Flat Earth vs. the Geocentric Model

How it ran

1. 8:03Host explains the format
2. 9:11Subirats' opening statement
3. 19:49Sungenis opening statement
4. 30:43Sungenis presents the geocentric model
5. 36:41Subirats' rebuttal
6. 42:20Sungenis rebuttal
7. 48:48Subirats' second rebuttal
8. 56:15Open discussion
9. 1:24:36Best piece of evidence from each side
10. 1:36:58Questions from the live chat
11. 1:54:54Sungenis wrap-up

The key exchanges

Antonio Subirats's point first, then Robert's answer. The time jumps to that moment in the video.

1. 42:20

   1. Isaiah 40:22 and up

   Subirats argues that Isaiah 40:22 has God looking down from on high, and that up is not the same as far away, since there is no up in space.

   Robert answered that it is a moving Earth that loses any real up or down, which is the postulate of modern science. A fixed Earth gives real directions, which is part of why he holds it.

   “If the earth is fixed, that means we have direction, we have an up, we have a down, we have a east, we have a west.”

2. 43:36

   2. The saints rising, Matthew 27

   Subirats argues that Matthew 27:52 to 53, where the bodies of the saints rise from their graves, is plainly a story, so an authority resting on that book cannot dictate the shape of the Earth.

   Robert answered that rejecting that passage means rejecting the resurrection at the end of time and every other passage too. He added that Subirats then used Jesus overturning the money changers' tables against the Church, picking and choosing which parts of the Bible to accept.

   “It's either all true or it's all false, there is no in-between ground.”

3. 44:36

   3. Abuse and Church authority

   Subirats argues that the Church's cover-up of abusive priests shows it has no moral standing to rule on the shape of the Earth, and that Jesus would raze the Vatican as He cleared the temple.

   Robert answered that this is an ad hominem argument: he condemns the abusers himself, but a few rotten apples do not make the whole basket rotten or the Church's teaching false.

   “So that's another logical fallacy that you had, it's basically saying that a part is bad so that means the whole thing is bad.”

4. 45:37

   4. Was Babylon flat earth?

   Subirats argues that flat earth thinking is not a nineteenth century invention, since the Babylonians drew the zodiac as a circle on a flat plane some five thousand years before the Greeks.

   Robert answered that liberal scholars read a flat Earth into Mesopotamian texts from metaphorical statements, and that the scholar Horowitz, working through that literature including Gilgamesh, found passages about a spherical Earth that had been overlooked. He said the aim of the flat reading is to make Genesis look like a primitive copy.

   “As far as the flat earth being five thousand years old, that's another fallacy, and that's why I wrote this book.”

5. 1:04:53

   5. Lost records and legends

   Subirats argues that the ancient builders of Central America, the Maori and others kept oral traditions of multiple suns and of people coming from and leaving to the south, and that the Church destroyed their written knowledge.

   Robert answered that none of these cultures is recorded as saying the Earth was flat, while written history from Gilgamesh through the Greeks, Ptolemy and the medieval globe iconography speaks of a sphere. Assuming lost documents taught a flat Earth begs the question.

   “Did these pagan peoples believe the earth was flat? We have no way of knowing that.”

6. 1:07:00

   6. Flood stories worldwide

   Subirats argues that deluge stories and legends of gods from the sea appear in cultures across the world, older than the Bible and independent of it.

   Robert answered that the universal flood stories come from the survivors of a real deluge, and that the Hebrew account preserves what their ancestors experienced, with the memory passing to surrounding cultures as far as China.

   “What they don't want to do is say that the Hebrews wrote about it because their ancestors experienced the deluge.”

7. 1:22:02

   7. Molten iron and magnetism

   Subirats argues that molten iron loses its magnetism, so the globe model's account of the geomagnetism that moves compasses fails, and by Feynman's maxim the theory should be dropped.

   Robert answered that he never claimed a molten iron core drives the field: there are about a dozen theories and nobody really knows, and iron is also in the mantle. He said the source of magnetism does not decide whether the Earth is flat or spherical.

   “There's about a dozen theories how magnetism is created around the earth, nobody really knows.”

8. 1:26:46

   8. Gyroscopes show no drift

   Subirats offers as his best evidence that mechanical gyroscopes do not show the drift a rotating Earth would produce, and that Foucault's original gyroscope result has never been repeated.

   Robert answered that a non-rotating Earth fits his own model too, and that the forces seen on Earth come from a rotating universe, which produces the same Coriolis and centrifugal forces over a sphere or a plane. He rejected Subirats' account of day and night as gels of different viscosity as a declaration without evidence.

   “It doesn't make any difference whether that rotating universe is going around a spherical object or a flat object, you're going to have Coriolis and centrifugal forces.”

9. 1:35:45

   9. Composite satellite photos

   Subirats argues that globe photos show duplicated cloud patterns and that a NASA graphic artist has explained how he created them, while the lack of a flat photo proves nothing.

   Robert answered that an artist painting images of the Earth does not make real satellite photos fake, and that low satellites photograph the Earth in strips, so NASA fills the gaps to make a whole picture and has never hidden it.

   “NASA has already explained why sometimes they have to put clouds in pictures to complete the picture.”