If the boot were on the other foot, certain parties would be saying 'get over it!'
Speculation to NO end, apart from an academic interest.
A waste of time ....

No. And what would YOU or the rest be able to do about it if you did know 'the truth'? It'd just be a hollow moral victory for time wasted apparently 'educating' yourselves for something which, in the grand scheme of things, means absolutely bugger all.

Odd thread. It should probably be pointed out that the idea that people until recently believed the earth was flat is one of those daft factoids that's virtually got the status of an urban myth.

And here is the contradiction. I mean, it's completely irrational to waste endless bandwidth arguing about THE shape of the earth when you know it's indefinable (and this is just using Euclidean geometry). It doesn't matter how "close" something is to spherical - it's not. If someone paid you in monopoly money I doubt you would let them off because "it's closer to real money than rocks". In the same way as the actual reasons for going into Iraq are important. They're about as important issues as you can get in my opinion. They're about our entire way of life.

Which is why I don't believe every conspiracy that's floated but nor do I automatically discredit such thoughts.

We know governments do secret things and can pull off secretive events. We know that the media is corrupt, in the sense of it doesn't just present with unbiased facts and information. It puts its own slant on it and selects facts and information it likes and ignores facts and information it doesn't like.

So I don't blindly trust official sources of the media any more than I would trust Flat Stanley. They're both bullsh|tters.
I look at a situation and decide whether it adds up. I try and find the other side of the story. I urge people to watch RT news channel occasionally, especially at the moment with the confrontation with the Russians. Again, don't believe it anymore or less than you would Sky News or the BBC, but it presents a different side to issues and often information that isn't presented to you by the regular media.
Look at all sides, look at as much evidence and information as possible and then think about it for a while.

In the case of JFK anyone who does that HAS to come to the conclusion that SOMETHING is wrong, even if you don't agree with various theories about it.
The same goes for me with 9/11 and at least parts of Sandy Hook though I've only seen bits on that so far.

I'm struggling to think of 2 bigger events since the end of the 2nd World War than JFK and 9/11. They both radically changed the world we live in both in a macro and micro sense. If, if it turns out those 2 events aren't how we've been told, then I think that's very very important and very relevant to myself and my family.'"

Who says they need to do anything beyond look after themselves? If the three million or so German Jews knew "the truth" about Hitler's intentions beforehand rather than taking the advice of bitter and twisted cynics such as yourself do you think one or two more might have been able to "do" something?

I don't even know why I'm wasting my time here.

And there we have it. Another victory for Godwin's law.

The key point about Flat Stanley and his ilk is not just his delusional flat earth stuff. He actually seems to believe that the whole of science is bogus, there is no universe, there are no planets, let alone astronauts or space stations or craft sent by humans to explore other worlds. There are no GPS satellites, there is no South Pole - there is just a great ice wall beyond which it is (for unexplained reasons) impossible to pass. In this mindset, it is easily possible to dismiss entirely out of hand the hundreds of thousands of professional and amateur scientists and astronomers who have produced innumerable works and, in recent times, the literally millions of images from all around the Universe, as some great NASA hoax and conspiracy. They are all either part of the conspiracy, or ellse, "sheeple" (yes, he really does use that term), or "indoctrinated".

I find it strange to come across, in the 21st century, an apparently quite intelligent, quite literate person, who yet is so utterly delusional in the face of an almost infinite avalanche of fact and evidence. I mean, just take the current space mission of Tim Peake, for instance. This, and the coverage, involves scientists and ground stations around the globe, and tens of thousands of people, particularly at ESA, and of course the Russians who currently have the only means of transport to/from ISS, and who would, presumably, like nothing better than to show up NASA as fakers yet are perfectly amicable collaborators in the venture.

What I find weird is that you will actually find YouTube videos by just the same crew which post footage from the ISS with optical anomalies and say it is "proof" that alien craft surround the ISS and Earth, and that NASA deletes/blocks the footage to keep the existence of aliens from us. So, we have a non-existent ISS, which nevertheless does produce genuine images from its non-existent orbit of real alien craft.

And Stanley would see no issue with that.

The terrorism in Paris is seen in this light. Stanley just loves the phrase "false flag". The trouble is, sitting in his bunker doing nothing but watch dodgy videos by some real lunatics whom he hero-worships, he feels able to pontificate that Paris was a "false flag" - in other words, Islamist fundies did not slaughter the poor kids at the Bataclan - presumably the French did, as part of the New World Order or whatever it is. How offensive these knee-jerk false-flaggers' ramblings are to the parents and families of the victims, I can't even begin to imagine.

Good points.

I've often wondered what framework they employ to ensure that their 'evidence' can be tested, verified, and hold-up to scrutiny. They obviously don't employ the scientific method, which is really the only feasible way to try and understand anything. If they did we wouldn't be having this discussion. It's quite alarming to see how ever more complex their ideas have to be to try and fit evidence around an idea rather than let the evidence lead them to a conclusion. There are similarities between creationists and Falt-earthers in this respect. They have to invent complex realities to stop the foundations of their belief from crumbling. When it becomes too much of a struggle, they simply ignore it.

Hence you get Flat earth which has to lead to NASA hiding things to Governments covering things up then onto elaborate reasons for them to do so. Etc etc. It becomes exhausting as someone looking in to see how far the story has to bend to keep it intact. They don't seem to be aware of how ridiculous the idea has to be to be true. I suppose they are invested in their idea to the point that they simply can't sit back and look at it reasonably and rationally, which is dodgy ground when you are trying to formulate proof of a concept. The scientific method avoids this trap through peer review and the fact that everyone is free to test an idea and prove it wrong, and is encouraged to do so. Conspiracy theorists and flat-earthers struggle with this process because they themselves don't have that rigorous platform to try and test and disprove their own ideas before letting the rest of the public test it. They throw an idea out based around what 'evidence' they can find to fit instead of sitting on the fence and testing it themselves. When problems occur they become defensive and have to invent yet more reasons why other people don't see things the way they do.

Since this topic started I've been accused of being a shill and having multiple accounts to discredit. I've become a conspiracy theory of my own. I wish I was a shill, the extra income would be very welcome this time of year!

It does tell you a lot about the psyche of those people who peddle this stuff though.

Heliocentric nonsense.

Flat Stanley doesn't believe half the things he says. I would have thought some of the smarter people in this thread would have figured this out by now.

I guess I overestimated their intelligence.

Nasa did with their CGI blue marble 1.5185546875:5