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Tales Of A Flat Earth

Frasier Buddolph said:
Sorry if I sound smug, but the most obvious reason that occurs to me is that they are stupid.

I suspect that many (most?) flat-earthers don't really believe that the earth is shaped like a frisbee. It's just their chance to pose as fearless, brilliant, original thinkers who haven't been brain-washed like the rest of the sheep. Instead of blindly swallowing the "lie" that the earth is a sphere, they have blindly swallowed the "lie" that the earth is flat without questioning implications and apparent contradictions. All they can do when confronted is stick their fingers in their ears and holler "LA-LA-LA" until the challenger loses interest and goes away. Then they can brag to their friends how they totally shut down another doubter.
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There are times I like to think they are just playing smart-alecky logic games, but now and then someone proves me wrong like the rapper who stared directly at a solar eclipse:

https://nypost.com/2017/08/24/rapper-who-stared-at-eclipse-abruptly-cancels-concerts/

It has a tie-in with the flat-earthers who were saying the "special glasses" were a deception by NASA to disprove their crazy talk.
 
genex17 said:
There are times I like to think they are just playing smart-alecky logic games, but now and then someone proves me wrong like the rapper who stared directly at a solar eclipse:

https://nypost.com/2017/08/24/rapper-who-stared-at-eclipse-abruptly-cancels-concerts/

It has a tie-in with the flat-earthers who were saying the "special glasses" were a deception by NASA to disprove their crazy talk.
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Well, there's always one. As Einstein said, "The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits."

I guess someone has to anchor the curve.
 
This new survey suggests flat earth beliefs are most common among the young and the religious. That's not nearly so big a surprise as the apparent fact nobody's been surveying such beliefs.

A Third of Young Millennials Are Confused About This Incontrovertible Fact
Only 66 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. are confident that the world is round, according to a new national survey.

The findings don't necessarily indicate an epidemic of flat-Earthism, as only 4 percent of the 18- to 24-year-old age group said they actually believe the world is flat. Rather, there seem to be a relatively large number in this age group who are willing to entertain doubts: 9 percent said they had always believed the world was round but were recently having doubts, 5 percent said they had always believed the world was flat but were becoming skeptical of that conclusion and 16 percent just weren't sure. ...

Overall, the results suggest that 84 percent of Americans believe the world is round. Five percent said they always believed the world to be round but have recently become skeptical. Two percent said the world is flat. Another 2 percent said they always thought the world was flat but have recently become skeptical. And 7 percent just weren't sure.

"Young millennials," or those ages 18 to 24, were the most likely to exhibit round-Earth skepticism, with only 66 percent firm in their belief in a spherical world. For comparison, 94 percent of those 55 and older think the world is round, as do 85 percent of 45- to 54-year-olds, 82 percent of 35- to 44-year-olds and 76 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds. ...

The most predictive demographic factor that explains flat-Earth belief appears to be religion, the YouGov survey suggested. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/62220-millennials-flat-earth-belief.html
 
I'm never normally pedantic but I wish that people who say the world is definitely NOT flat would stop calling it "round" .. a circle is round but it can still be flat .. this niggles me .. use the words "globe" or "sphere" instead people when disagreeing with flat earthers .. *goes for a bit of a lie down*
 
After much debate, geologists have agreed on calling the Earth geomorph.

Which actually just means eart-shaped, so it's a bit silly.
 
Swifty said:
I'm never normally pedantic but I wish that people who say the world is definitely NOT flat would stop calling it "round" .. a circle is round but it can still be flat .. this niggles me .. use the words "globe" or "sphere" instead people when disagreeing with flat earthers .. *goes for a bit of a lie down*
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If we're being really picky the Earth's an oblate spheroid (a sphere that's a bit squashed), and is slighty pear-shaped. (The pear-shaped Earth story crops up in every few years an 'ASTONISHING discovery scientist say Earth is PEAR-shaped'. I came across it in a children's book of astronomy around 1963.)
 
Occasionally I'll watch a flat-earth video on youtube - just to see what they're saying this time. And I always find myself thinking you know what? It does sound plausible. Maybe...

But then logic kicks in and I find myself in the very same predicament as Fox Mulder in this little scene:


Agent Stonecypher: [to Scully] Oh, did you play that game where, um, you couldn't use any negative words?

Agent Kinsley: I couldn't believe how hard it was not to use the word "but."

Fox Mulder: [derisively] I'm having that same problem right now.
 
Swifty said:
I'm never normally pedantic but I wish that people who say the world is definitely NOT flat would stop calling it "round" .. a circle is round but it can still be flat .. this niggles me .. use the words "globe" or "sphere" instead people when disagreeing with flat earthers .. *goes for a bit of a lie down*
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Reminds me of one of my favourite quotations by Isaac Asimov, which I'm now probably going to misremember and butcher somewhat, but it was along the lines of;

"It is wrong to say that the Earth is flat, and it is wrong to say that the Earth is round, but to think that both of those statements are equally wrong is wronger still".

And I suppose that's where a lot of this nonsense comes from in the first place - people with little scientific knowledge, and no scientific education, see the "Science vs. Religion/Faith" dichotomy and assume that Science is a belief system in the same sense as religion, that it has its doctrines and absolute truths (you see this in creationists thinking that attacking flaws in Darwin's work somehow undermines the whole concept of evolution), so when a scientist comes along and says, "actually, we were wrong about X", or "the Earth isn't the shape we thought it was", what they see is, "well, these scientists keep getting things wrong, what do they know?". When the entire purpose of science is to keep proving itself wrong as new information becomes available.

But it leads to this "well, science doesn't know everything..." mentality that then jumps to the conclusion that science doesn't know anything, wrapped up in the usual conspiracy nonsense that scientists are all in some grand scam to prevent The Truth from getting out, or else are stubborn dogmatists afraid of conflicting theories. What I found curious about it is that, despite that, the people who propose Flat Earth theories do so in attempting to wrap them in an approximation of the methodology and language of the science they refute. I almost have more respect for those who argue the Earth's flatness on purely religious grounds.


I'm convinced, though, that an awful lot of people making claims of a Flat Earth are doing so with tongue firmly in cheek. Either as a thought exercise to show how even the most preposterous claims can be made to sound convincing when presented in the right manner, or as a troll job. The danger, as with so many things online, is that it's very difficult to separate those who are just playing along for a laugh from the true believers.
 
"or else are stubborn dogmatists afraid of conflicting theories"

Science has exhibited a fair few of those over the years, to be fair. But that doesn't mean you can leap from that to 'the earth is flat' .

Why would religion result in people thinking the world is flat anyway? Although I guess Sir Pterry got the idea for Discworld from some religion or other.
 
Cochise said:
Although I guess Sir Pterry got the idea for Discworld from some religion or other.
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I seem to remember the "Elephants on top of a Turtle" myth being taught to me at primary school as existing in Hindu myth, but may be getting things muddled.


It's not so much that religion leads people to believe in a Flat Earth (though there are some for whom that would be true), as the idea of Science and Religion/Faith as two diametrically opposed belief structures can lead people to misunderstand, and distrust, Science as a whole, and therefore be more likely to believe in something as absurd as a Flat Earth in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
 
The earth's continents and islands as music .. surprisingly harmonious .. we might need a whammy pedal instead if it isn't flat so we can create more curvature sounds ..

 
I just saw someone had written "The Earth is flat" on a dirty window on the way to work today. I might have to go back and write "You're an idiot!" underneath.
 
Someone on the dreaded facebook has posted this selfie on top of Everest .. a flat earther (or someone just having a laugh) has inevitably replied with "They've obviously just used a fish eye lens, they can't fool us." ..

aroundearth.png
 
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