Bill Nye Sucks at History of Ideas ...

Bill Nye Sucks at History of Ideas ... · And Bill Nye Sucks at History of the Earth and Universe - He Doesn't Read the Bible (or Believe It)

Hey Bill Nye, "How Do We Know the Earth Is Round?" #TuesdaysWithBill | Big Think
24th May 2016 | Big Think
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oz7k7Wn_vo

I

2:00 No one could afford to fake that much documentation ... bad argument.

I agree the earth is round, but this is a bad argument.

If NASA wanted to fake sth, they would have resources. I do not think they do, bit if they did, they would have resources.

And here is why I don't think they want to : on abiogenesis, they made an absurd claim, for cell membranes to have started out in a kind of soapy material and not phospholipids. I and Jonathan Sarfati both went against it, and the absurd article was taken down. Shows they have some honesty and decency ....

II

2:59 And here Bill Nye confuses Copernicus with Magellan.

If Copernicus repeated arguments already used by others in his book, that doesn't make it his discovery. However, Magellan did discover places showing Earth is a complete globe, not a "chapati pan" shaped object (rounded, but with an edge).

III

3:23 Here Bill Nye first of all confuses Aristotle with all of the Ancient Greeks.

No, the atheist guys Democritus, Epicure and Lucrece (one Roman in the end) weren't good at astronomy at all.

Second, this is Aristotle's weakest argument (the one he enumerated as 3:rd). Indian / Hindoo flat earthers consider the shadow - both type of eclipses! - is cast by the planet "Raku" which comes up above the rim when Sun and Moon line up on one side or around Earth, and otherwise remains invisible below the rim.

The good arguments : 1) ships seen from the shore get visible with sails first, meaning the waters are bent; 2) sun casts shadows of different angle on same day depending on place (measured by Eratosthenes, I think after Aristotle), but these two while excluding an entirely flat earth don't per se exclude the chapati pan.

So, Aristotle's strongest argument (until it was shown false) was 4) a pseudo-Magellan. When you cross the Ganghes, you arrive at Gibraltar. At least that is what Alexander and himself concluded, probably by having bad details on exactly how Gibraltar looks. Then the pseudo-Magellan with "Gibraltar east of Ganghes" was debunked (probably the distances for this didn't match up with the curvature of earth as measured by Eratosthenes, for one, unless one supposed N-S was the long axis of an American Football shaped object, which is exotic), and we had to wait for Magalhães to give the real version : knowing one can sail from Spain to Cape Horn westward, and arrive across Pacific still going westward to Indian Ocean and then still westward to Cape of Good Hope and that's just south of Spain, yeah, the globe shape is complete, and it roughly matches Eratosthenes' measures of the curvature.

4:02 Actually, the Hindoos believe Raku is a ball. So the shadow being circular from all directions doesn't necessarily prove it's earth that's a globe.

Those who still believe that are of course, erroneously, dismissing Magellan because he's Portuguese and Catholic.

IV

5:00 Navigating with merchandise actually counts as commerce. Sure, some science is involved.

And you still haven't mentioned Magellan ....