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Following are excerpts from an Iraqi TV debate on whether the earth is flat, which aired on Al-Fayhaa TV on October 31, 2007.
Fadhel Al-Sa'd, Iraqi researcher on astronomy : The Koranic verse that I have just recited – "The breadth of Paradise is as the breadth of the heavens and earth" – attests to the fact that the Earth is flat.
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Iraqi physicist 'Aboud Al-Taei: If the Earth is not round, what shape does it have? I have proof today, as a result of scientific development – using satellites, modern devices, and spaceships... In particular, considering the spaceships and space shuttles that constantly circle the Earth, and some have left Earth for the solar system... The photographs they took prove that the Earth is round.
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When you watch a ship sailing towards the shore, all you see at first is the mast. Then you see the ship's bow, and eventually the entire ship.
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Fadhel Al-Sa'd: When you stand on the beach and you look into the distance, everything you see is in the visible distance. In the blurred distance, you cannot see a thing. Later on, as the ship gets closer to the shore and the harbor, you see its upper part. How do you see it? The eye, as I have said... So far, no doctor has succeeded in understanding how the eye works. How come you see things as round when they are in the blurred distance, but when they get within visible distance, you see them as straight? It happens the same way. When we stand on the ground, we are close to it. Therefore, we see with only half of the eye. If we split the iris into half, we see with the upper half things that are far, and with the lower half things that are near.
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In 1999, there was a full solar eclipse. We went to Mosul, and over there we climbed to Mar Matti Monastery, the altitude of which is 3,600 feet.
The sun began to disappear slowly behind the moon. This is because the moon is half the size of the sun. The moon's diameter is 1,200,000 km, while that of the sun is 2,400,000 km.
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'Aboud Al-Taei: The figures he mentioned regarding the size of the moon... By means of scientific methods, and physical and astronomical principles, scientists have managed to determine the mass of the moon. It is one-sixth the mass of the Earth. This explains the gravity on the moon, which was determined by the astronauts who reached the surface of the moon. They proved that the moon is round. Gravity was less there. It was six times less than the gravity on the Earth, which is why the weight of things is one-sixth there.
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Interviewer: Lunar and solar eclipses, sunset and sunrise, and the changing of seasons – how would you explain all these phenomena, if the Earth is not round, as you claim?
Fadhel Al-Sa'd: The sun circles the Earth because it is smaller than the Earth, as is evident in Koranic verses.
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Have you ever seen how the sun moves? I have seen the sun moving. The sun makes one move every 24 hours.
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What I say is based on Koranic science. He bases his arguments on the kind of science that I reject categorically – the modern science that they teach in schools. This science is a heretic innovation that has no confirmation in the Koran. No verse in the Koran indicates that the Earth is round or that it rotates. Anything that has no indication in the Koran is false.
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