123. Imprecise, unknown or revised astronomic figures means that the science cannot be trusted

"Heliocentrists’ astronomical figures always sound perfectly precise, but they have historically been notorious for regularly and drastically changing them to suit their various models. For instance, in his time Copernicus calculated the Sun’s distance from Earth to be 3,391,200 miles. The next century Johannes Kepler decided it was actually 12,376,800 miles away. Issac Newton once said, “It matters not whether we reckon it 28 or 54 million miles distant for either would do just as well!  How scientific!? Benjamin Martin calculated between 81 and 82 million miles, Thomas Dilworth claimed 93,726,900 miles, John Hind stated positively 95,298,260 miles, Benjamin Gould said more than 96 million miles, and Christian Mayer thought it was more than 104 million! Flat-Earthers throughout the ages, conversely, have used sextants and plane trigonometry to make such calculations and found the Sun and Moon both to be only about 32 miles in diameter and less than a few thousand miles from Earth."

It is called scientific method

Dubay finds fault with scientists retesting, improving their experiments and improving the accuracy of their measurements over time.  He presumably prefers to decide what answer he wants beforehand and then to bend the facts to give that answer and to ignore anything that brings the required answer into question.  No wonder their original estimates do not change.   That is not a good thing.

Science always accepts that it may be wrong and that future experiments may contradict the currently accepted truth.  This has led to fantastic progress over the last few hundred years and given us modern medicine, computers, air travel, radio, TV, the internet, space travel and much much more.

Presumably Dubay would have more respect for science if after Copernicus scientists had decided that they knew everything that they needed to and then proceeded to close their eyes, stick their fingers in their ears and shout lalalala.

As an aside I am amazed that Dubay can make this point when flat earthers are so  vague in all their measurements.

Here is an extract from a Flat Earth web site https://www.tfes.org/

"The distance to the sun and the celestial bodies has been in some contention over the years. In Chapter 5 of Earth Not a Globe Samuel Birley Rowbotham computes the sun to be less than 700 miles above surface of the earth, and the stars contained within 1000 miles. Later researchers have estimated the sun to be at about 3000 miles above the surface of the earth, with the stars at about 100 miles above that. However, the exact methodology of that later research in regards to how the angles were determined has been lost over time."

< Prev    121-130   Next >