Notes from a Flat Earth Conference • Hacker News Board

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#61

Post by brightball » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #17

I've been spending quite a bit of time interacting with the young-earth creationist community on Reddit and YouTube. It is closely related to flat-earth, though there is one significant difference: YEC is overtly religious, and specifically Christian. Other than that many of the forms of argument are the same. From that experience I have made two observations: 1. These people are not idiots (at least the YECs aren't,…

Inerrancy is a whole other bag of chips. I teach a Sunday School class and one of my big topics is man made rules that aren’t Biblically supported.

Inerrancy falls in that camp from my reading. There’s a single verse that the basis for the entire doctrine.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

This verse is interpreted to mean that it is inerrant. There’s a wide gap between inerrant and useful for teaching from my own reading. There are many people wiser than me who disagree on the subject.

My own interpretation is simply that Jesus constantly spoke in metaphor because it was more useful for teaching. Why would we assume that the creation of everything, that involves so many intricate details, would be any different? Would we expect books on microbiology and geology to accompany Genesis?

Of course not. Genesis, Revelation and Job are 3 books of the Bible that don’t document events as observed. I believe (not 100%) that all the rest do.

Bookenders as I call them, people who only want to argue about Genesis and Revelation, are a concern because they take away from the real message to pursue an argument that nobody can win. It’s not productive and it’s not useful.

If everyone was convinced that the earth was or wasn’t 6,000 years old tomorrow it wouldn’t change a single facet of life on earth for anyone. It would only remove one argument. IMO, that makes it a pointless subject to debate and only creates friction.

Romans 14 is pretty clear about this too.

https://www.biblehub.com/niv/romans/14.htm

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#62

Post by shadowgovt » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #32

> All this is to say that rational questions and arguments miss the point entirely. These are not rational beliefs, nor even really beliefs. They are more like identities, firmly established and fiercely defended. Their existence is not a happy one, either. It seemed to me that they were commonly the product of deep personal and social tragedy. This seems to me to be the chief problem of social media. We live in a po…

They can be internally-consistent beliefs, which is what makes them tricky (both for the believer and the rational contradictorian). But internally-consistent isn't quite the same as rational.

Where they deviate from rational is either failure to align to observational reality or an Occam's Razor argument (but be aware that Occam's Razor doesn't apply for a true believer; if something is true, it doesn't matter if it's complicated! ;) ).

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#63

Post by mayankkaizen » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

In my real life I've never met a flat-earth guy (I live in India). I genuinely tried hard but couldn't find one in real life.

Most flat-earth people I found online seem to be Americans. This is possibly anecdotal but I'm puzzled as to why they are all Americans. It is coincidence or there is something about America?

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#64

Post by Aaronstotle » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #22

I used to be a flat earther. No, I didn't actually believe the earth was flat, but I loved the outrage it provoked and the attention I got when I told people I was a flat earther. I also enjoyed trying to defend my position and call out (valid) logical fallacies round earthers were making. It really forces you to improve your debate skills when you have to defend an impossible position. Lastly, there was a social asp…

Being a troll is good fun, however, I think at some point if you keep the charade going long enough, it does infect the psyche.

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#65

Post by natcombs » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #17

I've been spending quite a bit of time interacting with the young-earth creationist community on Reddit and YouTube. It is closely related to flat-earth, though there is one significant difference: YEC is overtly religious, and specifically Christian. Other than that many of the forms of argument are the same. From that experience I have made two observations: 1. These people are not idiots (at least the YECs aren't,…

YEC is not closely related to Flat earthers. I know many YEC that refute flat earth theory completely. The overlap of the two is small, but maybe there are a few outspoken ones on Reddit (it’s always the outspoken ones isn’t it?)

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#66

Post by munchbunny » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

purple-again wrote: post #28

umvi wrote: post #22

I used to be a flat earther. No, I didn't actually believe the earth was flat, but I loved the outrage it provoked and the attention I got when I told people I was a flat earther. I also enjoyed trying to defend my position and call out (valid) logical fallacies round earthers were making. It really forces you to improve your debate skills when you have to defend an impossible position. Lastly, there was a social asp…

I believe polite people call us "contrarians" while everyone else calls us "assholes". But yeah I get it, I truly enjoy taking opposite sides of arguments against people that are passionately arguing their position for much the same reasons you have described above.

I think everyone has a bit of a contrarian inside them. I used to express it more readily, because, let's face it, it's fun! But I noticed that increasingly I was just encouraging "true believers", so I stopped. The reality check for me was that, starting a few years ago, increasingly frequently when I started to try to make up ridiculous sounding arguments and not even logically sound ones, people on both sides would think I was being serious. The world doesn't need me adding to the insanity.

The straw that broke the camel's back was when I tried to make up an obviously ridiculous constitutional legal argument as a joke and accidentally hit something where a court clerk told me sovereign citizens actually use the argument. If you can roll a d10 for the Bill of Rights and a conclusion you want and land on something that someone actually tries to argue, then... well, that's today's reality.

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#67

Post by simplify » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #17

I've been spending quite a bit of time interacting with the young-earth creationist community on Reddit and YouTube. It is closely related to flat-earth, though there is one significant difference: YEC is overtly religious, and specifically Christian. Other than that many of the forms of argument are the same. From that experience I have made two observations: 1. These people are not idiots (at least the YECs aren't,…

> So if science leads you to the conclusion that life has no transcendent purpose (and it does)

How does it lead to that? I feel like that's a false assumption that many people make, religious or not.

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#68

Post by shadowgovt » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

RobRivera wrote: post #16

BrianOnHN wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure this won't be a popular comment, but based on the descriptions in the article, the flat earthers seem very similar to the Trump supporters I know (family, not by choice). The clear distinction is the absolute unwillingness to listen logic without screaming what-a-about conspiracy A, or conspiracy B, or C. Or the classic "your just a socialist" inbetween talking about their social security and medicare benefi…

>Trump supporters I know (family, not by choice) What is the implication here? Is it bad to have friends who are Trump supporters? EDIT: I see my point of political bias proven, complete with intolerance, rationalization of said intolerance, gross assumptions, and overall it leaves me disappointed that the HN crowd allows this.

One can choose friends, and when one chooses some friends, it casts strong suspicions on one's character. This is not new to human behavior or social structure.

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#69

Post by Covzire » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

mcculley wrote: post #46

Covzire wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your first point, even creationists believe in empirical science and I doubt you'll find any meaningful disagreement between a die hard creationist and an evolutionary biologist on the empirical data. The line between empirical and circumstantial or interpretive evidence is often very blurry, however.

My 3rd though 6th grade education was at a private Christian school. We were explicitly taught that the Earth is ~6,000 years old and that fossils are a test of faith in that belief. Fundamentalist creationists exist. https://enki.org/2018/07/30/things-i-learned-in-elementary-s...

I don't doubt you, but neither of those ideas are empirical in nature and not what I was referring to.

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#70

Post by jfengel » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #17

I've been spending quite a bit of time interacting with the young-earth creationist community on Reddit and YouTube. It is closely related to flat-earth, though there is one significant difference: YEC is overtly religious, and specifically Christian. Other than that many of the forms of argument are the same. From that experience I have made two observations: 1. These people are not idiots (at least the YECs aren't,…

I can't really find any word for "No amount of data is going to persuade them otherwise." than "idiot". They may be able to constrain their idiocy to certain domains -- after all the early history of the planet (whether 5,000 or 5 billion years ago) has no real effect on your daily life.

But in my experience, it nonetheless creeps out to affect other areas of their life. YECs are often afflicted with other conspiracy theories, not just flat earthers but also climate denialsm, and these days, COVID denialism.

I find that the assumption isn't so much the teleology as the group superiority. It's not so much that the Bible is inerrant as that they are the ones who hold the truth, and those who disagree must in all cases be wrong -- and not merely wrong, but out to get them. The appeal to teleology is more about literal divine right, that "God shed his grace on thee". That leads them to make alliance with those who don't accept young-earth creationism but nonetheless share their nationalistic, chauvinist, xenophobic aims.