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"Foundation of the World" Dispensationalist χρ
It is ALL connected---we KNOW that.
The earth is flat and we never went to the moon--Part II
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Sorry for the confusion on this earlier post. I mixed up bulge height as a rise in height when I should have described it as a drop in height. But, as you will see getting the bulge right is important. I have made a number of word revisions and added more commentary on what the "bulge" is to clear up any misunderstanding.
Earth's Curve Horizon, Bulge, and Drop
If you put 3 miles distance and 6 feet for viewer on the chart at this website you will get this:
View attachment 26536
Go to the interactive illustration on this site and drag the blue dot on the curved earth (it will probably have the word "Hidden" in red to the left of it) right on top of the X marked as "Horizon" and the word hidden will disappear. This is the bases for my argument that follows.
On the interactive illustration at Metabunk the earth "bulge" is located in relation to "eye level", and "surface level". Eye level is looking straight forward parallel to the ground as if the surface level is flat and not curved. The bulge of the earth is below the surface level of the curved earth. For a viewer with his eye at 6 feet above the ground the horizon is 3 miles away. At the three mile distance to the horizon, eye level remains 6 feet above the flat surface level. The flat surface level is 6 feet above the horizon point of the curved earth 3 miles away. So, from my eye to the actual horizon point, is a 12 foot drop.
1. Eye level---------------6 foot above surface
2. Surface level---------0
3. Horizon point--------6 foot below surface
A 6 foot drop from eye to surface level plus a 6 foot drop from surface level to horizon point equals 12 feet. So, though it may seem that we are looking straight ahead at the horizon we are actually looking down on a curved earth with a 12 foot drop from my eye to the horizon. But the author of the video says the change in "vertical height" from where we stand at 6 feet on a beach looking three miles to the horizon is a 1.5 feet drop.
How can there be a vertical drop of only 1.5 feet when there is an actual drop of 6 feet from surface level and a 12 foot drop from eye level?
According to the interactive illustration from the Metabunk website, the "bulge" is determined by drawing a line from the point on the surface where we are standing to the horizon. The bulge height is calculated from this imaginary straight line that runs under the actual curved earth surface. The bulge height of 1.5 feet is the distance from the imaginary line up to the actual earth surface midway between the viewer and a 3 mile horizon. It seems this 1.5 foot bulge is used to determine "the change in vertical height", (the distance in drop at three miles distance from viewer) that the author in the video refers to. Which makes no sense.
But there is another bulge point (not mentioned in the Metabunk site) created "at" the three mile horizon, but that is a bulge half way between a 6 mile distance. As ships sail past the three mile horizon they begin to gradually sink below this bulge until they are entirely hidden from view 6 miles away.
So, we have two different points we call "bulge", one is a midway point, 1.5 miles, between the point where we are standing at 6 feet to the horizon three miles away, and the other is the horizon itself, the midway point from where we are standing at 6 feet to a point six miles away where anything under 6 feet in height becomes entirely hidden
So, saying there is only a 1.5 foot drop in a three mile horizon is inaccurate and misleading. There would be an actual 6 foot drop on a curved earth at 3 miles from where we stand plus 6 more feet from eye height. Where as a 1.5 foot drop three miles away would be unnoticable a 12 foot drop would be.
This is where I see the failure of globe model in respect to the horizon.
--Dave
Earth's Curve Horizon, Bulge, and Drop
If you put 3 miles distance and 6 feet for viewer on the chart at this website you will get this:
View attachment 26536
Go to the interactive illustration on this site and drag the blue dot on the curved earth (it will probably have the word "Hidden" in red to the left of it) right on top of the X marked as "Horizon" and the word hidden will disappear. This is the bases for my argument that follows.
On the interactive illustration at Metabunk the earth "bulge" is located in relation to "eye level", and "surface level". Eye level is looking straight forward parallel to the ground as if the surface level is flat and not curved. The bulge of the earth is below the surface level of the curved earth. For a viewer with his eye at 6 feet above the ground the horizon is 3 miles away. At the three mile distance to the horizon, eye level remains 6 feet above the flat surface level. The flat surface level is 6 feet above the horizon point of the curved earth 3 miles away. So, from my eye to the actual horizon point, is a 12 foot drop.
1. Eye level---------------6 foot above surface
2. Surface level---------0
3. Horizon point--------6 foot below surface
A 6 foot drop from eye to surface level plus a 6 foot drop from surface level to horizon point equals 12 feet. So, though it may seem that we are looking straight ahead at the horizon we are actually looking down on a curved earth with a 12 foot drop from my eye to the horizon. But the author of the video says the change in "vertical height" from where we stand at 6 feet on a beach looking three miles to the horizon is a 1.5 feet drop.
How can there be a vertical drop of only 1.5 feet when there is an actual drop of 6 feet from surface level and a 12 foot drop from eye level?
According to the interactive illustration from the Metabunk website, the "bulge" is determined by drawing a line from the point on the surface where we are standing to the horizon. The bulge height is calculated from this imaginary straight line that runs under the actual curved earth surface. The bulge height of 1.5 feet is the distance from the imaginary line up to the actual earth surface midway between the viewer and a 3 mile horizon. It seems this 1.5 foot bulge is used to determine "the change in vertical height", (the distance in drop at three miles distance from viewer) that the author in the video refers to. Which makes no sense.
But there is another bulge point (not mentioned in the Metabunk site) created "at" the three mile horizon, but that is a bulge half way between a 6 mile distance. As ships sail past the three mile horizon they begin to gradually sink below this bulge until they are entirely hidden from view 6 miles away.
So, we have two different points we call "bulge", one is a midway point, 1.5 miles, between the point where we are standing at 6 feet to the horizon three miles away, and the other is the horizon itself, the midway point from where we are standing at 6 feet to a point six miles away where anything under 6 feet in height becomes entirely hidden
So, saying there is only a 1.5 foot drop in a three mile horizon is inaccurate and misleading. There would be an actual 6 foot drop on a curved earth at 3 miles from where we stand plus 6 more feet from eye height. Where as a 1.5 foot drop three miles away would be unnoticable a 12 foot drop would be.
This is where I see the failure of globe model in respect to the horizon.
--Dave
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You're still misunderstanding the bulge, Dave. There is no 12 feet. The error you're making has to do with the way the site is drawing the triangle.
The distance in the interactive part of that site is not "a line from the point on the surface where we are standing to the horizon". In fact, that distance can be very much past the horizon.
The way that site has it drawn works but it's confusing for our purposes because it would make more sense to define the distance as the tangential line from the surface where you're standing to a point directly "above" (i.e. at 90° too) the visual target (i.e. what the site refers to as the "surface level"). In effect, the site has the triangle flipped over and they're using the hypotenuse of the right triangle at the distance rather than using the "surface level". It still works because the pertinent information is the angle the two line make, which they are calling the "view angle" which is the same either way regardless of which way your flip the triangle. By their calculation, this angle is .04°.
I would dispute the accuracy of that .04° figure but it doesn't matter. I've done some more research and there is some dispute about the resolution of the human eye. To be conservative and to make this as hard on my side as I can, I'll use Wikipedia's number and say that people with good vision can see something with an angular size as small as .02°.
That means that even using this sites larger number, the horizon drop would be only just barely detectable by someone with excellent vision on a globe with no atmosphere to distort the horizon. In the real world with the atmosphere of the real Earth, there's no way that any person is going to detect such a small drop without using some precision equipment and even then only under the most perfect of conditions.
And so, as I said in my last post, as far as we can visually see, the horizon is dead straight in front of our eyes, even though, in actual fact, it is VERY SLIGHTLY below our line of sight.
Clete
Thanks for a great response. Do you think these figures below from the Metabunk site are correct or not?
It seems to me that seeing the horizon is seeing the curve, or the beginning of it. And that would mean we are looking at the bulge. Everything in front of this bulge is in view and everything beyond it gradually becomes hidden.
Now is this correct or not?
According to the author of the video I posted a 6 foot drop becomes a 1.5 foot drop, which makes no sense. Who wouldn't be confused?
Even though seeing the slight drop is almost impossible to see apparently seeing ships go over the horizon / bulge is not. That will be next.
--Dave
If you don't know the calculation then there is no way you can form a convincing argument. Learn some basic geometry and figure out the angle one has to look down to see the horizon. It is very simple math so give it a go. Because even on a flat Earth, one must look down to see the horizon.
Perspective does not explain a sun setting behind a horizon nor how we observe sunsets. Your hypothesis does not match observable facts and is, therefore, wrong.
Atmospheric density does not explain anything. Density varies as a function of altitude and hi and low pressure system. Please explain what function atmospheric density serves.
Your notions regarding horizon refraction have been shown to be in error by several persons on this thread so again, your hypothesis is wrong.
Well, it's in the Religion forum and I think it kinda fits there but I suppose it also could have gone in "The Rest".
How does it fit? That's my question.
DFT Dave, Patrick, and STP believe God created the world flat and we are all at the center of God's creation. They also believe that the devil is responsible for the lie that is the spherical earth.
So to them this issue is as much about religion as anything else.
I know that the drop is six feet at three miles but I dispute the .04° figure because a right triangle with one side being 72 inches and the long side opposite the hypotenuse being 15800 feet yields and angle opposite the 72 inch side of .0261° not .04°.
As for the bulge, it is only relevant past the horizon and only then if you are trying to calculate how much of the object is hidden below the horizon.
Yes, that sounds correct.
I agree.
Quite so. You can see ships disappear behind the horizon. Under normal conditions the ship (or land mass or whatever) is seen to drop behind the horizon in a manner that is completely consistent with what one would intuitively expect. The object is hidden from the bottom up just as if it were going over a hill and disappearing down the opposite side. The times when this perception is altered is when there is some atmospheric effect on the path of the light on it's way to your eyes, which we've already discussed at length.
The important point here is that, because the Earth is so large, the small section of it that we can see with our eyes (a circle with a three mile radius) is practically flat and the horizon drop is too small at that distance to detect by the normal person under normal circumstances.
Just to give you an idea of how small something is that has an angular size of .04° (again using the larger figure for argument's sake), a tennis ball at 298 feet, (99.3 yards) away would have an angular size of .04°. A 1/4 inch ball bearing held at arm's length (3 feet away) is just over ten times that angular size!
Incidentally, if we use the real number, which is .0261° the tennis ball would need to be 548 feet (182.6 yards) away and the 1/4 inch ball bearing at three feet away would have an angular size 15 times that of the horizon drop.
Clete
P.S. I wanted to mention that my last post could have actually added to the confusion because I stated that the website was flipping the triangle over, which is not the case. They have the triangle situated just fine, they just have the terms flipped. The hypotenuse, it seems to me, should not be the "distance" figure because the calculation to determine the drop is not based on the length of the hypotenuse but rather the side opposite the hypotenuse and thus it is that side that would rightly be referred to as the "distance". Again, it doesn't really matter so long as one keeps it straight in their head because the real pertinent figure for this particular discussion has to do with the angle the two line make, which is the same regardless of what you call them or which way the triangle is situated.
View attachment 26537
P.S.S. The angle calculation of .0261° is approximate. Before I was getting .0217° and now I'm getting .0261°. I'm sure I've changed the inputs somehow but the point is that it's really really tiny and about half of the .04° that the other site is reporting probably because they are failing to realize that the horizon drop would only be 1/2 of the angular size of an object at that distance. (see above image)
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No, Dave believes there are good arguments for both flat a globe earth.
I am arguing on behalf of flat earth to see if it will hold up in a good debate.
The Bible clearly supports flat earth, but one can argue there are verses that can be used to support a globe. I'm not so sure that's the case but I can't say it's not either. That the moon turns red, which it literally can, and the stars will fall from heaven in the book of Revelation can't be interpreted one as literal and the other as not literal, that's not good exegesis.
--Dave
I reject every premise of the above quoted comment.
The Bible does not make any sort of argument that the Earth is flat. It discusses the Earth in terms that are consistent with out every day experience, which, as we've just been discussing, is practically flat, but the Bible makes no cosmological claim of a flat Earth in the sense that the idiotic Flat Earth Theory means it. If it did, the Bible would be falsified and our faith along with it by something as mundane as the Pythagorean Theorem.
In regards to when the Bible discusses stars, it's often quite difficult to tell for certain whether it's referring the points of light in the sky or to angels or to both. The vagueness is consistent enough to allow one to confidently conclude that it is intentional.
And, attempting to understand the Bible from a purely natural standpoint is an inherent self-contradiction. When God turns the Moon red, maybe it's talking about the visual effects that occur during a lunar eclipse but maybe it's talking about something a lot more supernatural than that. You sound like the ding-bats who think the story about the parting of the Red Sea wasn't actually about the Red Sea and was caused by a rare but entirely natural weather event. Maybe God will actually turn the Moon red just like He actually did split the Red Sea.
And whether one is literal and the other not is not a matter of interpretation but of reality. If God chooses to knock out some of the stars from the sky, in what way is that easier for God to accomplish if the stars are or are not far away suns? If, on the other hand, God isn't talking about the points of light in the sky but is using figurative language to refer to angels in heaven, how is our interpretation to the contrary going to change that? Maybe it's better to let the Bible simply say what it says and not worry so much about PRECISELY what it means until we see it happen.
Clete
From my quote from Metabunk,
Horizon = 3 Miles (15838 Feet)
Bulge = 1.5 Feet (18 Inches)
Drop = 6 Feet (72.02 Inches)
Hidden= 0 Feet (0 Inches)
Horizon Dip = 0.043 Degrees
Clete says "I know that the drop is six feet at three miles but I dispute the .04° figure because a right triangle with one side being 72 inches and the long side opposite the hypotenuse being 15800 feet yields and angle opposite the 72 inch side of .0261° not .04° (horizon dip)."
It's also been stated many times from many others, perhaps even yourself, that because of the "scale" of the earth, the horizon dip is so slight that it cannot be seen, which is why many think they are seeing the horizon at eye level and not actually looking ever so slightly downward.
But, if I and others maintain that we personally observe the horizon at eye level and we are not looking slightly down at it and if you maintain that the downward look is so slight that we don't realize it then I ask you, and everyone else, how do you "prove" or know this downward look, be it .02 or .04 degrees, is occurring?
--Dave
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Did the "Spirit of God move" over the face of the waters or did the "waters move" under the Spirit of God?
Did the sun literally stand still at Joshua's command or did the earth literally stop spinning?
--Dave
I wouldn't be dogmatic either way. In any case, neither of those things require or even imply a flat Earth cosmology.
There is insufficient visual evidence to prove it either way but visual evidence is not the only evidence, as this thread has demonstrated 14,542,718 times.
Those who believe in a spinning globe simply can't take these verses literally. The grammar is clear and the scripture throughout says the sun moves across the sky. God made the sun and moon stand still not the earth.
Isaiah 40:22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
This verse describes a "circular" flat earth covered by a "tent" like dome that God sits above.
There is a different word in Hebrew for ball than the one used for circle in Isaiah.
Isaiah 22:17 Behold, the LORD is about to hurl you headlong, O man. And He is about to grasp you firmly 18 And roll you tightly like a ball, To be cast into a vast country;
--Dave
The declination angle is: arctan(6/15838) = -0.0217 degrees. You cannot mix inches and feet as you did, they must be the same units.
The main problem that you have is that you are ignoring that on a flat Earth, you must also look down to seen the horizon. On a flat Earth the surface never rises. If it rises, then you live in a bowl. And if you live in a bowl, the surface only rises if you are looking outward. If you look inward, then the surface falls away. On a flat Earth, when you look out, your line of site would be parallel to the surface and, as I hope you know, parallel lines never meet.
The point is that whether the Earth is round our flat, you must look slightly down to see the horizon but our eye are incapable of detecting the angle because it is so small. You must also consider the field of vision our eyes take in as we can see the horizon in peripheral vision even when looking slightly up.
In in the end, attempting use your claim that the horizon rises to eye level is an error. If you look directly at the horizon on a disk or a globe, you must look down. If you were to look perfectly level out, you would still see the horizon because the human eye has a wide field of view. The conclusion is that the horizon is not a convincing argument for flat Earth.
But you do need to deal with the issue of how a sun tracing a circle above a disk sets below a horizon from the bottom up.
Thanks for a good reply.
I've been working on understanding the degree of angle.
I went to the arctan calculator as you pointed out.
6 feet (viewing height) divided by 15838 feet (distance to horizon) = 0.00037883571
I went to another calculator to enter the input value and get the result in radian and degree.
0.00037883571 = 0.0217 degrees
So why does the Metabunk site say the Horizon Dip = 0.043 degrees and not 0.0217?
The surface on earth (flat or curved) is not said to actually gradually rise but only appears to do so to our eye level because of perspective. I totally agree that if the angle of declination is only .02 degrees over 3 miles then no one can really notice that. A 1.5 foot drop is also not noticeable as the author of the video states.
In my next post I'll focus on "scale". I'll use the Metabunk site as the basis for my graph. If I have the figures and angles correct my graph to scale will be very interesting.
--Dave
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