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Flat Earthers. Seriuosly?!

β€˜The American community is big and brash and filled with personalities vying for public influence. There, Flat Earthers have secured airtime on almost every major television network, sometimes primetime slots, and the movement has been lent credibility by celebrity support. (The rapper BoB is a believer.) But, because Flat Earth has been a YouTube phenomenon, the same hypotheses tend to appear everywhere: that the Earth is flat and round, like a pancake. That it is surrounded on all sides by the Antarctic, a huge impassable wall of ice, and protected by a dome. That it is not hurtling through space at great speed but rooted somehow, an immovable mass: still, calm, glorious, the epicentre of the universe.’

[theguardian.com]

moNOtheist 7 May 27
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14 comments

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0

The attraction of any oddball notion - rather cleverly named as "conspiracy theorries" by the media, the better to muddy the water when it comes to real conspiracies, such as the assasination of John F. Kennedy and the 9/11 attacks (which were by definition conspiracies, as they involved two or more in their planning and execution) - is that you and you alone are privy to what is truly real. Religious cults, particularly the more extreme, offer the same allure, something not unlike the true believer staus to be found in being one of the first select few to discover a new trend in dress or music (summarily dumped as soon as the hoi-poloi jump on board). The added plus with such bordering-flameout-wigginess beliefs as flat earthism - even more than the sincere belief that Hillary Clinton ran a pedophile ring from the basement of a pizza parlor - is that it is so out-there that, in the eye of the stone-cold believer, that it's impossible to disprove. Any evidence offered is proof positive that the Man or the Deep State or the Illuminati or (fill in the blank) is cleverly fooling everyone but us, We In The Know.

1

I'm glad they believe it's flat. It amuses me.

1

Nothing special here, particularly 'en mass'. Many groups and even more individuals shelter themselves within the bounds of fantasy to avoid aspects of objective fact/reality for which they aren't emotionally equipped.

Such is the damage that afflicts us all, as members in good standing of 'right thinking and moral living'. Most damage is correctable and we're equipped with the cognitive tools for making repairs.

Good 'theraputic' practitioners with effective modalities put us in touch with those tools. In the probably distant future, with growing understanding of the functional unity of body and mind, modalities will also unite and greatly expand efficacy.

Until that time, we must be our own judges, or shoppers and carefully, oh so carefully and courageously, fill-in the gaps.

3

Got me started now (so much for never wasting my time on the subject again)...

Okay look β€” I live in Brighton, UK. We have a long, steep road called Elm Grove; on a clear day, if you look west from the top of the hill, you can see the Isle of Wight out to sea, about 60 miles away β€” why can you see it if it's 60 MILES away? Because it's a bloody big hill, rising out of a flat sea and you're standing on another bloody big hill, so you're able to see the top of it rising above the curvature of the Earth.

If you get on a 22 bus, sit upstairs at the front and ride westwards down Elm Grove, you can watch the island disappear gradually below the horizon as your viewpoint gets lower. Eventually the top of the hills disappear into the sea and they're gone. That wouldn't happen on a flat plane... The Earth is a ball and it is impossible to be a flat-earther in Brighton UNLESS YOU'RE A FRIGGIN' IDIOT.

I know Brighton πŸ™‚ Spent three years at the art school as was in Grand Parade, opposite the King and Queen. It's been more than thirty years since I last visited - must make the time to get down there again when I'm next in Blighty. When I was first there, they were just beginning to build the marina and, of course, there were still two piers.

@moNOtheist Excellent! The King and Queen is still there though lots of other stuff isn't, but we do now have a 450ft high donut on a stick and the Marina is currently sprouting several hundred new apartments to go with the thousands of others that have gone up in the last decade.

We're growing up.

1

It does seem to be a distinctly American fad, and I wonder if it's down to the entertainment/media-led culture that the States seems to have (and that the rest of us are fast adopting).

Having listened in on a couple of YouTube debates, I've completely given up on ever wasting my time on the subject again. It's a non-topic with laughably piss-poor arguements that require backflips and the most contorted apologetics to present. Debating these muppets is like shooting fish in a barrel... If the fish could then deny they'd ever been shot and carry on protesting the fact all the way to the frying pan.

@Countrycuz666 Dear oh dear oh dear. It's got out. ?

1

so you are distracted from whats really going on.. the media is a sham

1

Flat Earth is one of the funniest things to ever happen. I can't think of a better example of trolling in history. For that reason, I totally support its existence.

1

I have no idea how this is even a subject these days. Everytime I hear it I smash it very easily with a simple thing called a rainbow. If the earth was flat a rainbow would be as well.

8

Anytime I hear someone boasting about being a flat earther, I laugh.
When I find out they have children, then I get scared β€” for their future.

I have a few flat earth memes but my favorite is the meteor hitting the disc-like earth and the dinosaurs being flung into space with the caption "What really happened to the dinosaurs..."

1

The flat earth model is very limited but it does have some uses. For example, land surveyors often assume that the earth is flat when they do small surveys.

What is usually overlooked is that the planetary model with a spheroidal earth is also nothing but a mathematical model. Just think, the earth is supposed to be orbiting the sun, but no one seems to understand space or time, except to say that they are illusions. Particles of matter are said by physicists to consist of probability waves that are in no particular place, until observed by a conscious observer, upon which they β€œcollapse” into things.

I will not ridicule the flat earth folks because we are all ignorant IMO.

The difference is, though, that anyone can overcome that ignorance by educating themselves. There may be things in science that it's hard to get one's head around, as a person in the street, but a bit of reading or even a bit of schooling and the understanding grows.

With flat earth thinking, you have to wilfully misinform yourself as there are uncountable ways to shoot the idea down in flames β€” things that anyone can do just by day-to-day observations.

@DaveMania A bit of reading will give you some superficial knowledge, and I maintain that superficial knowledge is all that anyone has. The true nature of reality is a deep and unfathomable mystery.

I guess superficial knowledge is better than a deliberate false paradigm. Could those folks just be jerking our chains or playing for attention?

@DaveMania Exactly. How hurricanes rotate in different hemispheres is just one way to stump a flat earther.

2

I put flat earthers in the same category as creationist, moon landing hoaxers, climate science deniers, anti vaxxers etc.

4

I just read this article and was left speechless. So there really are people who honestly deeply believe that all of science is a lying conspiracy and the earth is NOT round after all? With my psychology background, I especially enjoyed reading about the possible connection between such beliefs and some of these folks' psychological crises and loss of a sense of control in their lives. Makes me wonder if this is another way for helpless hopeless people to act out, better certainly than shooting strangers. To be so estranged from reality...

Sooz Level 6 May 27, 2018
4

It's so ridiculous people seem to be worried they're missing something, they're not, it's complete and utter rubbish πŸ™‚

1

It's the age of the Selfie where everyone is the center of their own personal universe, no reason the same mindset wouldn't believe that the planet is the center of the universe too.
Except Galileo! πŸ˜€

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