Watch: 2017 Flat Earth Conference Attendees Discuss NASA Lying, Being Lonely

Flat-Earthers flew in from around the world – or rather in a direct line – to Raleigh, N.C., last week for the 2017 Flat Earth International Conference.

The “educational endeavor” was held to bring like-minded individuals together to discuss their mutual belief that the earth is not round and that a wide-scale conspiracy has instead hijacked scientific thought. Although the Greek philosopher Aristotle is credited with floating the “Earth is round” concept more than 2,000 years ago, hundreds of attendees shelled out between $109 and $249 to discuss their flat-earth theories.

The conference schedule included events throughout the day with grand titles such as "NASA And Other Space Lies" as well as "Flat Earth With The Scientific Method."

The conference held Nov. 9 and 10 in North Carolina is the first annual conference hosted by Kryptoz Media and the Creation Cosmology Institute. Its sponsors include Abacus Pills, the Gordon Rocket Company and Celebrate Truth. The event’s website lays out the basis for their skepticism about earth’s spherical distinction. Hundreds gathered at the Embassy Suites event hall, where a BBC News film crew discovered dozens of attendees willing to articulate the ongoing “deception” forced upon them by the scientific community.

“We used to think that when we started individually in this, that we were all alone,” said one of the event’s speakers. “We have one thing in common – we live on a flat plain.”

One attendee notes to the BBC that among the others perusing the conference, “very few people are overweight” and “30 percent smoke.”

Other Flat-Earther attendees echoed sentiments about loneliness. Mark Sargent, whose “Flat Earth” YouTube channel has more than 43,000 subscribers, explained that “Nobody likes this uncomfortable feeling to be in this tiny ball, flying through space in this vast end of the universe.”

“I think we’re almost at the critical mass point,” Sargent added. “Science is gonna have to address this, plain and simple. They cannot dodge us forever.”

At one point in the video, Sargent responds to a comment about Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

“I was wondering, people like Elon Musk, who founded the SpaceX program [Sargent groans in disgust], when they reach, if they actually do produce a rocket capable of reaching the dome so to speak… are they going to strike it and immediately explode, or are they going to hug the edge?”

The Flat Earth International Conference website details the conspiracy theorists’ reasons for doubting the world’s scientific community.

“Most people today subscribe to the espoused heliocentric globe model explanation of our cosmology,” reads the website for the FEIC. “[W]hich contends that: The earth spins at 1,040 miles per hour while traveling around the sun at 66,000 miles per hour; meanwhile, the entire solar system moves through the milky way galaxy at 490,000 miles per hour as the milky way galaxy darts through infinite space at over 1 million miles per hour.”

“However, every experiment ever conducted to prove even the simple spin of the earth has failed!” the FEIC website adds.

The FEIC also clears up some “FAQs” from flat-earthers concerned about NASA lying or simply falling off the edge of the Earth’s end.

“'Will I fall off of the edge?” No. Though there are varying models within the flat earth community, the most commonly depicted model of our earth is that of a circular disk with Antarctica serving as an ice wall barrier.”

“’Is NASA lying?’ We believe that government space agencies are taking creative liberties with your tax dollars and producing misleading materials.” The FEIC argues that NASA’s photos proving the Earth’s round shape are either Computer Generated Images (CGI), artistic renderings, taken with a fisheye/wide-angled lens or just outright photoshopped.