Inside a Flat Earth convention, where nearly everyone believes Earth isn't round

[Music] we'll start with some basic questions the sky is in a world where it feels like nothing is as it seems blue it's blue of course oh this guy's blue skies blue one plus one is two two - hmm there's at least one truth we thought was indisputable and the earth is what flood the earth is flat my reality of my senses tell me that the earth is flat and stationary or so I thought but for the people attending the first Flat Earth international conference here in Cary North Carolina their earth is indisputably not round everybody here can agree on absolutely one thing which is it is not a globe for centuries a flat earth was accepted as certainty until science and sailboats said otherwise but in 2015 this guy mark Sargent hosted his Flat Earth Clues part of a series of clues that can help you get your head around both the design of the Flat Earth system we live in you're kind of the like father of this did not invent Flat Earth all I did was walk up to a door point at it say you know what I think there's some really interesting things on the other side of this and check it out for yourself if Flat Earth is a university you know FAA then I would be the freshman recruited people have traveled from around actually mark would say across the flat world to attend the first world flat Club is you don't talk about flat Club until now you know I have a poem about that it's right here Amy Nicholson wrote a book of poetry about her flat earth journey a few months flat and seven months to rally Kimberly came to the conference from Houston I haven't really come out all the way I'm still a little in the closet laney in ivali came from even farther I mixed with quite a lot of flavor tha's anise in New Zealand you know flatters I guarantee it but you don't know who they are because they're afraid of talking about it like many modern movement this one has grown in large part out of the internet with rappers like odd TV evangelizing to hundreds of thousands of subscribers and YouTube channels like blow Buster's encouraging skepticism about what you've been taught for the serious students here at the conference it all comes down to proof when it comes to science there's things you can test right now right fire burns waters wet drop something Falls the ground that appears to be gravity those are things you can test right but the curving horizon the sloping sea level the spin of the earth unless you can see these phenomena with your own eyes they may not be true this is crazy right but think about this for the last 2025 generations this is what we've told people I like what we've been told in school some flat earthers imagine the earth looks like a snow globe round but not sphere the North Pole is at the center of most Flat Earth maps with the ice of Antarctica holding everything in so are you certain this is pretty sure almost I mean there are some details to be worked out sure but the basic concept is sound absolutely sound and one thing again we absolutely know for a fact this ain't it so those iconic Blue Marble images seen from space flat earthers denounced them as fakes you start seeing words like composite or animation or you know something that tells you this is not an actual photograph of the earth so if you think you have questions feel free to line up a statement the flat earthers have men many more this is what returns stores which is why I thought someone who's actually seen the Earth from space might have some answers one plus one is two what color is the sky and the earth is round professor Mike Massimino spent more than twenty days in space and worked on the Hubble telescope so when you looked at the planet what did it look like looks round yes it is round like my eye witness account and I looked at it as much as I could it is round okay we're in the final countdown are you doing over there he's played himself on the Big Bang Theory but some flat earthers actually believe astronauts are just actors part of a huge conspiracy going back to those very first steps on the moon you don't believe in going to space knew no no at all the Rockets go up sure there's nobody in them Rob Skiba is another one of the celebrity contrarians in the Flat Earth movement his popular YouTube videos and podcasts take clues from the Bible's Book of Genesis there's no way you can get a spinning heliocentric globe out of anything in the Bible are you just skeptical with everything I have become skeptical at everything and I think rightfully so pretty much everyone here those kind of a conspiracy theorists say that's a common trait but I think there's a little bit of conspiracy theorists in all of us I really do this it's why many of them do their own experiments Darryl marble packed a level on a flight to test if the plane was flying parallel to a flat earth so there's gonna be some sciency people who say that is a real bug low experience that's a little basic I know it's so simple it'll go right over your head the Creed over many of these believers check it out for yourself go out and test you just want them to ask the questions why do you believe what you believe and let you go from there because I can tell you something that then you just look at me and say I'm crazy a lot of people watching this will go me like that man is crazy they probably do and and I would say well they're crazy for not testing what they think they believe but in a world of disagreements large and small for something as clear as this horizon the interpretation could be infinite for Nightline I mean a pilgrim in Cary North Carolina hi everyone George Stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the ABC News youtube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our Channel and don't forget to download the ABC News app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching

Channel: ABC News

Views: 2,994,886

Rating: 4.0525861 out of 5

Keywords: Flat, Earth, International, Conference, educational, seminar, about, our, planet, support, theory, that, is, flat, nasa, space, technology, abc, abcnews

Id: 1gHbwT_R9t0

Length: 7min 6sec (426 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 27 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Arid36]

If the Earth WAS actually flat these are the same people who would tell you it was round.

[u/brtt3000]

I'm fascinated by Flat Earth as a social phenomenon. The denial of science and common sense is both amazing and harmful but I don't even want to know who either believes, trolls or just profits because any ratio would be bad.

Wonder how long till it gets politicized with all the post truth shit that is going on. Maybe it is a psyops operation by foreign power, running manipulation test or something, that would be a good story.

[u/UppityRedneck]

What I want to know is WHY they think the globe is a conspiracy? What would the point be? What do they think the government has to gain by telling people the earth is round vs flat? People are free to travel the earth as they see fit so if the earth were truly flat, some private citizens would be able to figure that our relatively easily and I haven't heard of anyone hitting the ice wall and saying "holy shit this is the edge of the earth".

[u/Mu4dD1b]

I thought of a test they could complete on their own. They seem to have enough members around the world to verify. Is the sun visible from everywhere at the same time? No, then were is it when you can't see it? Do they think the sun actually goes behind the disc? Or does it rotate around the edge. In either one of these scenarios it wouldn't hold up to actual intelligence.

[u/MessageInAButthole]

It struck me when the guy started talking about the compatibility of a round earth with the Bible that perhaps the the flat-earth movement has less to do with science denial directly and more to do with the feeling that modern science doesn't provide for any personal significance in our lives. For much the same reason the early church rejected a lot of scientific ideas about Earth and its place in the cosmos, people want to believe the earth is flat because it gives a unique significance to it rather than it just being yet another planet floating through a meaningless void.

I mean, you've got a guy taking a level onto a plane, you aren't going to bring any flat-earthers over to your side with logical scientific arguments. Until we can understand each other and our inner motivations better, we aren't going to be able to come to any sort of agreement and will just be building up more walls and resentments. If people didn't feel so alienated and alone in the world, perhaps they would stop looking for conspiracies to try to make sense of why they feel the way they do. Trying to make them look stupid (no matter how naive their understanding might be) is not going to help heal this divide, but will only make it worse.

[u/Contradiction11]

Fuck it, who wants to go in on making crystal healing necklaces and following these conventions around making BANK?

[u/bigboyg]

Rather than trying to understand why these people want to believe such nonsense, it's far easier than to posit that they don't exist. There are no flat-earthers. Everyone at that convention is an Illuminati plant.

[u/HeloRising]

Did they get attendees from all around the globe?

[u/SparkyPantsMcGee]

Want to break a flat earther? Ask them what other planets look like.