The Earth exists as an oblate spheroid

One of Con's images may or may not be appearing appropriately for all users. Con requested that I posted a link to it in this round. Here is the link: https://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov... "NASA says so” is a persuasive argument, it isn’t fallacious, and I stand by it. An appeal to authority frequently isn’t a fallacious form of argument. This page explains what’s going on rather well: http://www.iep.utm.edu... You appeal to authority if you back up your reasoning by saying that it is supported by what some authority says on the subject. Most reasoning of this kind is not fallacious, and much of our knowledge properly comes from listening to authorities. However, appealing to authority as a reason to believe something is fallacious whenever the authority appealed to is not really an authority in this particular subject, when the authority cannot be trusted to tell the truth, when authorities disagree on this subject (except for the occasional lone wolf), when the reasoner misquotes the authority, and so forth. Although spotting a fallacious appeal to authority often requires some background knowledge about the subject or the authority, in brief it can be said that it is fallacious to accept the words of a supposed authority when we should be suspicious of the authority's words. NASA is an authority on this particular subject. NASA can be trusted to tell the truth about this subject. There is no significant disagreement among the experts on this subject. I did not misquote NASA. NASA has no reason to lie about this. There is no reason to be suspicious of NASA’s claims. Con compares my reasoning to drawing the conclusion that cheese pizza is the best because Obama says so. This comparison is inapt because Obama is not an authority on that particular subject, among other reasons. Con then goes on to discuss the climatic heating, but I didn’t talk about this when I was making my case. All I said was that “NASA says so” to support my contention that the shape of the earth is spherical. I then linked to a NASA article. The title of the article is “The Spherical Shape of the Earth” and the first words from the article are “Because the Earth is a sphere”. The purpose of the linked article was to demonstrate that NASA says that the earth is spherical. In any case, Con shows an animation depicting the sun, perhaps as some alternative explanation for day/night cycles or climactic heating. The explanation is ridiculous. The proposed movement of the sun and the moon violate Newton’s first law of motion. http://csep10.phys.utk.edu... They keep going in circles without any proferred explanation for their constant change in direction. Second, Con’s proposed shapes of the continents are not consistent with observation, particularly Antarctica and Australia. In his images, Antarctica goes around the entire earth and Australia is flat as a pancake, but actual images taken of Antarctica and Australia by the Galileo space probe show Con’s proposed shape of these continents to be false – Image source: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov... Third, there have been scores of expeditions to the South Pole and journeys across the Antarctic continent dating back to the 1500s, but nobody has ever found the edge of the earth as it’s depicted in Con’s images. They are listed in this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org... Con goes on to assert that my images and videos are fakes. Con has no reasonable basis for these assertions. Mere speculation that evidence might be doctored is argumentatively insufficient to impeach it. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Con provides a link to an image that he asserts is of the Milky Way galaxy - http://dockastronomy.wikispaces.com... Con is mistaken. It isn’t a picture of the Milky Way galaxy. It’s a picture of the Andromeda galaxy that, for some reason, has been labeled as milkyway.jpg. You can tell that the galaxies are the same because of the shared locations of bright clusters of stars. Second image source and association with Andromeda galaxy here: http://apod.nasa.gov... Con then leads in to a discussion regarding the radii figures I grabbed from NASA. Con’s second drawing doesn’t depict a radius. Rather, Con’s second image depicts the diameter of the smaller circle. I’m not quite sure what Con is trying to show with these drawings. Con again attacks the appeal to authority argument, but without good cause. Con argues that I have appealed to an improper authority (“This is comparable to a very credible heart surgeon telling you about the economy”). This isn’t the case. An astronomer is an appropriate authority for the subject at hand – The shape of the earth. The earth is a celestial body, and the shape of it is within the scope of the science. Con doesn’t appreciate the significance of the study regarding lightning strike data. The study showed that if the computer programs assumed the earth was an oblate spheroid as opposed to a perfect sphere, then the accuracy of the lightning strike data would be increased. If the earth was perfectly spherical, but not oblate, then this wouldn’t be the case. That was the purpose of the evidence.