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I don't think, I know for a fact it's a globe.
The Earth is flat.
It's like we have this picture of reality that's a big puzzle piece,
and then one of those pieces just wasn't fitting.
I'm always open to having a discussion with someone
who is holding a
wrong belief like this.
I'm not.
The evidence is so much.
Nobody wants to be a flat earther,
but if you showed me
incontrovertible evidence,
I would definitely go back.
Who wants the ridicule?
I'd like to tear them to pieces.
I'm Jim Underdown,
executive director of the Center for Inquiry West in Los Angeles and
the chair of the
CFI investigations group
I'm Spencer Marks,
one of the senior members of the CFI investigations group,
science advocate.
I am Ali Nayeri,
I'm a theoretical physicist and
I'm with the University of Irvine.
I am Wendell Walton.
I am a chief learning officer for a young startup.
I'm Shelly Lewis.
I'm a graduate of West Point, critical thinker
and jumped out of airplanes.
My name is Dan Glatman.
I work as Dan the Water Man in the drinking water filtration industry,
and I'm a truth seeker.
Well, I've been a Christian for thirty years, so
The Bible is a Flat Earth book.
You have to take it literally.
Like for example in Isaiah
when it talks about how the earth
is like a clay wet wax seal
that stamped with upturned edges.
That's just not some fancy story.
That's a simile: "it is like".
[Shelly]: Right, absolutely, and in Isaiah talks about too - and I'm a Christian -
He who sits upon the circle of the earth.
There's a difference between a circle and a ball.
Well, exactly, if you look at the original
Hebrew it means "disk". There's over 200 scriptures in the Bible that point to a Flat Earth
So this notion that you need God or some higher power
to create the Earth or the universe is very old
and was initially
posited by people of a pre-scientific age.
Since then, we have learned quite a bit about
the universe coming into existence when that happened.
Modern humans don't get their cosmology,
they don't get their physics,
they don't get their knowledge of the universe
from the Bible or any ancient text.
It's sort of like the God of the Gaps.
Once you know people used to believe that
lightning was God's wrath and throwing these lightning bolts,
but once we understood it was a natural process
God shrank a little bit more
because now we couldn't attribute those lightning bolts to God,
we had to attribute that to the real science.
And the other thing
to the point about the Bible specifically for me is
why is that one particular text the correct one. You choose
to believe that, and that's fine, but
there's so many other writings and so many other books.
So why weren't they correct? Why is just the the Bible, correct?
Well what you'll find in a lot of these ancient religions
is they're all flat earth religions.
All their cosmology goes back to being a flat earth with an enclosed system.
So it's not just the Bible that teaches this.
It's many different religious books.
So one problem I have is to uh- trying to explain
phenomena happen in nature
by holy books.
Those are religious books.
Those are not books of science, and it is wrong to
infer or deduct
scientific readings out of those books.
My name is Wendell, I am a
logical, biblically-based and scientific Flat Earther.
I didn't start out and no one starts out as a Flat Earther,
but I had a lot of questions
So I actually got to the point where I had to go out and and put my own eyeballs on it
So we went out to an observation at Salton Sea and
Things just didn't add up down there.
So we've gone back
Probably a dozen times and
I can guarantee you that
there is no curvature over distance.
We have the advantage of information today that's outside of Channels 2, 4 and 7
and the few networks that are corporately owned.
It's pretty easy to say
YouTube isn't research
but when you spend enough time,
you're picking up quite a bit and
with the discussion groups, panels
We've gone against opposition, we've opposed ourselves
Surprisingly enough flat earth is its own worst enemy
so it's not that easy for us to come to consensus
and we find that consensus is orchestrated and not
actually scientific in any way.
You know, my grandfather used to tell me growing up
never believe anything you read in the newspaper.
Right?
He told that to me.
Now what the age of the Internet it's like, you know
How much of this misinformation are you getting there?
And when you have like eyewitnesses taking video of something,
you do have to take everything with a grain of salt
That's why because of my um, my multimedia background
I knew that all that stuff could be faked,
you know, take it into Photoshop.
Take it into After Effects
Ok, this is at the core of the issue
of why there are so many Flat Earth believers
out there right now.
The problem is
the information from someone who decides to
Start a website
or produce a YouTube video is not reliable.
When I have a toothache I go to a dentist,
My car breaks down, I go to a mechanic.
When you have questions about cosmology
You should go to an astrophysicist.
You should go to a physicist.
You should go to people who have spent years and years
studying these ideas,
not some 6 minute YouTube video
There is a percentage of people
that if they saw a youtube video that
was not within their scientific chops to refute on the face of it
would believe anything out there.
One of the things I will say
is nasa.gov
has their own documents out there that
we get to vet
Which is through the Freedom of Information Act
and would you agree that NASA Documents
if they're on display that we should be able to go
and research inside there
NASA is not proving that the earth is flat
Well they say it in [inaudible] documents
Well you should read what NASA says
and you should listen to what NASA says.
I would love to see your NASA
evidence that the earth is flat.
It's only they're contradictory issues that bring us here
We're all familiar with the earth rise photo,
right?
The earth is rising over the moon.
We're all familiar with it
It's NASA. You can go out to the NASA site.
You can download the original, right?
I already know what you're gonna ask.
So
You bring up the luminance on it and you can see where it's cut out and pasted there
They're showing us doctored images that are clearly doctored
The Blue Marble is a very famous image from 1972
when you talk to the artist from NASA
His name's Robert Simmon.
He talks about exactly how it was created from data,
and it's not a photograph whatsoever
He added clouds, he added highlights.
You take you know on your phone most phones have that panoramic image
When you do that you're taking a series of picture
and the phone cleverly stitches that together
I'm just saying how it's presented. It's presented as a real photograph.
So when NASA takes real Photos and they either clean them up for color
or they stitch them together. So it's one large image
It doesn't mean they're CGI.
You're talking about composites
I'm what you call a globe denier
You could even get me into a virtual construct if I can't find the w- the borders myself
It appears to me to be a stationary plane
as opposed to the vastness of infinity of space
I would find it to be an ice plane
where we have a localized sun
and our environment thrives there.
You know these these particular people have misled us on television
This is a brilliant opportunity to speak.
We've been suppressed,
censored by mainstream media
Alternative media is that's just a thing of beauty for me
I'm running
Well, they uh they certainly think they're educated.
And they're following
quite a bit of the university system what we call scientism
Right, scientism.
obviously is the belief in what's
what's written.
Where we tend to be exploring in the field with
physical properties.
Not theories of any kind we're using actual measurements
That are calculated not by our guidelines, but the guidelines of science as we know it
I can only hope they're uneducated as opposed to disingenuous
well
That's the other thing too because we know that
It was on a large scale the government has been disingenuous
and they're, they're pushing a narrative, right?
So it's, it's hard for us.
I mean, I'm sure that you've met people too
It's like look, are you just you haven't looked into it yet, or are you a shill?
Are you - Are you part of a disinformation campaign?
I don't think you guys are uneducated,
I think you're wrongly educated
I think the problem with
what I've seen in the Flat Earth crowd is that
it's not that they're under-educated, but they
Instead of looking at evidence and letting the evidence guide to where the ultimate conclusion is
They start with a conclusion
and then they try to cherry-pick evidence to support their pre-drawn conclusion
They cast away all the bits of evidence that actually is contrary to their beliefs
I think that you're very well educated as well as you are Jim
Certainly Ali is, he's probably got the best education of all of us
Exactly, and he paid for it, too.
But more and more
professionals are coming on board.
They're starting to question their reality
So the thing of it is is once you start to
really look
take a hard look at the evidence and you are
unafraid of just standing for the truth wherever that may lead you
then people end up becoming flat earthers.
I'm hoping to be able to tell
our side of the story from the inside out.
So many times
Flat earthers are depicted from the outside in and I want to be able to share with others
empirical data that proves the earth is not what we've been told.
So when I was 12 years old,
I went to Space Camp
and I met Alan B. Shepard, (Wendell: ohh, nice)
Yep, yep,
and I wanted to be an astronaut and I wanted
to be the first woman to walk the moon.
So for me, I'm a glober.
I went into this completely
wanting it to be true
and my husband told me he saw this thing about the fake moon landing.
And I was like, you're absolutely crazy.
There's no way that the moon landings are fake and then in 2010
My husband was killed and so I never really developed that until around
2014 when Flat Earth kind of came back up and that...sorry... and that little voice inside my head
Said: remember the fake moon landings, remember when?
That was brought to my attention
and then I started really critically analyzing that and I would say
You know just looking at that evidence if they can lie about the moon landings
They can certainly lie about pictures and satellites
and other things than so. I started going down that rabbit hole of
Studying so that was my influence from my husband.
How many lies does it take to make a liar, right?
And being ridiculed for being inquistive
Is pretty tough on us
I wouldn't say that I've changed my mind because my mind isn't set.
NASA is, is solely designed to change my mind
It is from its inception from its discovery has been a television program
It's been a space program to sell us
on something that they've yet to actually show us
Show me a globe spinning with clouds and a moon.
Show me home
And I think I could shut up quite easily
I think I could shut up.
The timing of your conversions is interesting to me.
20 years ago
the flat earth
world
was tiny and insignificant
Enter the advent of the internet - YouTube, online discussion groups, all these new
available places where you could find information about everything
This is true that
The evidences you looked were not robust evidence
and the sources you used
They were not reliable sources again.
But my problem is that,
and I like you guys that you are very skeptical,
but at the same time you're not skeptical about your belief system that should come first.
You think that that's my foundation for why I believe the earth is flat and I'm telling you you're wrong
I have evidence that proves it's flat.
What type of evidence?
That proves that's not a ball
We're being misled,
we're being deliberately less- misled by mainstream media,
No, what's your evidence?
We see too far.
We should not be able to see-
I live in Dana Point
Okay--
I can see San Clemente Island, which is 60 miles away
So what? (That is pretty high)
What do you mean "so what"? [Well, I'm on the beach] (It's 11 hundred feet tall) [I'm on the beach]
Can you see a ship which is going?
Oh yeah let's talk about the ship that goes over the curvature of the earth, I love that
Science has said that when I see a ship go out of my field of view
It's going over the curvature of the earth, correct?
Yes. SHELLEY: But then I bring my p900 up and guess what, I can zoom it back in
so is it going over the curvature of the earth or not?
Absolutely. Oh not all the time?
You don't see all the ship. The bottom part of the ship is hidden by the curvature.
At that distance you shouldn't see the top of it either.
If the earth were truly flat
There would be really hardly any limit,
you would be able to stand at the top of the Empire State Building and look toward Chicago
a mere thousand miles away, and see the lights of Chicago at night
No. Why wouldn't you? No because you have an atmospheric disturbance.
It's very thick.
I, I've been to astronomy since I was 10.
It's faulty logic. It's completely faulty logic
One of the big things I do is investigate
extraordinary claims like flat eartherism or
ESP or all sorts of different things
The earth is undoubtedly a globe and not flat.
This is well supported by gobs of science.
What is the question? I don't understand the question.
"Scientific consensus is possible"
Possible anything is possible.
I mean anything is possible
I've got a, I've got a tremendous issue
with consensus and peer review.
I've been spending a lot of time
Arguing the other, with people that argue the other side
And I found that surprisingly consensus always wins
it was shocking to me that the group with the majority has an incredible advantage
As scientists, flat-earthers, truthers, punks
We're at incredible disadvantage.
Let's talk about scientific consensus for a second
You're never going to get a hundred percent of anyone
There is scientific consensus on a global earth,
there's scientific consensus on evolution
A lot of big issues.
They use the word theory
Do you know what a theory in science is an extremely
Dan: And a fact is a fact
Don't mistake this word theory.
In science. It's not conjecture. It's an explanation
By definition it's an explanation
So this is something people maybe mistake they think theory is..
In science the word theory is the highest level that you can give something because it's so well supported
What about a fact?
That is a fact.
It's not a fact you would call it a fact.
You know, why? Do you know why?
Because in science, there's always room for improvement
There's always room to find better, to tweak, and find better information.
So that is how science works.
It gets better refined over time
as opposed to Flat Earth Theory
which never gets refined
it simply is what it is.
New ideas have limited access to media
And limited exposure until we're in US University curriculums.
We will continue to appear uneducated
Well, that's not true.
In the history of science we had many occasions that it, the ideas
It was not welcomed by the society
Iceland was one of them. Galileo. Galileo was one of them,
but if your theory is an authentic one and
It can be go through this hardship of scientific method
eventually, will win.
I used to believe that
Science was after the truth, right?
They just we all just want to know what the truth is
Science has been trying so hard to divorce itself from the idea of a creator
When God's intent was to create science to lead you to him, you know
Sometimes things seem supernatural that we are able to explain
later through, you know science
Okay, understand.
But there are other things as well that are supernatural,
that go beyond the natural, that we can always explain
Through believing in a creator, right?
This is my big issue with science
Scientific approach and non scientific approach.
You are absolutely right, in science
We are after the truth and we are hoping by each day
We're getting closer and closer to the truth.
We never get there, never.
Well, I know that's true for you.
No, no that's just science.
That's-- that's you guys,
you think you do have the truth
Now, let's look at the evidences as you were mentioning.
You do have the conclusion
Let's find the evidence.
This-- science doesn't work that way
That's not true. That is not true-
Well you're saying, you're referring to Jesus, who many
Billions of people do not believe, including myself.
And many more billions do.
So what? So who's right?
Of course I cannot-
When you say that
We start with a conclusion and then try to match everything to make it work,
like that to me is complete dishonesty
That is not true at all.
That is what you are doing right now
No, you're not
You're making that assumption. No it's not my assumption
So do you make assumptions or not?
Does science make assumptions?
No, we're sure
we do make assumption but based on things that are well supported and proven
and reproven.
Show me how you isolate gravity if gravity is an assumption, show me the scientific method
how you isolate gravity?
[inaudible]
I kind of feel like I want to develop some of this stuff a little bit more
It feels high-level, but I feel like there's so much
that I haven't really even touched base on.
Well, I mean I
Certainly didn't think that anybody was gonna the side was gonna flip.
Well, there's still time
There's still time I have hope for you Wendller and Shelley I don't know about Dan
But you know, it's certainly
I'm glad it's a civil discussion certainly oh, yeah
He flipped!
The greatest moment in television history
So, I mean,
obviously any organization can be wrong
with certain things and they
may have individuals
that lie or deceive
or something.
But as a general organization
They're looking for the truth.
Yeah, the idea that NASA and the government is lying to us about
the shape of the earth is
the height of
conspiracy theories.
In order
for this to be true,
the literally hundreds of
thousands of people who at some point
over the last
50 or 60, 60 years
would have to have to be somewhat complicit in this and
Nobody spills the beans at all is on the face of it
completely unbelievable.
The private does not know what the general is doing
There's compartmentalization happening all the time
(Of course)
So it wouldn't be that far-fetched
has the government ever lied to us is really the question at stake.
We all agree on that
Now we have nasa.gov
Right and we-
Oh absolutely they're not lying about anything
they're completely transparent everything is true.
We'd be foolish to think that's true
I'm sorry
This is a fallacy here.
I'm sure it is-
you were talking about the government.
Now you're talking about an
NASA-dot-GOV
But this agency is scrutinized
By thousands and thousands of scientists
around the globe.
You are dealing with smart people.
Believe me you are--
I don't deny that.
So it is very hard to do that once or twice. Maybe,
not for the whole time
What is the proof
hundreds and hundreds of pounds of moon rocks and dust,
and we have distributed those
freely to PhD scientists around the world
and not one of those geologists have said
What is this ??
They're proven to be fake
Collected on the ice in Antarctica and the Arctic as well
There's also collected that you don't have to go to the moon to get moon rocks as a matter of fact all
US Air Force photography prior to 1958
shows a Flat Earth only NASA shows us
That is not true, that is absloutely not true
NASA is lying to you my friend
Not myself.
We have a laser retroreflector
On the moon that we're using now
We still use to this day you it's sitting there you can find to the inch
How far away the moon is
No pictures of home.
That only is there but
My question to you is
Why? Why would all these honest hard-working people
perpetuate this massive fraud?
Why would they do this?
What's the benefit of it ?
The benefit of it they make fifty two million dollars a day.
Follow the money.
No, the little guy-- the little guy-
That's one thing.
When you say all--
It didn't start out that way,
and NASA I was not founded to proof the earth was a globe
it had nothing to do with the way they were found
Are you sure?
Yeah positive.
Really?
Yes
Somebody has to be a voice for reason and somebody has to be a voice for truth
It's it would be a fantasy to believe that I would change anybody's mind from the other three
However, if there's somebody sitting on the fence and this is the first introduction to this debate
Perhaps they'll hear the reasonable voice and say
that makes more sense than having this pizza shaped earth.
I used to be a ball Earther.
Everything you say
right now
is completely what I used to agree to.
So I completely understand where you're coming from
For me,
I think the the correct way to do any kind of
investigation or to examine things
is by literally putting yourself in that mindset of the other person.
So I do do that.
I disagree with your position,
but I completely understand from your perspective what you're saying.
The trouble I have
understanding your perspective is
in the modern world
unless you live in a cave somewhere you have to believe in science
implicitly.
I met a flat earther, a young woman who said
I don't trust anything that science does and
that's a problem because human beings can't replicate the whole body of science
every single generation.
At some point you have to trust
What's already been discovered and proven and move on to the next thing.
Otherwise, we're not going to advance at all.
I mean when you turn that key ignition in your car you expect the car to
start out and not blow up and not blow up because
Science put you in that position
So it's really hard to
understand how people
Would know in their hearts that science
Achieves wonderful things and then just
jumping ship when it comes to this other issue.
We're not drawing conclusions
We understand the mechanisms that made that car work
There is no theories and no
no disputed conclusions involved there.
It's not a good analogy
Can I admit a great compromise that we have to experience being against the grain people?
We have to literally sit in a group and decide whether or not we can afford to have an opinion
and that's-- that's tough.
Actually, I- I agree with you there because we're the same thing
I mean, I think skeptics go through this
and atheists go through this.
I don't believe in God.
When I'm around religious people
I take a chance
socially when I tell them I'm an atheist
so I know it takes some courage to follow your beliefs
and I appreciate that.
But I think I've done a lot of research in that
Venue too and it's not something I choose to believe in.
It's something I have to believe in based on the evidence.
See what I get from you guys is that seeing is believing.
So, how come you believe in God or Jesus? You haven't seen?
Neither of them right?
I've seen evidence though.
Well exactly. So we are looking for evidence
There are many many other evidences
For earth not being flat
My point is that these are these experiments
Clearly show that the earth is globe and you don't need to go outside the globe to see it's a globe
It's a conclusion. You told me you want the evidence.
if you're saying that you look only to see something
then I dispute your belief system in God and Jesus or
Jehovah or Buddha or Azeris Torah, or anyone.
You keep going back to religion as being our conclusion
Because it's coming from you-- You think you do have the truth
You quoted at the beginning of this, you quoted the Bible.
Of course I did,
but that is not the only reason I know what the shape of the earth is.
And you keep -- That's fallacy.
That's not fallacy.
Actually, it is not fallacy
It is a fallacy.
I'm a Theoretical physicist
What I'm doing is
the combination of string theory and cosmology.
So we try to understand what happened
during the Big Bang,
after the Big Bang
or even before the Big Bang.
Well, I hope I would be able particularly to the young generation
To convince them that first they should think critically and don't believe anything. They shouldn't take anything for granted
Look at the evidences and examine those evidences and
throw away
Those claims that are not evidenced base.
Science
not to put it down, but when you're talking about rocket science
This is very difficult for the majority of people to understand and it's designed that way and
So in a lot of ways
hiding behind
Rocket science is similar to religion if you look at the Catholic Church back in the days only we can interpret the Bible you have
To listen to what we say
So in a lot of ways
We're getting that same notion from science that says only we can interpret what these numbers are
You just need to trust us.
But then when we actually do go and test some of their equations and they don't work
Does that beg the question for us to go and test it ourself? Absolutely.
I would say, you know one great thing about science is its predictability.
Let's form some moment for a short moment assume that your model. This Flat Earth model is correct. I don't know
What does it buy for us? What does what does it predict for us?
So my question for you guys
would be
next time
Bring me something from your theory your model that you can predict something which the globe earth
Model cannot predict then I would change my mind
And we just say that don't believe
anything that I've said
You got to do your own research and I think what you'll find is that
You'll see that a puzzle piece doesn't fit and the only way you're going to do that is if you put your own eyeballs on it.
I don't blame people for being skeptical.
I'm skeptical about a lot of different things. I applaud that
instinct in you, but you have to go beyond just
Not believing in something, ask the hard questions
Ask what qualifies a YouTuber or a book author?
Anywhere else you're getting this information
What qualifies them to make wide-ranging?
Comments about the shape of the earth.
Look anybody who can overturn Einstein or some major theory is going to be eventually
written in the halls of science for the rest of their lives, but they have to come up with the goods they have to show
Good science-based evidence that what they say is true and they have to withstand
the test of time and peer review and the rigors of the scientific method.
Thank you guys for watching this episode of middle ground that's right
We know that one of the biggest requests we get is we just want longer episodes
We wanna know more about these stories. We want to hear more about the middle ground
So, we created a podcast called 'Radical Empathy' where we can do just that
Shelly from this episode actually sat down with me and we had a conversation
About her beliefs and how she came to be a flat earther. It's amazing
You have to listen to it, but don't just take our word for it. We're gonna play you a little sample right now. All right
This is John Regalado sitting with Shelly Lewis, and we are here to talk about
Beliefs.
Okay.
I have studied that the earth is flat. Mmm, and I've come to the conclusion that I agree with that;
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