When a photo of spherical Earth is pointed out to flat-earthers, they will dismiss it as CGI in the blink of an eye; even if they haven’t done any analysis at all. They do this because their belief in flat-Earth is not evidence-based, and any evidence contrary to their beliefs needs to be invalidated no matter how.
They are so used to doing it, and sometimes they become confused by it themselves, to the point that they would take the slightest hint of digital manipulation of any picture of the Earth as evidence of the flat Earth.
That is a logical fallacy of argument from ignorance. Flat-Earthers claim the Earth is flat because (according to them) there is no evidence (that they can accept) that says otherwise. There is no need to prove a flat Earth, because (they assume) there is no evidence that the Earth is spherical.
Beyond pictures of the Earth, they would do the same to any time-lapse video of the Antarctic midnight sun, southern star-trail pictures, pictures of curved power lines and other photos contrary to their beliefs. Any slightest imperfection is going to be dissected under scrutiny; to the point that if we were to apply these ‘critical reviews’ to any pictures of anything, then it is going to be very easy to ‘prove’ them as fake.
Everyone would admit that photos of the Milky Way seen from the ‘top’ are CGI, nobody would tell otherwise. We never actually leave Milky Way, and it is not possible to take a real picture from outside it. To flat-earthers, the fact that these pictures were created from CGI is ‘evidence’ that the Milky Way does not exist.
The fact that a photograph of the Earth was made from CGI can only be used to disqualify the photo in question from the very long list of the evidence supporting spherical Earth. But it can never be used to prove that the Earth is flat.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
References
- Appeal to ignorance – Wikipedia
- Argument to ignorance – RationalWiki
- These unbelievable space images of Earth at night are a bunch of beautiful fakes – Business Insider
Credits
Photo: Anton Balazh – Shutterstock