Is the earth flat or round ?

The Flat earth vs Round earth:

If I had to say in one sentence, the most valuable thing I learned in this period is “Truth is a well-accepted belief”.

The reason I accepted the above quote was my encounter with a person who believes the earth is flat. I recently found out his weird belief and the sad thing is, he is also my close relative. Sounds hilarious, doesn’t it?. In today’s era, some people still believe in the flat earth theory. Heck, there are entire communities of them. How stupid?






One might assume, If there were a debate between a flat earther and a normal person, the normal person would bombard that dimwit with all the facts of this world. Right? Wrong. I made such an assumption and went on to argue with him, only to find myself utterly humiliated.

When I first found out that he believed such a thing, I thought he had gone astray from the path of truth. So I considered myself responsible for enlightening him. Then with a hope to be his saviour and win his appraisal, I started poking his belief.

I asked him,” why does he believe such bullshit; there is plenty of evidence that earth is a sphere?”

He said," As I look around, all I see is a flat plane."

To prove him, I took out my phone and searched “earth” on google. Then I showed him the picture.

He also took out his phone and searched “flat earth”, and showed me the image.

I told him to read the blogs and articles that say flat earth is a hoax. Then He took out his phone. There was a saved article in his drive which had described the details of the flat earth.

I told him,” Your article is clearly wrong. He asked," what makes your articles more valid than mine? Aren’t they all written by other people whom you don’t know about?"






To further prove my point, I said, ``Come with me. I can go to hundreds of people and they will all say the earth is round. They will call you stupid for saying the earth is flat."

He replied, “I also have tens of people who believe the earth is flat and mock you for preaching otherwise.”

Now, I was losing the battle which I had thought to be a child’s play. I was losing more ideas to present to him.

He was calm, confident, and acted like he had done this debate with hundreds of people. His face revealed he knew my every move. While I was oblivious to his intentions.

I told him to look at the curvature of the horizon. He told me “When I go to the horizon and look, all I see is the flat earth.”

I said," The same physics which proves the earth is round, run our TV, mobile phone, watch and everything else". He again replied," Can you prove it to me?"

I thought I could prove it to him, only to realize I did not know how to. It quickly became clear that I was not prepared for this battle. He dominated me very easily.

In further debate, no matter what attack I threw at him, he always had his magical mirror, which reflected my attacks right back at me. And all I could do was try to avoid his attacks.



Then, I threw my last arrow.” So many people here believe that the earth is round. Why would you think otherwise?.” And his conclusive answer was,” Christianity has 2 billion believers and “Rastafari” has 0.6 million believers. Does that mean Christianity is more right than Rastafari? If more people believe it, it’s genuine; otherwise, it is false?”




This was his best attack, and I had no means to counter it. It made me helpless. To please my ego and gain a sense of triumph, I wanted to bring my friends to mock him and his beliefs. But the futility of my action was clear.

I had always known the earth to be round but never cared to experiment with it. We were both the same; living and believing our beliefs. We never cared to come out of our self-made cocoon and look at the world unbiased. We both forced our perceptions to define the objective reality of this world.

In my later contemplation, I realized that the debate was less about the truth than about proving one’s superiority. We both were trying to show our dominance. Accepting each other’s words meant a hurt to our ego.

After a small fight with my angel and demon sitting on my shoulders, I came to my conclusion," would my life have been miserable if someone else preferred to believe the earth is flat? If I made him believe the earth is round, would that improve my life? Never. Then why argue? Let him believe what he wants and let me secure my peace of mind.”



By consoling myself with those words, I didn’t have to accept my defeat. My ego is also happy. I felt like I just realized a profound truth of this universe, “Truth is a well-accepted belief." In my subsequent debate, I always used this sentence as my last resort and it saved me every time.