Actually, I'm going to deny that.  Scientists have believed the earth was round for about as long as the scientific method--and hence, scientists, existed.  It was the religious leaders who aggressively promoted the earth as flat and the center of everything.  It's really not that different from the scientists-vs.-political lobbies nonsense we have now.

yeah, loads of scientists of those times were quite certain that the Earth was round, and that it revolved around stuff, but if they said so they were excommunicated (=exiled), tortured, burned, discredited ... anything you could think of to keep someone quiet.

if not for those few who dared stand their ground and face the religious, we might still be afraid of falling from the face of the Earth and even call someone who's grass is greener than ours a witch !

Tetley, post one link to one website that supports what you've just said.  Otherwise, you're once again making a claim without evidence to support it.

Wich thing that he just said must he support ?

The grass in Mecca and Jerusalem being greener ?

Scientists a few centuries ago knowing the Earth was round but being opressed and bullied by fanatics ?

Jungle lizard tastes like chicken ?

None of the above ?

(a cookie if you find wich of the above he didnt mention ^^ )

I am so bored im just writing stupid ans insane stuff ... were is a global thermo-nuclear bombardment when you need one ?

talk to Kyogre he will probably be able to help u

Don't worry, I'm working on it. I was just planning to wait until after Xmas, so no one's holidays are ruined.

I'll take that one for him.

Eratosthenes of Alexandria

Not only did Eratosthenes of Alexandria successfully argue for the Earth being round in or about 240 BC, he got an estimate that was, at most off by a factor of 16%, and with the reasonable assumption that, being in Egypt, he was using the Egyptian standard for a stadia, it was under 1% off.

The Flat earth theory was actually never as prevalent, even during the middle ages, as is often credited to them, although it's adherents during that period were primarily influenced by Biblical passages that presumed a flat earth, as are (in my experience) most flat earthers today.

You're also too lazy to google "Round Earth", which is all I needed to do (Well, I also clicked the link to open the wikipedia article, and then another one to read about Eratosthenes.). This is a somewhat laxer standard for lazy than "too lazy to do a whole research paper" - many people too lazy to do a whole research paper are not too lazy to google two words. Too lazy to use google is a 'special' kind of intellectual sloth.

Jonnan

Thank you Sole Soul, I'm glad I don't have to clarify that myself.  It gets tiring fending off people who do nothing more than nitpick minor details, like earlier.

I would think that people would know that to win a debate, you have to present your own evidence as well as discredit that of your opponent.  I commend you for presenting tons of irrelevant information though.

As for using websites instead of books and generally more authoritative sources, I am not willing to look through that much material to present a case.  Besides, I highly doubt that you would bother to get a hold of the books yourself to make sure that I wasn't just lying through my teeth, so from your position it should make sense for me to use the internet.  For the purposes of this debate, the internet is both more useful and convenient.

I will happily admit to a degree of "Someone is wrong on the Internet" in my make-up. I did read the rest, but I concede, somehow it didn't compute that anyone would have difficulty detecting the sarcasm in

Finding the sarcasm there as a subtlety that somehow doesn't translate over the internet is rather like claiming you can't really comment on whether Venus is hot without checking it yourself in person with a thermometer - after reminding the listener that the thermometer you sent last time had melted to goo and obviously no longer gave accurate readings. Accordingly, since Tetley had made a comment refuting his previous statement, and his sophist tendencies to demand more proof of basic things on other fronts made it seem quite reasonable that he was referring to that, perhaps you'll excuse my assumption of a logical cause and effect relationship between what IQ of Spam says and the posts he's replying to.

Yes, I know I should know better by now. And true, frontotemporal dementia explains much about IQ of Spam. Dementia in any case.

Jonnan

Of course you can help. Are you good with computers? If you are, I need you to hack the nuclear missile launch systems for every country that has them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_mythology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society

end of the world....   or end of humanity :/?  

rly the world will live,  so will humans btw, were not gonna get baked and even if this heatwave did show im sure the us would invest some serious money in making Bunkers     identical to those shown in Fallout    (hopefully we've got a G.E.C.K. to then (havent played that for a while, andnever botherd playing fallout 3 so not sure if i spelled G.E.C.K. right