I found this meme in two groups yesterday, by the same poster. I didn't check to see if he posted it in more places. Below is my response.
How to tell someone else has learned all their science from YouTube (even though that if they looked, they would also find videos explaining this there, too.
* They can't predict what the effects of Earth's rotation would be but they repeat "1000 MPH" instead of plugging that into the the formula for centripetal acceleration together with the radius of the Earth.
* They refuse not only to believe other's measurements of curvature, but refuse to try to measure it themselves. They will probably use an incorrect formula for how far an observer can see which does not take into account the height of the observer or observee. They may ignore that they cannot see the bottom of the observee. Or claim that a telescope can "bring it back".
* They use "perspective" as an all-purpose answer without knowing what it means.
* They don't understand aviation
* They don't understand how the distance to the Sun was measured. They certainly haven't tried to do it themselves. When asked how far it is, they will either refuse to commit to anything other than "local". They may show photos of crepuscular rays through clouds or ones that they claim show the Sun lower than clouds.
* They dismiss all photos from space are fake, whether from NASA or another source without explanation. They don't understand photography.
* The proofs have gone over their head, instead of asking for help to understand them (which they don't want, because their minds are already made up) they just say "no proof"
And one more:
* They respond with claims that anyone who disagrees with them is "indoctrinated", insults, meme dumps, laugh emojis, or simply don't respond.
Another day, another video by a flerf. This one was sent to me by someone who posts on Facebook under the name Sean Angelo Mchugh. Its name shows up on Facebook as "Nasatan exposed part 1". He also sent me a part 2, which may get its own post, and added "They are my videos so they don’t give opinions rather just raw facts" and went on to say that these facts are "all referenced".
Let's start by seeing if these are his videos. I didn't find any photos of him, just memes on his Facebook profile, but his About page on Facebook says that he works at ARTSTOPSeany and Sean Angelo Mchugh artist and both of those have photos of possibly the same person
The YouTube channel the video is on is called CUBESMASHER and the description on the channel's About page says "Exposing the lies of the luciferian Freemasons". There's no name, but the person speaking in the video is on screen most of the time, and this does seem to be the same person.
But back to Sean the flat-earther. Let's watch his video.
As I write this it's got ten likes and 377 views, so maybe all he wanted from me is more views. He's "absolutely gobsmacked" that anyone would believe NASA, who, he says have been repeatedly proven liars. On the screen is a quote from Albert Pike having something to do with Freemasonry. According to Wikipedia, Pike wrote a book, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in 1871. Flat-earthers and conspiracy theorists of all sorts often display a great deal of paranoia about Freemasons, I don't know why.
Anyway, he's got a quote that drones on for a while, but I think can be summed up in saying that high-ranking Freemasons are supposed to believe that Lucifer is god, but not tell the lower ranks. It's not found in the copy of the book at Project Gutenberg, however. His copy seems to come from Amazing Discoveries which looks like a site of more conspiracy theorists with a section on Prophecy News.
He moves on to Wernher von Braun. There's a photo of von Braun with Walt Disney, another 33rd degree Mason. Is that the only evidence he's bringing of either of them being Freemasons, that they are standing together? The photo is from when they met about Disney films on space exploration. Or is it that von Braun was a Nazi, Nazism is Satanism, Satanism is Freemasonry?
In an aside he says that we "lost the technology" to go back to the Moon. This is a standard flerf misinterpretation, we no longer build the rockets and spacecraft used in the Apollo missions. They think it's suspicious somehow. There's more technology on a phone today, he says - yes, but there's no Saturn V rocket at the bottom of it. He runs the clip of astronaut Don Petit saying "I'd go to the Moon in a nanosecond. The problem is we don't have the technology to do that anymore". As ever, flerfs suddenly trust NASA (remember the title of this video, NASA are liars?) when they say something they like. This is stuff I've seen in endless flerf videos, it's been dealt with. He changes the color and slows down Petit's voice as if that demonstrates anything.
Now he's back to von Braun and Disney, who he says are connected to Aleister Crowley. A quote from Gregory Garett says that Crowley, in addition to those two, was a member of "the NASA Dream Team". This should be good, seeing how Crowley died in 1947 and NASA was founded in 1958. There's a very small photo of the cover of a book in which it seems Garett wrote this, but it's too small to read.
He goes on to talk about Crowley and bands, The Beatles, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin. Loads of them, all satanic. He's done a previous video about that. Is Paul still dead? He doesn't say people are satanists if they aren't, it's all researched.
Oh wait, I figured out what this guy is doing, he's got a blurb about that book that mentions Crowley, but doesn't say he was a member of NASA. Is he saying he is? Or that someone else had some connection to him? I think this and all the other blurbs are part of Google search results.
Now he's talking about Jack Parsons, who was kicked out of Jet Propulsion Labs in 1944 due to following Crowley. And Parsons died in 1952, six years before NASA was founded. Another blurb from an also unnamed book by Gary Cartwright mentions, without context, Albert Einstein, Werher von Braun, Lyndon Johnson, Fidel Castro, Karl Marx, and Mao Zedong. I'm pretty sure that neither Castro, Marx, or Mao worked for NASA. I don't think he has any idea what he's even trying to insinuate here.
Now the blurb from the Parsons book is talking about "satanic-influenced mind-control experiment, supposedly run by the federal government" and then continues listing the names starting with Einstein. Now he's reading a quote about "not understanding oneness is satanic" and then there's an ellipses meaning text has been skipped over, and von Braun's name. He doesn't like evolution either and found another blurb mention evolution and von Braun. But all these blurbs say is that the same book discusses Crowley and NASA, or evolution and von Braun.
"They're laughing at you guys" - actually he's right here, he's hilarious.
NASA, he claims comes from a word "nasatan". Once again there's a small blurb from some book, but not an entire quote, so I have no idea what this word is or even in what language. And NASA means "to deceive" in Hebrew (no, it does not, he didn't prepare, but I already blogged about it). And the red part of the NASA logo looks like a snake's tongue. What research skilz! Repeating something every other flerf says.
Now he discusses "how many astronauts are masons" And it's another of those book blurbs. Which lists eight. Googling how many people have been in space, one finds numbers in the 500's or 600's. But it's worse, Lewis and Clark were masons! A photo of masonic emblems is I suppose intended to be scary as he reads a few more astronauts' names. Most of the Apollo astronauts were masons (no evidence of this presented).
There's an Orange Lodge where he lives, and the word orange, when you "put it through a numerical calculator" (he means some sort of Gematria) has a value of 33. It's the only color in the world that does that! And there are 33 degrees of Scottish Rite Masonry! And one third of the angels fell from heaven with Lucifer! Jesus died at age 33!
Buzz Aldrin took a Masonic flat to the Moon! And brought it back. Except he didn't go! Norman, coordinate!
Most famous people were masons. Area 51 - voice trails off. The (unnamed) head of NASA was "knocking around with Aleister Crowley". All famous songs are satanic. Masons are charitable because Satan gives them lots of money! He's getting bored. But he's still droning on. Freemasons freemasons freemasons. Charles Darwin was one. He wrote that people evolved from rock. His grandfather was, too. And half-wrote a book for him, all he had to do was go to the Galapagos Islands and look at some finches.
He doesn't watch TV, but he hears there's a series about Leonardo (da Vinchi) who was another one and "just propped up as this genius". And another Google search blurb says he was a freemason.
Now that we've established that all astronauts are masons (by finding partial quotes from books that say that some were, without seeing their evidence) And that masons are luciferians (with a quote from a paranoid website), if you disagree, please argue with him in the comments (all I see is one "really enjoy this" more comments from Craig McNeil from the FTFE channel on YouTube trying to set up a debate with him). He can keep going all day and there's another half hour of this.
French people are all masons. It all comes from there. And Scotland. The Jesuits are behind it. Please do not forget this.
Now he's going to show some clips where NASA admits they cannot leave low Earth orbit. But first, he's sorry that took so long. But he's going to repeat some of it again, after which it's going to become interesting. But not quite yet, he's going to compliment you for a while for watching this far. And tell you again that NASA lies, quod erat assertum. And rant a bit against theoretical physics, which means it isn't real.
Maybe we're getting near those clips, there's a diagram that correctly shows you that Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is indeed low. What a surprise! It shows the height of Yuri Gagarin's, Alan Shepard's and John Glenn's flights and the International Space Station (ISS) and Hubble Space Telescope. And the Moon is much further away (right again). So it looks like he's going to show some clips saying we currently have no spaceships for leaving LEO, therefore we never did, and never went to the Moon. But he's not going to tell us where to find these videos. Well no need, I'm sure everything on YouTube is as reliable as every book from which Google search can provide excerpts.
Well the first, from flat earth channel ODD TV, says, in that annoying slow playback that NASA has admitted that we can't go beyond LEO. Someone on the ISS says "right now we can only fly in earth orbit" (slow replay). Again, that doesn't mean we weren't able to during Apollo. This goes on for a while. It's just one repeated lie.
And the Buzz Aldrin cherry-pick. Aldrin was asked why we didn't go back to the Moon, and he's clearly explaining that we did go, but haven't been back. It's a longer excerpt than usual, so there are some new cherry-picks. He says that before Apollo, we hadn't sent people to the Moon. This is replayed in slow motion to give the impression that he's saying we never sent people to the Moon. Until today I had never watched this steaming pile of shit, but that is no longer true. Aldrin goes on to correctly describe how earlier Apollo missions first went around the Moon, and then practiced landing (Apollo 10 descended from lunar orbit but did not go all the way to the surface before returning to orbit). For no discernable reason "practice everything but landing" is repeated in slo-mo. And then Apollo 11 made an attempt (repeated in slo-mo) to land. And we did.
Maybe repeat that in slo-mo? Instead, a picutre of Aldrin making the "OK" sign over his eye. I think that this is supposed to be something masonic but he spares us that.
So if they haven't been to the Moon ... This is another standard flerf tactic, assume the result you want, and then make up reasons why "they" are lying about it. Oh, the "hide God" nonsense. Aldrin took Communion on the Moon. The read from Genesis on Apollo 8. If they're trying to hide God, they're really doing a terrible job of it.
But not everyone is in on the scam. The people making the parts are really doing that. Only the 33rd degree folks know this is cartoons for adults. Disney animators don't know, either (what they don't recognize their own work on TV?)
35 minutes in, he starts part three, where he's going to make the usual flerf lie that there are no real photos from space. And, this is another standard flerf tactic, ask why there isn't evidence, in this case a real-time video from launch to high enough orbit to show the whole globe. Which of course he would also reject as false.
And he then wants to zoom in on Australia and see people upside down. Has no idea what cameras are able to see at what distance. Maybe he'd also like NASA to read the license plate on his car and tell him where he left it.
NASA admits there are no real photos from space, says they have to be photoshopped. As "evidence" he shows yet another unsourced video about the 2002 "Blue Marble 2.0" image which is indeed a composite. And the video explains why this one image had to be photoshopped. But if something is called 2.0, there was probably a 1.0, and in this case that's the 1972 Blue Marble. And then there's the 1968 Earthrise, both of which were taken on film, using a camera.
He then takes a photo of a salt lamp, masks out all but a circle, and claims it looks like a planet.
But what about satellites? In September 2021 there were 4,550 satellites. Well, a screenshot is evidence, right? But he did by some chance land on something not made up by a fellow wongle, here. And he posts this.
Here's a map of Starbucks locations in Manhattan. Is much of the island covered completely with Starbucks? No, if the coffee shops were to scale, they would be hard to spot, on an island that is 13 miles wide at most. Same goes for satellites around a 7,917.5 mile planet.
Why don't they crash into one another, he asks? Why don't all those Starbucks merge into one giant one, with an exceedingly long line to get your coffee, but enough tables for everyone in the Tri-State area?
And 99% of the internet travels between continents via underwater cable. But did anyone tell him that all those satellites are for satellite internet? (What Is a Straw Man Argument?)
Satellites are not in space, they're on high altitude balloons. But I thought we could get into LEO? And then he says that some are in LEO, but only for the military (as usual, no evidence, not even a screenshot). And now, after saying there are some in space, he says there aren't any. There are no real pictures of satellites on the internet (he's lying). All satellite dishes point to the east (proof - one photo). Well it could be to the west, too. But never up.
NASA's livestream (I suppose from the ISS) is both made in a studio, but also never shows satellites. Well then why can't they bring a model of a satellite into the studio? And he lost the video, but he says he saw a hand adjust a lens from outside the ISS, and since he's presented no evidence up to now, why should he suddenly start? And there are bees in space (bits of debris, that don't look like bees at all). The internet has pulled all this down, well isn't that convenient? You won't find these videos (but somehow his video of these supposed bees is still there). There are bubbles in space (Eric Dubay lie #163). Astronauts are on harnesses, which he talks about while not showing you. Things disappear (because videos are shortened or frames get dropped)
Rockets don't go straight up, they are going into the ocean (no). The Red Hot Chili Peppers sung that the Moon landings were faked in a Hollywood studio (the actual lyric is “Space may be the final frontier but it’s made in a Hollywood basement” which isn't terrible from memory but can't he look shit up before lying about it?) And they're Satanists. And why are they telling you what you think is the truth? Because "it's part of their decree to tell the people what they're actually doing" (huh?)
Conclusion: this is all the usual flerf lies, misunderstandings, cherry-picking, and paranoia. He's discovered not one thing himself, every bit of this has been posted by other flerfs, some of which got enough views to make money, unlike him. And he thinks he's done research.
It's a standard flat-earth claim that rainbows are semicircles because the dome that they think is above the flat Earth is a hemisphere. In fact, rainbows are circular, but the bottom is only seen at high altitudes. See How to see a full circle rainbow, from which this photo is taken.
But I found someone on Facebook who seemed to be making an additional claim that double rainbows are the result of "The sun and the moon and the stars are set in the second firmament. What you see is the reflection\projection of them" and when I asked where he got it from, he posted this image of Hebrew quote. Only a bit more back and forth did he ask if I understand Hebrew (fortunately I do)
I was too busy to read it then, he identified it as coming from Bereshit Rabbah, I only replied that it is not a physics textbook. Tonight, I posted a longer response, which I'm slightly changing here because Blogger has more formatting options than Facebook. for example you can only have one image per post or comment and hyperlinks are harder to enter.
Only an עם הארץ (ignoramus) quotes a source without a מראה מקום (precise reference, how this is done varies depending on the source, in Midrash Rabba, of which Bereshit Rabbah is one, it's generally by chapter and paragraph). I don't know why you post images of text instead of text. Just in case you think it makes it hard to find the source that way, it doesn't, all I had to do was right-click, search in Google Lens, select some text, and found it Bereshit Rabbah 6:6 Of if you prefer your text vocalized, here
So let's see what it says. I'm working from the second copy and not comparing to see if there are variant readings, Sefaria doesn't have English translation for this yet, so I'm doing it myself.
In what sphere are the Sun and Moon located? In the second רקיע (the Hebrew word translated as "firmament" or "expanse" or just "sky". As it is written (Gen 1:17) "And God set them in the expanse of the sky ..." (Rashi, explains this to mean the expanse above the sky)
I'm going to paraphrase to attempt to make it a bit clearer, a similar derivation is made from (Nechemia 9:6) "... You (God) made the heavens and the heavens above the heavens, and all their hosts ..." and again, reading this as that there are at least two layers of heavens and the "hosts", e.g. the stars, are in the second one.
And from the Earth to the expanse is a journey of 500 years, and the thickness of the expanse is another 500 years, and from one expanse to the next is one more 500 years. None of the commentaries at Sefaria explain this distance, but I read it as, the distance it would take to walk (or perhaps ride) in 500 years,
How far is that? Well there's a unit of distance in Jewish law called a parsa (unrelated to parsec), whose name comes from the Persian parasang. Herodotus (source in link about parasang) said that an army could travel five parasangs per day and it's believed to be between 3 and 3.5 miles. In Jewish law it's 8,000 cubits (about 2-2/3 miles) and an average person can travel that far in 72 minutes. Well maybe an army moves slower than a pedestrian, or stops more often.
So let's say our traveler walks for 720*8 minutes or 9.6 hours a day, using 3 miles per parasang, that's 21.36 miles. Let's give our traveler a lunch break and round that to 20 miles. Note that I'm assuming that the 500 year journey is made of days' journeys and not how far a person could travel if they never stop. So 20 * 365 * 500 is 3.650,000 miles. And we need to triple it to get to the second expanse.
That's a bit of a problem for FE's "local" Sun and Moon. In reality, the Moon is an average of an average of 238,855 miles away and for the Sun it's 93 million.
Well back to the Midrash, on the first day of Tekufat Tammuz, the summer solstice, nothing has a shadow, as it is written (Psalm 19:7) and nothing is hidden from His Sun. This is true at noon on either Equinox and is dangerously close to how Eratosthenes measured the size of the globe.
And the sphere of the Sun has a sheath, as it is written (Psalm 19:5, four verses after the one on Werner von Braun's tombstone) "... He placed in them (the heavens) a tent for the Sun". And a channel of water is before it, when it goes forth, the Holy One blessed be He reduces its strength with water so that it does not burn the world, but in the future He will remove it from its sheath and burn the wicked as it is written (Malachai 3:19) "... and He will burn them, on the coming day".
I once saw, in a program of short Israeli animations, a Claymation where a rabbi was explaining this verse from a podium, adding a commentary that this will not hurt the righteous, and then the camera pans to the audience, who are all melting.
There is then a debate about the nature of Hell, is it only what will happen on that day, is it a place that already exists, or does fire emerge from the corpses of the wicked and burn them (rather than an external source)
The passage ends saying that had God placed the sun in the first heaven, no one would be able to withstand the heat of the day.
The same guy also provided another image, this time from a commentary, the Or Hachaim. This time it almost gives a reference, Verse 20.
Well I didn't need Google Lens for this one, it was obviously on Gen 1:20 (but only because that's the first chapter in the Bible, it's either laziness, or an attempt to make it hard to verify, to not put the full reference when quoting something), and this time Sefaria has translated it into English, so I'll just post the relevant parts of their translation.
It's about the creation of "birds that fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky" and this commentary explains that the odd wording "expanse of the sky" by referring to the previously discussed midrash. What's even the point? If you take Midrash literally (which according to Maimonides makes you a fool), how does it contribute that a commentary quoted the Midrash? Either you already believed it, or you didn't, but how does source 2 quoting source 1 help?
I asked him if his own private Torah study convinced him of FE, or he was taught it in a religious framework (yeshiva, shul, etc.) he ignored my question and just kept sending me more religious sources. Eventually he sent me a list of flat-earth videos in Hebrew, but it's still not clear if this is in answer to that question or he just did a search for "flat earth" in Hebrew on YouTube. I may watch and discuss them later. Meanwhile I'm just adding them to a private playlist (Flerf rabbis) and translating the titles.
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6QMHif7LlE The Flat Earth - a photo of Mount Hermon from the Dead Sea, nothing is = hidden = no curvature, no sphere by Rabbi Chen Shaulov part 2 (this one is from Shaulov's own channel)
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kaZv64ueXQ And what is the connection between Jesus, Martin Luther, René Descartes, Copernicus and flat earth? (this is by Rabbi Dov Berkovits)
In #4 and #5, the rabbi is referred to as "the gaon". In Modern Hebrew, this word means "genius" and comes from a Biblical root meaning "pride". Classically, it was used to refer to the heads of the two major yeshivas in Babylonia in the post-Talmudic period, Wikipedia says between 589–1040, and more recently was used to refer to a small number of exceptional figures such as The Vilna Gaon. More recently just about any rabbi can be called "gaon" and the title has been rendered meaningless.
And then there's this image that he posted.
At the bottom of the image are the words "Daat - Emet". And a search for the text, finds that it comes from a website by that name. Unfortunately for him, going to the homepage reveals that this is "the movement for liberation from religion". Oops.
