That’s why they removed the one at the Smithsonian!! :smack:
I think the Flat Earthers and the Moon Landing Deniers and even the Anti-Vaxxers and Climate Change Liers (and effectively all conspiracy folks) all know that they need to be oppressed to be successful. They are all taking a page from teh playbook of the Westboro Baptist Church- start angry and get your opposition to attack so that you can be oppressed.
That to me is why your “guide” to the artwork got hostile first is that they need to feel oppressed to demonstrate they have the truth and the world is against them- that builds their internal community. I suspect that we will continue to see this strategy of wall building to create these isolated belief systems- Facebook groups was just the tip of the iceberg. <Now on my soapbox> I personally believe that this strategy works well with people pre-disposed for religion and religious persecution. The next step toward persecution for other beliefs is a very easy one.
I’m irresistibly reminded of a – fictional – episode set about a century ago, involving ultra-religious Flat Earthers. It’s in The Emperor’s Coloured Coat, one of John Biggins’s splendid series of novels featuring an officer in the navy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in that entity’s last years (when it had an Adriatic Sea coast). The hero, caught in the Far East by the outbreak of World War I, is trying – by whatever means come to hand – to get back to his homeland and his naval duties.
In the Dutch East Indies, he manages to get passage on a Dutch ship taking Muslim pilgrims to Jeddah, the port for Mecca. All the ship’s officers are extremely fundamentalist and uncompromising Calvinists of the most strict and severe kind; they are convinced that the earth is flat – whether because of the sort of reasoning laid out above, or because they read Scripture as asserting that it’s flat, or a bit of both. The hero is initially concerned as to – with people of such a persuasion doing the navigating – where on the planet they are actually likely to fetch up. However, something of an anti-climax is revealed: it turns out that Flat-Earther navigational data and techniques are, rather boringly, not as far removed from conventional ditto as one might imagine. Jeddah is reached on schedule and without trouble.
Don’t you mean flatabouts?
Flat earth. I don’t see how anyone can actually believe it. We’ve seen the earth from the moon. You can see some of it, not all of it. if I’m looking at the earth from the moon and I can see North America but not Africa, where’s Africa? On Side 2 like a record? I just can’t see how anyone genuinely believes this stuff.
I’m still planning to pitch the TV idea taking flat earthers go on an expedition to the edge of the world.
Ha, good luck with that.
Well, if you don’t believe in a space program or that we went to the moon, it’s easy to dismiss all that evidence…
The last time I bet money was 35 years ago with a friend that didn’t believe the Flat Earth Society existed. Brought him an application and other evidence and won $1.
I’ve recently been thinking about my days of dabbling in celestial navigation (now a good while back).
The thought occurred to me that it would be interesting to hear a Flat Earther explain how so many people managed to do so well navigating their way all over the flat Earth using a theory about its shape that is so wildly at variance with “reality”.
Translation: “We’re not smart enough to figure any of this out, so we just assume that nobody can, therefore the proof for our conclusions is literally our own ignorance.”
I have to believe that, for the most part, most of those “Flat Earthers” are just bullshitting for the sake of humor. Sure, you’re going to have some mentally unbalanced people who might actually believe that stuff, but I find it incredible that any sane person could possibly believe that nonsense. All you have to do is look at the sun and the moon to see that they are ROUND.
I enjoy engaging with Flat-Earthers by countering their “proof” with even dumber counter-arguments. First off, the earth isn’t flat. I’ve been on mountains, and the earth is hilly AF. Can’t fool me! The bottom of clouds being flat is countered by the links in my chainsaw being flat, but they go around anyway. And the no-spinning stuff is easily adressed by he observation that every globe I have ever seen, spins - so there. I’ve done this a couple times - both times the progression seemed to be from being seen as a likely possible convert to being too unreasonable/dumb to talk to.
Excellent idea.
I’d back up the physics book with astronomy, seismology, meteorology… etc. The heavier the better.
A still don’t know where good old Newton fits in with their “reasoning”. His work definitely assumed the world was a spheroid, and in any case his Theory of Gravity (unproven!) is a bit old hat these days. I bet they don’t have time for Galileo and Jupiter’s so-called “moons” either.
If they’re there next week I will ask them if a Star Turtle is involved, or else to follow bobot’s idea. What the frack in on the other side?
I run into this a lot with the climate change denial and anti-vax crowd: “We don’t understand the science, therefore the scientists are stupid.”
My default response to the gibberish these sort of people espouse: “I like how you think that’s an argument.”
Interesting that they would bring up Newton who famously depicted the world as round in the cannonball diagram in his famous Principia.
I’ll pass on this one, based on having seen a high school physics book that showed a picture of an astronaut doing a spacewalk over this caption:
“As you get further from the center of the Earth, gravity decreases - until, in outer space, you’re weightless!”
Not quite as bad as embracing a flat Earth, but still pretty freaking bad.
A good case for beating the editors with the book to make sure it’s fixed it in the next edition.
No, you drop it on their head. Then when they say “Ow, you dropped a book on my head” you reply “That’s just your theory.”
In the land of the concrete cow, the biggest maniac is king.
Go on now, git outta here with your Dr Xavier science and bein’ smart and all that.