How old is the Earth?

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

Hahahaha. I am seriously starting to worry about you. My whole point of the "Earth's Circumfrence" argument was to point out how small of an observable area you would have compared to the whole Earth's Circumfrence when compared to 100 years to 4.5 billion years. This shows how it would be impossible to conclude how far around the Earth is if you were only able to observe a tiny section of the Earth, (remember observing the sun is violating my initial premise since it is outside of your observable area). Then you go off on some crazy tangent about how you can actually measure the Earth's circumfrence using a yardstick. However, this was completely dishonest because the experiment actually uses the sun, not just a yardstick. It also uses loads of previous tested knowledge about the Earth's shape and it's relationship to the sun. This knowledge could not have been gathered by observing your tiny allowed area, so it can then in turn not be used in the experiment. So this experiment has nothing to do with my original point. You are given a linear image of 3.5 inches of the Earth's surface. Can you use this image, and only this image to tell me how big the Earth is? No of course you can't. To think, you get on me for deviating from the discussion at hand, pullease.

As I recall, the 'moving the goalpost' fallacy involves just what you are doing here because this is the first mention that the Sun is off-limits to measuring the circumferance of the earth given that the Sun is visible everywhere on the planet - including the observable area restriction you have given me.
Further, even if the sun is out of the observable area, the light it generates and the angle of that light is not.
As such, the experiment is still valid, but even without it, I can still easily calculate the circumferance of the planet by getting a bigger pole, measuring the distance to the horizon (best done on the ocean, and using that math to calculate the curvature of the planet and thus its circumferance using geometry... again.
Granted that's a larger area than the arbitrary limitation you've given me... but again... moving the goalposts. Plus, the original statement you made regarding why it was impossible didn't involve a mere 3.5 inches anyway - you merely stated that it was impossible without a large view of the planet, which I have proven with two easy experiments.