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Reporter Shares Experience of Visiting a Flat Earth Convention (vice.com)
Tom Usher, reporting for Vice: I arrived at the venue -- a Jurys Inn hotel -- on a wet Saturday morning, to discover that the event was essentially a small carpeted convention room boasting a few cameras, some stalls selling merchandise, and 70 or so attendees watching PowerPoint presentations beamed onto a wall. As I entered, I was offered a gift of "fluoride-free" toothpaste. This made perfect sense, given the location. A popular conspiracy theory states that governments across the world have been putting fluoride in our water supply to tranquilize the masses, despite the fact the only piece of "evidence" for this theory -- which involves both the Nazis and the Communists -- has been widely discredited. With the tone set for the day, I sat down to watch some speeches.
The speakers all seemed well aware of how "globe-earthers" view the idea of a flat Earth, i.e. ludicrous, and their talk of the current scientific establishment felt very "us versus them" -- a nice bit of truther tribalism. One speaker talked at length about the moon, and how its orbit proved the Earth couldn't be spherical, which seemed a little counterintuitive. Another talked about how the Egyptian pyramid structure points toward clues that the Earth is a flat diamond shape, supported by pillars. Between sounding off about the Vatican and the fact that the establishment has indoctrinated us to believe all sorts of things, including that the Earth is a sphere, a third speaker suggested that cancer is caused by negative emotions and argued that dinosaurs didn't exist. The story also explores why some people still believe these long-debunked theories. Further reading: The bizarre tale of the flat-Earth convention that fell apart (CNET).
The speakers all seemed well aware of how "globe-earthers" view the idea of a flat Earth, i.e. ludicrous, and their talk of the current scientific establishment felt very "us versus them" -- a nice bit of truther tribalism. One speaker talked at length about the moon, and how its orbit proved the Earth couldn't be spherical, which seemed a little counterintuitive. Another talked about how the Egyptian pyramid structure points toward clues that the Earth is a flat diamond shape, supported by pillars. Between sounding off about the Vatican and the fact that the establishment has indoctrinated us to believe all sorts of things, including that the Earth is a sphere, a third speaker suggested that cancer is caused by negative emotions and argued that dinosaurs didn't exist. The story also explores why some people still believe these long-debunked theories. Further reading: The bizarre tale of the flat-Earth convention that fell apart (CNET).
C'mon, I thought it was common knowledge that the whole "movement" is a giant troll-job aimed at getting just this kind of hand-wringing attention.
I would call it instructive. It shows that most people do not manage to understand what Science is and what it can and cannot do, because they lack the mental capabilities to do so. It explains a few things about why so many things on this planet are so fucked up.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I'd say that anytime there is a duality of opinion, no matter how much evidence there is, you'll always find people on both sides.
Because otherwise there wouldn't be a duality of opinion?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Don't make conclusions until they are done with their jobs.
I like how you wrote that 2 sentences after you concluded:
There is however, clear evidence that Russia tried to influence the US election, and that people in the Trump campaign were involved in that.
Salem Witch Trials? Violence against interracial couples, same sex couples, anti-abortion bombings & shootings.... The only difference is that in western countries religions no longer control the government.
Don't know what you are talking about. Christians did wholesale mass-murder in the crusades, for example, in pretty much the mode you describe. There is no larger religion that has not done atrocities and justified them afterwards.
Because some group of murderous bastards did something 800 years ago you think we shouldn't be denouncing any current group of murderous bastards who does it now?
What most people fail to realise is that multiple and repeated surveys found that the majority of muslims *worldwide* support Sharia law.
When you refer to "moderate muslims" you are still talking about people who would ban gay relationships and use the force of law to punish homosexuals. The number of christians who support those sorts of laws is vanshingly small.
Stop apologising for homophobia. You should examine why you need to go back hundreds of years to find anything comparative in primitiveness to Islam.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
The difference is the teachings of Christianity don't support those things.
Pick up The Holy Bible and read it. Once that Jesus guy turns up, things change.
My point isn't that they're right, but they have an idea.
It's an idea which has been disproven. That makes clinging to it dumb.
So let's ALL make some predictions and observations and see what works. [...] Spontaneous generation might still be proven right,
Yeah, if your experiment was dumb enough. That's the problem with listening to EVERYONE. Some people you clearly don't listen to about anything.
There is an internet philosophy that has people bringing up disproven or dipshit theories, and screaming that other people have to disprove them. A really warped idea if "If you don't disprove me to my satisfaction, you prove that I am right!"
Well, I suppose these modern day Neanderthals paid zero attention in science class, but I remember ancient concepts like spontaneous generation and flat earth being discussed in class, and unless a person wasn't capable of critical thinking, they would catch on real early and quickly that the earth was spherical, and that animals don't pop out of nowhere. Note yes - we now know that the earth was an oblate spheroid and a little chunky at the center.
The biggest problem with the idea that we must exhaustively explain every debunked idea over and overandoverandover again for people who have exactly no intention of taking the telling is that we'll be stuck forever explaining things like say, the phlogiston theory, when in fact we've moved so far beyond that that it would be a waste of time. Read it in a book, and move on.
Especially in the age of the internet, a skeptic could set up an experiment with say 50 others of like mind across the globe. Do the old Erastothenes experiment but around a meridian line describing a circle.
But who am I fooling.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.