Flat Earth

[publiusr]

See, THAT'S why the Earth has to be flat--if it were a sphere--it would have rolled off their backs...

[Zvezdichko]

I'll second that. I have never encountered a Flat Earther, and from what I have read about them I consider them to be a quaint contrarian curiosity.

I have. To put it simply, one of our family friends turned out to be a flat earther. It was a huge shock to me, after all we knew each others for years, and he always seemed sane, although he did have that inclination towards different conspiracy theories.

Then I was surprised that this is a hot topic among evangelical Christians. Our friend defended his flat earth beliefs on this ground - a flat earth in the center of the Universe, with the waters below, waters above, firmament and throne of God, and hell below, fits much better within his Christian worldview compared to a planet which is just a speck in the Universe, in the corner of a casual galaxy, one of the many galaxies.

Once you decide to believe in the flat earth theory because of whatever reason (like the one listed above), you can always come up with some kind of a rationalization to justify your belief.

[Hornblower]

I have. To put it simply, one of our family friends turned out to be a flat earther. It was a huge shock to me, after all we knew each others for years, and he always seemed sane, although he did have that inclination towards different conspiracy theories.

Then I was surprised that this is a hot topic among evangelical Christians. Our friend defended his flat earth beliefs on this ground - a flat earth in the center of the Universe, with the waters below, waters above, firmament and throne of God, and hell below, fits much better within his Christian worldview compared to a planet which is just a speck in the Universe, in the corner of a casual galaxy, one of the many galaxies.

Once you decide to believe in the flat earth theory because of whatever reason (like the one listed above), you can always come up with some kind of a rationalization to justify your belief.

I would think a fundamentalist interpretation of those words in the Judeo-Christian scripture could just as easily envision "below" as being toward the center of a spherical Earth.

Trying to resolve it mathematically appears to me to be the thorny problem. Sure, one could model a circumnavigation as a circle around the North Pole on a flat surface, but what happens when we start getting near the South Pole in that same model?

[Abaddon]

Somebody help me out, was "jbar" a seagull poster?

[Sticks]

I have. To put it simply, one of our family friends turned out to be a flat earther. It was a huge shock to me, after all we knew each others for years, and he always seemed sane, although he did have that inclination towards different conspiracy theories.

Then I was surprised that this is a hot topic among evangelical Christians. Our friend defended his flat earth beliefs on this ground - a flat earth in the center of the Universe, with the waters below, waters above, firmament and throne of God, and hell below, fits much better within his Christian worldview compared to a planet which is just a speck in the Universe, in the corner of a casual galaxy, one of the many galaxies.

Once you decide to believe in the flat earth theory because of whatever reason (like the one listed above), you can always come up with some kind of a rationalization to justify your belief.

At the risk of infracting the no religion rule, this seem surprising because a YEC person leading a lectureship on Science in the Bible, that I managed to attend in the 1980's pointed out that in Isaiah 40:22 where it reads "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth" the Hebrew word for circle was actually translated "ball" meaning that the it should read "above the ball of the Earth! thus the Bible was saying that the world was round long before other cultures realised this fact. (Thus the the YEC fell into the Victorian trap of believing the ancients believed the Earth was flat.)

I have heard a preacher promote Geocentricity, but never a flat Earth. I must not have moved in those circles...

[Swift]

Somebody help me out, was "jbar" a seagull poster?

Let's not speculate publicly about that.

[Gillianren]

We had a customer this weekend who bought three custom hand-stamped pins advocating flat Earth, and we universally agreed in the booth not to ask if she was kidding or not.

[bknight]

We had a customer this weekend who bought three custom hand-stamped pins advocating flat Earth, and we universally agreed in the booth not to ask if she was kidding or not.

Ah, I would have asked her, but you seem to have more tact than I.

[Gillianren]

We didn't want to lose the boss his $30, much less any other customers.

[George]

We had a customer this weekend who bought three custom hand-stamped pins advocating flat Earth, and we universally agreed in the booth not to ask if she was kidding or not.

I think I would be inclined to break the ice with something like, "That's a colorful pin!" and expect a response since the buyer might actually enjoy talking about the reason for the purchase.

[Jens]

Ah, I would have asked her, but you seem to have more tact than I.

I wouldn’t have asked, but not because I would have worried about losing the sale. Rather, my experience from booths is that once you break the ice with those types, they will go on and on and on and on and on, and there is a good chance you wouldn’t get a chance to talk to any further customers that day...


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[Gillianren]

I wouldn’t have asked, but not because I would have worried about losing the sale. Rather, my experience from booths is that once you break the ice with those types, they will go on and on and on and on and on, and there is a good chance you wouldn’t get a chance to talk to any further customers that day...

There's definitely that. If she were serious, she would've tried to convince us, and none of us were going to be convinced. And you kind of get a feel for when people are ordering pins they're serious about.

[NGCHunter]

Bit of a random comment here, but anecdotally it seems like flat earthers can be some of the nastiest conspiracy theorists out there in terms of things like doxing and harassment, and I don't really understand why that is. With something else like chemtrails, I can at least understand the rationale behind wanting to harm pilots and airplanes if you sincerely believe they're spraying you with dangerous chemicals to mind control/neuter/kill you. I don't understand the rationale behind flat earthers going after debunkers in real life.

I just learned that my girlfriend's address, my workplace, and my parent's phone number were all doxxed a while back by a flat earther calling me a "globe cuck." My parents disconnected that number a while back after receiving a flood of scam and spam calls and none of us knew of any specific reason that number would be targeted... until now. And all because what, I provide proof that flat earthers are wrong? I have my own house, there was no need to dox anyone else along with me. Why would my debunking videos warrant doxxing not only my personal identity but that of my friends and family as well? If earth is flat, why would any of that matter, and what would it do for you to try to get my friends and family attacked by others? I'm not a psychologist, but it seems to me like this belief system is an outlet for a deeper issue or pain and it can manifest itself in various other ways too, like doxxing and call flooding. It's disturbing and it makes me wonder how long until someone I know is swatted because of my videos. This leads me to question whether it's even ethical for me to continue debunking at all.

[Hornblower]

Bit of a random comment here, but anecdotally it seems like flat earthers can be some of the nastiest conspiracy theorists out there in terms of things like doxing and harassment, and I don't really understand why that is. With something else like chemtrails, I can at least understand the rationale behind wanting to harm pilots and airplanes if you sincerely believe they're spraying you with dangerous chemicals to mind control/neuter/kill you. I don't understand the rationale behind flat earthers going after debunkers in real life.

I just learned that my girlfriend's address, my workplace, and my parent's phone number were all doxxed a while back by a flat earther calling me a "globe cuck." My parents disconnected that number a while back after receiving a flood of scam and spam calls and none of us knew of any specific reason that number would be targeted... until now. And all because what, I provide proof that flat earthers are wrong? I have my own house, there was no need to dox anyone else along with me. Why would my debunking videos warrant doxxing not only my personal identity but that of my friends and family as well? If earth is flat, why would any of that matter, and what would it do for you to try to get my friends and family attacked by others? I'm not a psychologist, but it seems to me like this belief system is an outlet for a deeper issue or pain and it can manifest itself in various other ways too, like doxxing and call flooding. It's disturbing and it makes me wonder how long until someone I know is swatted because of my videos. This leads me to question whether it's even ethical for me to continue debunking at all.

I would not be surprised if this is the action of one or perhaps a handful of uber-mean-spirited people latching onto a worldview that otherwise would be a quaint curiosity.

[marsbug]

Having debated them a few times on various social media, I can say that there are both civil and uncivil people with this belief. I can recommend Metabunk as a good place to start learning about them*** in a saner environment than you'll get on their own forums and sites. There are some sincere believers among the trolls. I've spoken to FE guys who had been given a terrible education in the sciences, full of misconceptions. I've seen those that were pushing scientific misconceptions as a way to attack mainstream science and promote the CT. I've also talked go those who were are, more or less, detached from reality - their FE belief founded on things like encounters with invisible demons**, or the interpretation of certain bible passages as laid down by various highly suspect 'religious' figures.

There's a lot of deliberate misinterpretation normal, well explained phenomena: Rocket launches curving sideways after they get a certain way up is a good example - An orbit is a circular path around the world, so you'd expect the rocket to turn sideways at a certain altitude, but FE proponents insist it's because the rocket is just crashing into the ground or sea and that if space were real the rocket would fly straight up. There are an open and honourable few who'll admit to making a conscious choice to reject all the evidence for religious or emotional reasons. A few seem to be regarding it as a challenging intellectual exercise to fight the FE corner.
They genuinely aren't all nasty. I'm with Mick West: These people are irrational, but everyone is irrational about some things. Flat Earthism isn't as trivial as always cutting your toast diagonally, but the bad habits of thought and self persuasion are ubiquitously human - which these folk are, and need to be treated as such (with caution perhaps).

But... I do get the feeling, from having talked to a few of them, that they're just one indicator of a larger, deeper, and darker current: They're not just promoting FE, they're promoting faulty reasoning and bad habits of thought (e.g. pick what you believe then look for evidence to support it, stop looking when you find something that supports the belief, etc), and most believe multiple conspiracy theories. They're promoters of ideas that are often incredibly incredibly easy to disprove (eg you can't see satellites in the night sky, objects over the horizon can be recovered with magnification, the same stars are visible in the sky all year around, etc*) and yet they do gain traction with some people.
I get the feeling FE is getting it's most enthusiastic attention from those who see science as one face of a 'the system / the man' that they've already chosen to reject. The evidence and specific ideas are not so important as the alignment against the existing way of thinking about the world and running it. And, yes, I do suspect there are very strong links to darker things such as Sandy Hook truthers and antivaxers - so I think it's vitally important to keep debunking, not be bullied by the relatively few 'warriors for the cause', and keep promoting rational, evidence based, views and thinking. That said... I doubt that alone will see them seriously diminish in numbers or attention grabbing. Slow them up, seriously so with co-ordinated effort, yes. But I think we're in the grip of a resurgence of, as Carl Sagan put it, 'the siren song of unreason'. My intuition - and it's only that - is that at least some big chunk of these people are actually motivated by things that are political, socio-economic, and religious (or secular knowledge vs religion) in outline. I think we're going to keep seeing these guys until the world comes to grips with these more underlying causes - which are throwing out many symptoms in the world that are far more immediately dangerous that the flat earthers themselves are, at least taken in isolation.

Hey, that's almost a conspiracy theory of my own...


***If you want to.

**That was literally the reason given by a very sincere seeming and polite guy..

*I did go out with telescope and camera and collect the evidence. I don't really see the point of debating such claims when I can just go 'here's a picture of your claims being untrue'. At least when I get told I "must be" photoshopping the pictures (which I am also supplying all the details needed to replicate) I can drop the conversation with a clear conscience