Scraping the Barrel of Stupid

I'd heard of the Flat Earth Society before, but I didn't realise that some people actually take the "theory" seriously.

Words fail me how stupid these people are. Their forums are quite funny though, because none of the FE (flat earth) proponents can engage in actual discourse when their views are challenged.

I thought creationism was bad, but this really does scrape the barrel of stupid.

Here's a video with a 3D model of the flat earth (antarctica encircles the edge of the disc, and a giant ice wall holds the seas in):

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eZGAzN9X_E"]Flat Earth - Lunar eclipse finally explained - YouTube[/ame]

Here are their forums:

http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php#c2

I have now officially lost all hope for humanity.

 

People believe what they.. 1. want to believe, 2. what they are forced to believe since birth. Without ever going into space themselves, they stick to their foundational beliefs and assume that everyone else is too stupid to see their truth. These are the people that grow up and die in the same small town and are content with what they are told.

 

was trying to say that most of us will never go into space, and so we have to use the experiences/stories/pictures/video of those who have. This evidence clearly shows us a round earth, but for some reason when you have a belief like that, you can ignore incredibly obvious evidence.

 

Meh. People believe Jesus performed miracles. I really don't see the difference.

 

You know what is sad? That even a lot of smart educated people believe crazy dross like this.

Which goes to show that this isn't realy about stupidity so much as psychology. A lot of people think & believe whatever they think & believe because that is what they want or need to.

Just look at the list of cognitive biases and tell me humans on the whole are rational.

 

You guys are dumb flat earth for life yo.

 

As I understood it these flat earth people used the belief as a basis for argument and discourse to test their debating skills rather than an actual belief.
Are you telling me there are people that actually believe the world is flat? Really?

 

Notice how anything can be given a patina of serious respectability by appending the word “society” to it.

The Tin Foil Hat Society

See?

 

That was my thought too.....turns out I was wronh!

 

I also thought that, until the other day when I spotted a video refuting flat earthers, and found out that some people really do believe that it is self-evident that the earth is flat, and the idea that the earth is spherical, or that we ever went into space, is all fake.

Check this nonsense out:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpOyU-BVHHE"]Flat Earth in plane site "easy over" - YouTube[/ame]

I can understand the Jesus thing a lot more. At least there is no way to actually prove he didn't perform miracles.

This stuff is people either not understanding, or wilfully ignoring, what is right in front of their nose.

There seem to be two camps of flat earthers; the fundamentalists that interpret passages in the bible (Boko Haram are also flat earthers) as suggesting the earth is flat. The more worrying group are these people who follow a nineteenth Century empirical philosophy of only trusting your own observations.

It all started with the Bedford Level Experiments:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Level_experiment

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWl1pWiMLyo"]The Bedford Level Flat Earth Experiment - YouTube[/ame]

Here's a short debunking: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4338

 

Of course there is. Physics disproves miracles.

 

Physics cannot prove that Jesus did not perform miracles. It can only give the possibility of that happening infinitesimal odds.

You can't prove something that you can't test (and even testing cannot truly prove something as unequivocally "true").

That's just not as disturbing to me as people who can ignore things they can actually observe for themselves.

 

It's only flat on two sides, it's very obvious. If it was round all the water would spill off.

 

It does not disprove eyewitness error though, nor is it very good at explaining magic tricks - logically "a miracle" means "cannot be explained", which again does not imply the divine.

When people believe Jesus performed miracles they are not believing in him so much as the actual eyewitnesses

 

I think miracle means "goes against the laws of the universe".

 

No it goes against KNOWN laws...big difference

 

If I put a ball on the ground, it doesn't roll anywhere.

See?

Flat.

You guys are dumb, I'm out of here.

 

Well, *technically* earth is not round it is spheroid.... there is a difference and it *is* flat at the poles... so everyone is right

I stumbled upon some flat earth society stuff a few years ago and was just floored to realize that some people truly do believe that the earth is flat. Unfortunately there are people who are not that bright, who don't question everything. Not having knowledge of something is not stupidity... it is just being without knowledge, but the skill and practice to inquire, to critically analyse, and to deduce - that is smart.... a lot of people cannot be bothered. Sad. I know.

 

This means theres a conspiracy to hide this from the world - for hundreds of years by thousands of navigators, pilots and even between countries through WW2 - WHY?
I don't get it.

 

Big Geography.