Am I just prejudiced again a flat earth?

First, sometimes when I object to Flat Earth arguments, some people claim that I’m just expressing my fixed prejudices and indoctrinated beliefs. 

As it happens, I had a science teacher in school who put all sorts of arguments against a spherical Earth to us repeatedly and at great length. He got us arguing in our own time and racking our brains for arguments on both sides. It really made us think, and I took those ideas quite seriously.

So far from being indoctrinated, I was led to think for myself. That's in the spirit of science “take nobody’s word for it” (Nullius in verba)  as is written over the door of the oldest existing science organisation in the world, the Royal Society of London. “Check for yourself, experiment, reason, calculate”. That is science.

My father was a navigator in RAF Lancaster bombers in the 1940s, He was responsible for guiding the aircraft accurately round Europe and later around Africa. If the scientific understanding of the shape of there earth was false, he and the other six crew members with him would have been hopelessly lost, they would all have died and I wouldn’t be here now.

I’ve talked to people who have flown very high and seen the curvature of the Earth with their own eyes. Other people posting here have seen it for themselves. No indoctrination, no third hand arguments. Perhaps, as conspiracy theorist might claim, they were all lying?

But  you don't have to take anyone’s word for it - test it for yourself. Wherever possible, I’ve suggested ways that you can go out and test the question for yourself, with simple instruments ; a long stick, a protractor and a ticket to travel between two points about 200 miles apart, or a pair of binoculars. 

No indoctrination, no blindly believing authorities – see for yourself!

The Earth does curve, demonstrably and clearly! Test it out, people.  Nullius in verba.

(By the way, many of the arguments in Dubay's video is lifted uncritically straight from other believer sources from the 19th century. How’s that for indoctrination and taking other people’s word for it?)

Before we start reading the proofs, a few interesting issues.

It seems that even the Flat Earth Society think that Mr Dubay is an embarrassment to their cause, both from his bigotry and his lack of a clearly stated workable model for how the Earth/Moon/Sun/ Stars system works, for what actually produces the observable effect we attribute to gravity, and, well, anything, really.

He says he does have an explanation,, but we have to buy his book to read  it. No thanks. Scientists and other rational people don’t hold their most important ideas to ransom. (Flat Earth Society members also want nothing to do with Dubay’s “fascist” “racist” “irrational” views (their words, not mine)

So here’s the comical claim.  And I can’t believe it, but I find myself defending the relative rationality of the Flat Earth Society’s model against Mr Dubay’s even greater nonsense!

The Flat  Earth Society say there is no gravity, but the Earth accelerates upward (whatever that is without gravity) at the same rate that things appear to fall due to gravity. It presses up on our feet and if we fall, it comes up and hits us. That’s crazy, but at least it explains some the effects we see around us. Unlike Mr Dubay.

So what is his answer?

1.      The Flat Earth Society are just Freemasonry’s stooges. Very rational.

2.       “This ridiculous false flat-Earth argument also appears on Wikipedia and the FES homepage.  It is provably wrong as the "upwards accelerating disc" would smash into all helicopters, planes and hot-air balloons making sustained flight of any kind impossible, but they purposely promote these straw man arguments so flat Earth neophytes will rightly laugh off their dumb explanations, and then following suit, write off the entire subject.”  Thus spake Dubay.

I’m sure most readers saw instantly why that’s not just wrong, but comically so.

The whole point of the Flat Earth Society view is that the atmosphere must be accelerating upwards along with the solid earth, and at the same rate. If not, all the air would have streamed downwards off the sides of the disk, long ago.

In which case, helicopter and balloons would be in exactly the same state in relation to the ground in either the Flat earth Society’s view or the scientific view. As long as they have some lift, they are fine.

If you can’t see that, your powers of reason are as badly decayed as Dubay's seems to be and there’s no point discussing further.

And if you can see it , isn’t that one exchange enough to prove Dubay incapable of thinking logically at all?