light 32 Miles Across
Galileo Was a Liar
Science Insults Your Intelligence
World IS Flat, and That's That
The Earth is Not a Ball, Gravity Does Not Exist

Another site from the UK called Metro News provides a list of the top 10 reasons to believe that the world is flat. If these don't convince you then it's probable that your brain is totally closed and nothing will:

1.   It sort of looks flat, doesn't it?
2.   It's cheaper to fake journey into space than it is to journey into space.
3.   Satellite photos are actually faked.
4.   Day and night are created by the sun's visibility in a circle above and then below the North Pole
      (the sun also slides side to side for winter and summer).
5.   People who think they have flown around the world have actually flown in a big circle around
      the North Pole (the Earth is a large disk with the North Pole in the center).
6.   It all stays together because there is a big ice wall around the edge (Antarctica -  it keeps the
      oceans from flowing off the edge. The Flat Earth society however is "a little curious"
      as to what lies beyond).
7.   Gravity doesn't exist.
8.   The Earth is accelerating upwards due to 'dark energy'.
9.   Photos from airplanes look curved because of the windows.
10. An experiment proved that a six mile stretch of water was flat.

Of course not everyone is like me and open to a different "world view". When I checked out a skeptic site and referenced flat-Earth it seemed that a lot of people who go to discussion boards seemed really upset that anyone would actually believe that the Earth is flat. Here is a typical query:

"Well then, how do you explain photos of my house from the Google satellite? How is it possible to do that for any location? Do you know how long it would take to create these images and somehow frequently update them?"

For every stupid question there is a perfectly reasonable explanation. Here is a flat-Earth answer:

"I assume you are talking about suites with Google Earth. The majority of pictures are taken from sources like planes and  balloons. Google themselves admit this."

What more can I add?