Christians and flat earthers

[Wertbag]

I stumbled upon some YouTube videos of flat earthers ("100% undeniable proof!"), always good for a laugh, but one claim that I saw repeated was that most flat earthers are Christians.  They take the bible claims of a snowglobe earth covered by a dome literally. I'm not sure what kind of percentage we are talking or for that matter whether the idea is mostly an American problem?

Does anyone have first hand experience with this brand of crazy?  Or better yet is anyone ex-flat earth?

[florduh]

I've made the same observation. Seems to be primarily an American problem. Most flat arguments and "proofs" reference Biblical "information" but I have seen some that don't. That group appears to be secular conspiracy nuts who think NASA lies about everything for some unspecified reason. The most interesting thing to me is the variety of crazy; some say we never went to the moon, some say we went but found alien bases, some say the moon is hollow and others say it is a holographic projection.

 

Sometimes it's hard to realize we live in the 21st Century.

[Vigile]

The sister of my friend's wife over here fell for it. She's not an xian. I guess she and her husband are into Satanism or something of that nature. She was convinced of FE by YouTube. 

 

Haven't met her, but I take it not the sharpest knife. 

[♦ Fuego ♦]

It would be one thing if they did it as a lark, but to actually believe it is a sad commentary on either the human mind or dismal education. I've found that people often don't want to be bothered with learning what is real because it takes too much time and seems difficult compared to believing something else. For example, the often misused references to "quantum physics" in the New Age circles.

[Wertbag]

The big glaring problem is why no one has managed to reach the wall. We should be able to head in any direction and come across it. Seems such an obvious flaw.

Between 1000-5000 people live in the stations on Antarctica, strangely none of them have noticed the planet size wall stretching above them.

I feel like I need to read up further as to how they justify this...

[Thurisaz]

Personally, I think there's morons of that kind everywhere. It seems to me though that the source of this particular brand of nonsense is indeed (at least mostly) with US jebus taliban brand morontheism.

[MOHO]

I'll never forget the day I was quoting a moronic, jacktastical, jesus-freak, flat-earther, thinking that this had to be the one of the dumbest humans I had even encountered, when Mrs. MOHO quipped "Well, maybe the Earth IS flat!".

 

Normally, the lovely young lady, to whom I am related by marriage, would not have entertained such foolish thinking for even a moment but, because a fellow fundy said it, she began to seriously ponder the concept. See why I ensure that I get my glass of grape juice every night?

 

And let this episode serve as something to chew on for those who take a live-and-let-live approach to harmful religion and why we must keep it out of politics and the leadership of nations.

[Vigile]

Flat earth is probably an interesting case study for the efficacy of modern PR tactics. As best I can tell, 50 years ago. 100 years ago. Virtually no one believed something so inane. It has only been in the last 2 or 3 years that some folk seem to have engaged in developing media presentations and employing sophisticated-sounding arguments. A number of methods of convincing people against all credible evidence have been honed by the fossil fuel, tobacco, the military industrial complex and other industries to get people to accept pseudoscience. I posit that flat earth is a byproduct of these efforts. 

[★ Citsonga ★]

I was raised in a very conservative Christian environment. I was a fervent 6-day creationist the whole time I was a believer, thinking that evolution was a lie devised by people who didn't want to submit to god. Yet, even in that brainwashed state of mind, I never thought of the earth as flat, and, to the best of my recollection, none of the Christians I was around ever suggested that the earth was flat. Thus, the first time I came across the Flat Earth Society online, I thought it was a joke. I couldn't fathom people actually seriously believing that, but it appears that there are serious flat-earth believers. It's so mind-bogglingly crazy, yet my prior belief in YEC was probably just as mind-bogglingly crazy to people who weren't raised with that view. I now recognize that YEC is utter nonsense, but at the time it seemed to make perfect sense. It's amazing what brainwashing can do to people.

[★ Citsonga ★]

21 hours ago, Wertbag said:

The big glaring problem is why no one has managed to reach the wall. We should be able to head in any direction and come across it. Seems such an obvious flaw.

Between 1000-5000 people live in the stations on Antarctica, strangely none of them have noticed the planet size wall stretching above them.

I feel like I need to read up further as to how they justify this...

 

I doubt that any flat-earthers are among those working in Antarctica. They probably just write it off as though the people in Antarctica either haven't gone far enough or are part of a cover-up conspiracy. 

 

[florduh]

We are in the beginning of a new Dark Age. Conspiracy nuts, science deniers and "alternative truth" purveyors are becoming the new normal.

[Vigile]

6 minutes ago, florduh said:

We are in the beginning of a new Dark Age. Conspiracy nuts, science deniers and "alternative truth" purveyors are becoming the new normal.

 

There's a whole big world outside the US. If we don't nuke ourselves or release a super bug, I see reasons for optimism. 

[florduh]

25 minutes ago, Vigile said:

There's a whole big world outside the US. If we don't nuke ourselves or release a super bug, I see reasons for optimism. 

Tell that to our government.

[Thurisaz]

Problem is, as long as the ISA (think they) are the only superpower on this planet their 1 % don't have much reason to think about the rest of the world, other than whom to bomb next (not entirely sarcastic, sadly).

[Vigile]

2 minutes ago, florduh said:

Tell that to our government.

 

Well, fortunately, they aren't in charge of the world even though they'd like to be. They are losing influence as we speak and multipolarism is inevitable. No doubt they will try and start more wars to stave it off. Let's hope they aren't successful for the sake of humanity. 

[Vigile]

13 minutes ago, Thurisaz said:

Problem is, as long as the ISA (think they) are the only superpower on this planet their 1 % don't have much reason to think about the rest of the world, other than whom to bomb next (not entirely sarcastic, sadly).

 

That's changing. The US hasn't won a war in any of our lifetimes. But more recently, they've had their plans thwarted too. Syria was a glaring defeat in that it didn't end up a giant terrorist training camp like Libya. This was significant as it means they aren't the only ones calling the shots anymore. The same is true of sanctions. They told Germany and the rest of Europe not to buy Russian gas. Germany basically told them to fuck off and the UK, the biggest supporter of the US just bought a whole load of LNG from Moscow. China is building a new trade system that challenges the US empire rules and trade routes. Obama tried to put up roadblocks by forcing US partners to adopt TPP and TTIP, but these were failing efforts and the guys backing Trump saw them as such so had him scrap it all. The US is still trying to put up road blocks (why else are we still in Afghanistan of all places?), but these too are bound to fail. And, the big one is, China and Russia are challenging the Petrodollar. Without that, US funding for all this international politicking/war dries up. 

 

This leaves the US with two basic choices. Accept the inevitable and return to a more isolationist position or try and blow up the whole thing and go back to reset meaning starting WWIII. There are crazies running things in the US that no doubt see the later as the only solution, but I'm betting the laws of physics prevail and others both inside the US and outside that have influence will see that everyone dead doesn't get them what they want. IMO, the only inevitable future is multipolarity where the US plays a smaller role than it has for the past 60 years. The McCains will die off and people at home and abroad will be better off for it. 

[Wertbag]

Browsing Antarctica details and it appears there is a booming public tour business with 34,000 people visiting last year. There are several cruiseliners which circumnavigate Antarctica  (takes about 5 weeks) and you can do all sorts of excursions like scuba diving, penguin photo tours, camp overnight on the ice and zodiac tours to get in close to the icebergs and glaciers. Actually sounds a pretty amazing trip, although with a high price to match.

 

Still no sign of a giant crystal wall and the other oft repeated major issue is the 24hrs of daylight at the poles during summer.

[★ Citsonga ★]

Count me out. I find 65°F to be chilly. There's no way in hell I'd ever go freeze my ass off in Antarctica. My wife's nephew worked there for 5 months, though, and he hasn't mentioned any wall.

 

[Thurisaz]

Let's be real here... if people established a colony at the mountains of madness (H P Lovecraft geek warning ), eventually the ISA would come to them too (sure, only after there's no one left elsewhere, but still...) and force Free Trade(TM) on them to make more bucks for their 1 %.

 

You don't escape unchained greed.

 

@Vigile, yeah we can hope. What other options do we have anyway? Okay, theoretically we could hope for a revolution. *cough*

[Wertbag]

2 hours ago, Thurisaz said:

@Vigile, yeah we can hope. What other options do we have anyway? Okay, theoretically we could hope for a revolution. *cough*

I've always found Western democracy is built to avoid change. Better ideas and improvements can never be incorporated as the system is too rigid. Voting gives an appearance of choice but never real power to choose.

[★ Citsonga ★]

4 hours ago, Wertbag said:

I've always found Western democracy is built to avoid change. Better ideas and improvements can never be incorporated as the system is too rigid. Voting gives an appearance of choice but never real power to choose.

 

There certainly wasn't much choice in last year's presidential election. The two dominant parties with the only chance of winning put forth the two least-trusted candidates ever. You could vote for another party or write in another candidate, but you were guaranteed to be stuck with one of those two very problematic candidates.

 

[Wertbag]

A new low for flattard statements "If the world was spinning then a helicopter wouldn't need to fly anywhere, it would hover and the world would spin under it"  

[older]

Hey, remember the guy with the homemade rocket, who was going to prove the Earth is flat? He's at it again:

 

http://www.iflscience.com/space/flatearthers-homemade-rocket-has-got-a-new-launch-date/