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Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

willpatrick.co.uk

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Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#121

Post by baddox »

brightball wrote: post #61
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…

But of course, that interpretation of 2 Timothy is a post hoc defense of biblical inerrancy. There are much more obvious reasons for religious authorities to emphasize the absolute authority of religious scriptures (particularly when they also claim exclusive authority to interpret those scriptures).

It's also important to note that "inerrancy" means very different things to different people. I remember one evangelical preacher who informally explained it as essentially "God made sure that nothing got into the scripture that he didn't want in the scripture," which is a much weaker claim and is essentially synonymous with what it means for something to be scripture.

> 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.

The Book of Ezekiel has a lot of pretty wild stuff, but I guess you can say it's supposedly documenting Ezekiel's visions (but isn't that also true of The Revelation?). The Book of Daniel is also apocalyptic literature, much of which was likely not intended to be read as a document of observed events. There's also a ton of poetry (Psalms, Proverbs, etc.) that I wouldn't consider "documents of events as observed."

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#122

Post by rhn_mk1 »

lisper wrote: post #41
cma wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would some point of existence or meaning lead specifically to Christianity?

That is a very good question, and the answer is very long, much too long for an HN comment. But there IS an answer. (There is of course an answer for all other religions as well.)

Don't leave us hanging! Where can we learn the answer?

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#123

Post by baddox »

lisper wrote: post #118
baddox wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the whole point: some people value purpose more than they value explanation. Sure, but I don't think the debate is over whether creationists derive a sense of purpose from their beliefs. I have no doubt that they do. You'd never need to discuss things like fossils or evolution or cosmology to determine whether one derives a sense of purpose from one's beliefs. My assumption was that these debates are about t…

Yes, you're right. But by the time you get around to arguing about fossils your thought processes have already diverged beyond reconciliation. It's not because either of you are idiots, it's because you started from different foundational assumptions.

That may very well be true, but making arguments that conceal your true world view or "axioms" is intellectually dishonest.

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#124

Post by lisper »

baddox wrote: post #123
lisper wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you're right. But by the time you get around to arguing about fossils your thought processes have already diverged beyond reconciliation. It's not because either of you are idiots, it's because you started from different foundational assumptions.

That may very well be true, but making arguments that conceal your true world view or "axioms" is intellectually dishonest.

I've never encountered a YEC who concealed their foundational belief in the inerrancy of the Bible. In fact, if you watch Kent Hovind, he opens every single video he makes with, "I believe that the Bible is true and scientifically accurate." If you're going to lob charges of intellectual dishonesty you should be very careful that you're not living in a glass house.

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#125

Post by shadowgovt »

lm28469 wrote: post #119
shadowgovt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You appear to have equated depriving somebody of employment opportunities with disallowing them from living, and the opportunity to be employed somewhere with basic rights. In general, the two are not the same. And if they are in a given society, in this age, that society is in need of help. Nobody in a modern, healthy society with ample resources should have to work to be allowed to live.

Define "living". Sure you can "exist" without a job, maybe even afford rent in some countries like France or Germany (they give you something like 30% of the min wage for just being there), but I'd doubt many people would call that life. In countries like the US or third world countries you're in for a pretty miserable existence if you don't have a job. I'm not saying it's good, but it's reality

> I'm not saying it's good, but it's reality

No argument there, but we should do something about our barbaric local culture.

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#126

Post by lisper »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #122
lisper wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very good question, and the answer is very long, much too long for an HN comment. But there IS an answer. (There is of course an answer for all other religions as well.)

Don't leave us hanging! Where can we learn the answer?

Any Christian apologetics web site. Or your local church.

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#127

Post by lisper »

jfengel wrote: post #120
lisper wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't really find any word for "No amount of data is going to persuade them otherwise." than "idiot". That's because you find the data persuasive. They don't. That in and of itself does not make them idiots.

It's not just that I find the data persuasive, but that I find data persuasive. They don't. They reject the notion of data when it doesn't suit them. That makes them not merely wrong, but dangerous to me. They will go out of their way to make my life worse, without being able to judge the cost to themselves. Regardless of what derogatory name I choose to call it, our outlook is fundamentally at odds. They've shown re…

Look, I'm on your side. I agree that YECs are both wrong and dangerous. My point here is that you cannot effectively oppose them on those grounds. They believe that you are wrong and dangerous, so the situation is symmetric. A mere belief that the opposition is wrong and dangerous cannot prevail on its own.

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#128

Post by katmannthree »

kstenerud wrote: post #15
katmannthree wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a better term for people with a lack of critical thinking skills and/or a lot of unexamined closely held beliefs?

I've met a number of religious people who were quite good at their technical jobs that required critical thinking skills. So long as the knowledge, skills and behaviors required of them don't clash with their identity beliefs, there's no problem in terms of performance.

Sure, but most of those fields don't require a carefully examined set of beliefs about the world itself in order to succeed. A logically inconsistent but functional worldview is usually enough. As an extreme example it's entirely possible to be an award-winning pediatric neurosurgeon while simultaneously believing that the Egyptian pyramids were grain storage silos.

Fields that require carefully examined beliefs about almost everything (physics for example) are a lot harder to pull that off in.

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#129

Post by baddox »

lisper wrote: post #124
baddox wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may very well be true, but making arguments that conceal your true world view or "axioms" is intellectually dishonest.

I've never encountered a YEC who concealed their foundational belief in the inerrancy of the Bible. In fact, if you watch Kent Hovind, he opens every single video he makes with, "I believe that the Bible is true and scientifically accurate." If you're going to lob charges of intellectual dishonesty you should be very careful that you're not living in a glass house.

> In fact, if you watch Kent Hovind, he opens every single video he makes with, "I believe that the Bible is true and scientifically accurate."

If you're spending lots of effort making what appear to be good-faith arguments toward some conclusion, but that conclusion is in fact an axiom that you hold, then that's intellectually dishonest. If "Bible is true and scientifically accurate" is one of your axioms, then it's intellectually dishonest to provide some supposed piece of evidence that supports this claim (e.g. supposed missing links in the fossil record), because by definition 1) no evidence is necessary to support an axiomatic claim and 2) no evidence or explanation can possibly change your mind.

Re: Notes from a Flat Earth Conference

#130

Post by toss1 »

lm28469 wrote: post #99
toss1 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has zero to do with the specific beliefs It has everything to do with the person actively maintaining willful ignorance and complete distrust

I find your whole line of argument to be pretty frail and ignorant, I wouldn't bar you from being able to work though. If you don't see how this kind of system would be abused you have a very peculiar perspective on life.

Who said anything about barring anyone from work?

It is a specific employer choosing to question someone on their voluntary relationship with facts.

How is it that people insisting on believing in provable falsehoods (not religious beliefs) is somehow a protected class?

There is also nothing preventing a flat-earther employer setting up the same filter with the opposite polarity, i.e., filtering out people who actively work with scientific principles, perhaps because he considers that science-minded people are less likely to follow direction. It's his choice.

Real example, a lawsuit in Connecticut affirmed that a police department was within its rights to deny employment to a candidate who scored too HIGH on their intelligence test.

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