121) “When you observe the Sun and Moon you see two equally-sized equidistant circles tracing similar paths at similar speeds around a flat, stationary Earth. The “experts” at NASA, however, claim your common sense every day experience is false on all counts! To begin with, they say the Earth is not flat but a big ball; not stationary but spinning around 19 miles per second; they say the Sun does not revolve around the Earth as it appears, but Earth revolves around the Sun; the Moon, on the other hand, does revolve around the Earth, though not East to West as it appears, rather West to East; and the Sun is actually 400 times larger than the Moon and 400 times farther away! You can clearly see they are the same size and distance, you can see the Earth is flat, you can feel the Earth is stationary, but according to the gospel of modern astronomy, you are wrong and a simpleton worthy of endless ridicule if you dare to trust your own eyes and experience.”

Well, this is certainly a simpleton argument. It’s another one based on the principle that “everything is always exactly how it seems; our eyes never deceive us, there are no optical illusions or misperceptions.”

If I look out of the window now, I can see a car parked across the road. If I lift my hand, I can cover the car completely. Further down the road is another car. Strangely, even though it is the same model as the first, it looks much smaller. Why, I can cover it with my thumb! It must be really tiny.

And why should you feel the Earth move? I know you argued elsewhere that you can always feel a car moving, even on a good road. But the Earth isn’t running on any road at all. There are no bumps or rough patches in space; no road is ever as smooth and even as the virtual emptiness of space. 

And the Earth is never jolted sideways , nor does it suddenly take a left turn, or break, or accelerate. It moves evenly and smoothly in orbit, balanced between the gravitational pull of (mainly) the sun and its own inertia, neither of which change significantly. So what could possibly cause a bump, a rattle or a lurch that we might feel?

Remember, we don’t actually feel movement as such; we feel changes in the direction or speed of our movement.

When we feel motion, it is because there are tiny hairlike sensor in out semicircular canal  in our inner ears, immersed in fluid. When the fluid is jiggled, the hairs pick up the motion and transmit a signal to out brains, so that we feel the sensation of a change in the direction or rate of movement.  But the earth never changes direction or jolts , so what is there to feel?

Anticipating a misunderstanding: yes, the path of the earth is a curve (an ellipse –nearly but not quite a circle). But that won’t give the sensation of “turning a corner. The orbit of the earth is as it is precisely because it is an exact balance between the gravitational attraction of the sun and the outward effect of ‘centrifugal force (actually inertia. And the strength of both of these is constant over time, so there is no change for your inner ear to sense.

And by the way, what is this obsession with NASA, as if that was the only organisation in the world that contradicts your nonsense? There are a number of others space agencies, there are hundreds of universities, and observatories, and amateur astronomers and people like and private space companies and organisations and so on…

Two random people's vacation photo,
taken from google images.

The following from Daimonie is quite amusing:

You can clearly see they are the same size and distance, you can see the Earth is flat, you can feel the Earth is stationary, but according to the gospel of modern astronomy, you are wrong and a simpleton worthy of endless ridicule if you dare to trust your own eyes and experience.

I went to Google, and I did something extremely fancy. I googled for photo giza. Do you believe this couple is as large as the Pyramids of Giza?

You don't? Why not? Because your experience tells you that your eyes are wrong because far away things tend to look smaller.

You are worthy of endless ridicule if you keep an idea when it is so very, very clearly refuted by common sense, daily experience, high school level physics (and beyond), and so on. You literally have the option of looking at a photograph of the Earth. But no, an elaborate conspiracy involving basically everyone that doesn't believe you has to be present because you want to trust your  eyes and lack of experience. Well, you can do that; just don't expect us to join you.