If it were not so sad and dangerous, we might be tempted to laugh. 600 people went to their third annual conference in Dallas, Texas. This is scary:
A YouGov survey of more than 8,000 American adults suggested last year that as many as one in six Americans are not entirely certain the world is round, while a 2019 Datafolha Institute survey of more than 2,000 Brazilian adults indicated that 7% of people in that country reject that concept, according to local media.
One in Six American adults. One in six. Good grief ! It appears to be more popular among Christianist theonomist born again religious zealots than with anybody else. You might wonder how this could happen, but you see if you are certain that an omniscient, revelatory, omnipotent, honest, perfect God told you something and you are certain that you understood what that God told you, then you are obligated to do mental gymnastic of the highest order, earning tens even from stingy judges. These people are the most literal interpreters of their Bible that exist on Earth. Metaphorical (seemingly metaphorical to my mind in any event) language that refers to the four corners of the Earth I suppose must be their “proof text” which is viewed as a poor way of creating a systematic theology from the Bible by most scholars.
More problems follow. Here is a serious unresolved (one that they have not resolved in my opinion in a way that is consistent with science ) issue. Whenever the Hebrew word yom appears with a numerical adjective (first, second ...), everywhere else that this appears in the first five books, it refers to a 24 hour day. Furthermore, the expression, morning and evening, the first day, morning and evening, the second day, morning and evening… this morning and evening seems to require an interpretation of a 24 hour day, not an age. What is the morning of an age ? How could plants survive an age of darkness ? Now, death according to the Bible is a result of sin. There should be no death until there is sin. Sin can only be committed by humans. Now, if there is no literal Adam and Eve, then there is no sin. And if there is no sin, then one does not need a Savior. And there should not have been any fossils until after the sixth day, after they sin. If these people (Adam and Eve) are not actual literal, historical people, then how do we get to real humans who actually existed like Abraham ? While there might be some gaps in the genealogies, would it make sense that the gaps in time (not listed in Genesis) are larger than the record of years ? So, then these people are forced, it appears to me, to hold to an Earth (and Universe) that has existed less than ten thousand years.
However, we know from science that the universe is 14 billion years old and humans have been around for a million years. We know this from radiometric dating method: rubidium strontium and potassium argon are two examples. We know that a parent element decays into a daughter element at a certain rate. We commonly refer to the half life of an element which is the amount of time that it takes for half of a parent element to decay into the daughter element. We use the amount of the daughter element and the decay rate to determine the age of rocks and the fossils within them. As a simple example, let us suppose that we have a refrigerator with a freezer that makes ice cubes. Suppose that when it is off, five ice cubes melt a day. Suppose that it starts with 50 ice cubes. Now, suppose on the day that we find the refrigerator and freezer that there are only 35 ice cubes. How many days has the refrigerator/freezer been off ? 50-35 = 15 / 5 = 3 days. So, it has been off 3 days. Now, this is a linear example. However, the principle applies to radiometric dating.
We also know that the universe is expanding due the red shift. An object emitting electromagnetic radiation that has an increase in its wave length will appear red. The wavelength of light is stretched which makes it viewed as shifting or moving to the red part of the spectrum of light. When an object moves away from us, the light is shifted to the red part of the spectrum while its wave lengths increase or get longer. This clearly implies the Big Bang since we simply reverse the process and instead of the universe expanding, it shrinks until it becomes microscopic, approaching zero .
These people then have a conflict. They are certain about their interpretation of the Bible and certain about the Bible’s inerrancy. Yet, their interpretations conflict with science. Still, they have painted themselves into a corner, no matter how absurd it might appear to us. And they have no way out of it. They must dispute any finding of science that conflicts with their interpretation.
They also (including Rush Limbaugh) deny anthropogenic global warming . Yet, we know that carbon dioxide traps heat. We can prove this in reproducible experiments. We have known this for at least one hundred years. Scientists at Exxon Mobil knew this in the 1980s, but hid their findings from the public. While Methane is also a heat trapping gas, it does not remain in the atmosphere nearly as long. Almost all or all climate scientists understand that man is causing global warming by release of carbon dioxide. Peer Reviewed journal articles in serious scientific periodicals support human caused global warming through carbon dioxide emissions at least at a rate of 95% . While in popular science magazines, it is disputed (up to 50% believe it or not), that is not the case in articles that must survive the scrutiny of peer review. Peer Review means that you have at least three ph.d. s in the field reviewing your article for its scientific rigor, argumentation, and general accuracy. It is tough to get an article to pass peer review. This is why few, if any, peer reviewed articles contest the truth of human caused global warming through carbon dioxide emissions.
However, these people believe (primarily from their own “logical” inferences while forming a so-called systematic theology) that humans cannot cause global warming because this would imply that it is possible for humans to make the planet uninhabitable by man. There is no place in the Bible that I know of that says humans cannot cause global warming. They never consider what if it is possible for humankind to make the planet uninhabitable, but humankind chooses to be responsible and stops emitting carbon dioxide ? In that case, even though it is possible for humans to ruin the planet, they choose not to do so. This stills leaves a planet for the Savior to return to and for the kingdom of the Savior. So, this would not eliminate these vital parts of their theology.
Returning to their conference (of these flat Earthers):
The event's schedule resembled any corporate conference, with some fairly noticeable twists. Speakers gave presentations including "Space is Fake" and "Testing The Moon: A Globe Lie Perspective." Awards for the year's best flat Earth-related videos were handed out. And believers reveled in an opportunity to meet several of the movement's most influential minds.
It continues:
On a clear day, the curvature of the Earth can be seen from an airplane window. But remarkably, the hundreds of flat Earthers at the Dallas gathering were just a small portion of the movement.
People in every pocket of this spherical planet are rejecting science and spreading the word that the Earth is flat.
There's no clear study indicating how many people have been convinced -- and flat Earthers like Weiss will tell you without evidence there are millions more in the closet anyway, including Hollywood A-listers and commercial airline pilots -- but online communities have hundreds of thousands of followers and YouTube is inundated with flat-Earth content creators, whose productions reach millions.
The Flat Earth Society has 200,000 followers on Facebook. It says in the article, “The jury is still out on gravity- but as Davidson (one of the flat Earthers) notes, nobody has ever seen it . “ The article also says most flat Earthers adopt other conspiracies. Of course, they hate NASA ! In the article, they have a picture of two young women wearing pictures of their model of the universe on identical t-shirts and then a young man holding a huge, huge poster that says that NASA and other groups admit that the Earth is flat and attempts to prove it below the title.
“When you find out the Earth is flat, you become empowered !!” . How can a lie empower anybody ?
Again, some of us might be tempted to laugh. I am honestly more tempted to cry . In fact, it actually did make me cry while reading and writing this. It hurts my heart! This is dangerous. Let’s remember the context: cries of Fake News by conservatives and Trump applied to truth. Trump constantly lies and the elected Republicans in Congress support him in these lies. These people take the word of Rush Limbaugh, a high school graduate, over well-respected academic institutions and the mainstream media which neither supports the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party. It is pretty neutral. They do not listen to mainstream science. They do not do the hard work that scientists have done to reach their conclusions. They simply find some person (hopefully famous, maybe somebody way out of the mainstream of science whose views have been proven false, an eccentric) who support (or whose words can be twisted to sound like they support) their views. We have lost our ability to think critically and determine accurate, unbiased sources of truth and information. We have lost the notion of objective truth ! And all of this is extremely dangerous !!!
Monday, Nov 18, 2019 · 3:03:56 PM +00:00
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Dem
One strong reason why this alarms me is that these people are adopting a belief that they themselves can easily see is false. For example, if somebody got in a plane and kept flying east or in a boat. The curvature of the horizon. Gravity. Pictures from space. And we can also ask Cui bono ?
Monday, Nov 18, 2019 · 4:50:29 PM +00:00
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Dem
I did not intend to attack anybody’s religion or make anybody upset with me. There are many great progressives who are liberal Christians. I appreciate them. And If I upset them, I apologize. It certainly was not my intent. Liberal Christians do not interpret the Bible in a literal way. Where there are statements that they know are not true, they interpret them in some other way or acknowledge that these are inaccurate statements.
The leader who was interviewed was born again. He spoke of how this group comes together and supports each other from attacks from our modern world. It appears to me that fundamentalists are more likely to have a reason to adopt this flat Earth theory than others. I will admit, I could be wrong. However, this is my understanding. Fundamentalists are the people most likely to cast doubt upon evolution. The above is what leads me to suspect that it is more likely that people who are conservative and born again are the ones who form this group.
Yom certainly does have other meanings. However, its first meaning is a solar day. If context suggests a word is being used allegorically, then we should look to its second meaning or third meaning. However, if we do not have some reason to doubt that the author meant the primary meaning of a word, then we should begin with that meaning. We are trying to determine what the author meant, not what we wish that the author said or meant. Yom normally means a solar. So, unless there is a good reason to believe that it is being used allegorically, we should believe that it is being used in its first sense or meaning. Moreover, when yom is used with a numerical adjective (like first or second), then it always in the first five books refers to a 24 hour time period. The phrase morning and evening hardly makes sense unless we understand the author to be referring to a solar day. There are other reasons, but those reasons alone give us good grounds to believe that the author meant a solar day there. So, my point is simply that the author probably meant a 24 hour day when the author wrote that passage.
Of course, progressive Christians are free to get their own understandings from their Bible. I am just laying out what I think fundamentalists should get out of that passage.
Monday, Nov 18, 2019 · 4:53:38 PM +00:00
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Dem
I am feeling really sick to my stomach. I want to thank everybody for their kind words and revealing and interesting comments. I apologize to every religious person whom I offended. I apologize. I did not intend to offend anybody.
Monday, Nov 18, 2019 · 6:00:13 PM +00:00
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Dem
Here is an introduction to the scientific consequences of a flat Earth.
People who believe in a flat Earth assume that gravity would pull straight down, but there's no evidence to suggest it would work that way. What we know about gravity suggests it would pull toward the center of the disk. That means it would only pull straight down at one point on the center of the disk. As you got increasingly far from the center, gravity would tug more and more horizontally. This would have some strange impacts, like sucking all the water toward the center of the world, and making trees and plants grow diagonally, since they develop in the opposite direction of gravity's pull.
If it were possible to switch off that gravity, the Earth would shoot away in a straight line and hightail it out of the solar system. Instead, the linear momentum and the sun's gravity combine, resulting in a circular orbit around the sun.
Likewise, in a flat world, satellites likely wouldn't be possible. How would they orbit a plane? "There are a number of satellite missions that society depends on that just wouldn't work," Davis says. For this reason, he says, "I cannot think of how GPS would work on a flat Earth."
