147) “The ball-Earth model claims the Sun is precisely 400 times larger than the Moon and 400 times further away from Earth making them “falsely” appear exactly the same size. Once again, the ball model asks us to accept as coincidence something that cannot be explained other than by natural design. The Sun and the Moon occupy the same amount of space in the sky and have been measured with sextants to be of equal size and equal distance, so claiming otherwise is against our eyes, experience, experiments and common sense.”

Here Mr Dubay seems to claim that coincidences can never happen in nature. I wonder why we have the idea or word ‘coincidence’ then, if they never happen. And why can “the coincidence of size and distance only be explained by natural design” (whatever that last phrase means)? Don’t just claim it, give reasons.

It is actually a coincidence in time, too. The moon was closer to the Earth millions of years ago, and will be further away millions of years in the future. It’s only in the present period, on that timescale, that the Sun and Moon happen to be the same size.

Measuring angles is irrelevant. Nobody denies that they appear to be the same size. The question is, are they really?

There are ways to measure and demonstrate the Sun and moon’s distances.

The sun’s distance:

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/41-our-solar-system/the-earth/orbit/87-how-do-you-measure-the-distance-between-earth-and-the-sun-intermediate

http://www.universetoday.com/117843/how-did-we-find-the-distance-to-the-sun/

http://www.badastronomy.com/mad/1996/au.html

The moon’s distance

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-measure-the-distance-to-the-moon-using-trig.html

http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/gkastr1.html

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5688939/how-to-measure-the-distance-from-the-earth-to-the-moon