Sympathy For The Atheist

The inhabitants of the Earth: Lost in space

Barry Arrington, supremo of the de facto intelligent design web-site Uncommon Descent, has recently criticised science populariser Bill Nye for underestimating the ancient's view of the size of the cosmos. Let me quote the first part of Arrington's article (see here):

As long-time readers know, we at UD often disparage Wikipedia for its left-wing bias. Still, you have to give it its due. For a quick lookup of non-controversial facts, it has its uses.

Uses to which, apparently, Bill Nye has not put it. If he had looked up Wiki’s entry on Ptolemy’s Almagest (published in around 150 AD), he would have known that the ancients understood very well that the universe is incomprehensibly vast. Here is the Summary of Ptolemy’s Cosmos from that article:

"The cosmology of the Syntaxis includes five main points, each of which is the subject of a chapter in Book I. What follows is a close paraphrase of Ptolemy’s own words from Toomer’s translation.

The celestial realm is spherical, and moves as a sphere.

The Earth is a sphere.

The Earth is at the center of the cosmos.

The Earth, in relation to the distance of the fixed stars, has no appreciable size and must be treated as a mathematical point.

The Earth does not move."

The “the ancients thought the universe was tiny” myth and the “the ancients thought the earth was flat” myth are both refuted by the Almagest.  The persistence of these myths is difficult to explain given that it takes about 30 seconds on Google to find the Wiki article.

But apparently Bill Nye is so busy spouting his anti-Christian propaganda, he does not have 30 seconds to spare.

At the risk of being accused of a left-wing bias......

Ideas that the Earth is a sphere first appear in historical records around 600 BC (See Greek history and possibly also the Book of Job, a book thought to be dated circa 6th century BC). It is of course possible that the concept of the Earth as a sphere goes even further back, but the historical references we possess, as far as I am aware, don't go further back. As Christianity effectively came out of the classical world, belief in a spherical Earth was widespread among Christians from the start although not fully comprehensively so. But Ptolemaic theory swept the academic board after the crusades when the Western Scholastics had rediscovered classical learning from the Arabs. 

The trouble with Arrington's use of the quotation from Ptolemy is that in natural language usage of words like "tiny", "big" and "immense" are relative to perspective and context. When I'm driving around the small country of England, my car in relation to even a small country has no appreciable size and must be treated as a mathematical point. Even if one appreciates the relative insignificance of the size of a car in comparison with England or the Earth itself that doesn't mean to say one has a full appreciation of the size of the cosmic context in which the Earth is set. And so it is with Ptolemy: In spite of his comment about the relative size of the Earth we cannot conclude that Ptolemy really had a perspective on the extensiveness of the cosmos in the sense that we understand it today.

The fact that the stars and even the planets show no appreciable parallax probably tipped off many an intelligent ancient observer that those stars were very far away relative to Earthly dimensions. But although they might have an inkling that the "fixed sphere of stars" (See Ptolemy in Arrington's quote) was very distant, naturally enough given the perspective of their times Ptolemy and the Scholastics of the middle ages believed the Earth to be stationary at the centre of things as Arrington's quote confirms. It is this latter fact which really betrays the understandably limited perspective of their time.

There is "big", there is "very big", there is"immense" and there is "incomprehensibly large". I suggest that as time and science have progressed regarding the size of the cosmos we have moved from very big (Ptolemy) through immense (pre-Hubble) to incomprehensibly large (post-Hubble). Since Hubble's discoveries we take it for granted that the size of the cosmos makes even an immense object like our galaxy look small, very small. It is difficult to believe that less than one hundred years (i.e. a long human life time) have gone by since Hubble showed us that the starry universe goes way beyond our galaxy.

In the second half of the sixteenth century Thomas Digges unequivocally advanced the idea of the stars being spread across an infinite cosmos (as opposed to the stars being fixed on a distant sphere of quintessence). Not long after Digges, came the Italian Giordano Bruno who also proposed an infinite cosmos with an infinite number of worlds. On top of these huge increases in scale the centre stage status of the Earth in the Ptolemaic and medieval  cosmologies was in the process of being lost.  At the time these were revolutionary ideas and a complete departure from a finite, symmetrical and enclosed cosmos. The loss of the Earth's center-stage status, if anything, was probably a bigger blow to Western humanity's sense of special-ness than revelations of the ever increasing dimensions of that stage. The take home lesson is that human perceptions on the cosmic context and the status of the Earth have changed considerably over time whatever Arrington is trying to tell us. 

I'm a Christian but I have sympathy with many reasonable and friendly atheists who have difficulty perceiving a Christian God in the modern world view, quite apart from the perennial questions surrounding existence of suffering and evil. Through science God has progressively revealed to humanity a challenging post-enlightenment perspective on a cosmos that has immense depths in space & time and an Earth with no significant central position in terms of its space-time context, Moreover, the folk view of evolution is that it is an informationless process needing no special conditions in order to work (But see here).  All in all the popular impression is that the Earth is an incidental and accidental side show. This apparent loss of Terrestrial centrality and gain in banality has seated itself deeply in the Western psyche. Compounding the apparent loss in the sacredness and sanctity of life is the irony that even in these days of quantum theory the obsolete idea of an underlying insentient  "billiard ball" reality, independent of perception, as the primary reality is still a concept in many people's minds including, surprisingly,  Christians like Justin Brierley who are tempted to solve their consequent philosophical problems with a quasi-gnostic dualist world view.

These understandable but not always correct perceptions and reactions must be factored in when considering the rampant unbelief in the West. Consequently, I find I can hardly blame atheists for their lack of belief, many of whom are perfectly reasonable people whatever many right-wing Christians may think. True, there are some really nasty militant atheists out there who want their ideas to rule the world and would not balk at a Marxist dictatorship in order to impose their will. But then this is all part of flawed human nature and so not surprisingly we also find many really nasty authoritarian Christians out there who are just as domineering and whose toy-town cosmology and theology only further encourages unbelief and polarisation. The return to young earthism, geocentricism,  flat earthism and crackpot conspiracy theories among right-wing Christians and new-agers is evidence that many Westernised people are neither mature enough nor ready for the modern perspective and are unwilling to rise to the challenge it presents.


 I will leave the last words to Sir Kenneth Clarke.

Note: I think that this short sequence of film was taken at Osterley house

Relevant Link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzLwnl6qE_yed05ld0xhcGJwaDQ/view

ADDENDUM 4/2/19

Note on the “Axis of Evil”

Using a combination of the cosmological principle and relativity theory it is possible to trivially proclaim that the Earth is just as much at the centre of the cosmos as any other point. This “many centres” cosmos is, of course, contains nothing like the connotations implicit in the medieval use and interpretation of the Ptolemaic universe, a universe which only tolerated one centre, one axis of symmetry, not many centres and many axes of symmetry....any more than it tolerated Bruno’s “many worlds” concept. To the medieval mind the Earth and its cosmic context was like a stage set, with the Earth at centre stage, the focus of the great cloud of witnesses of Hebrews 12:1. The medieval universe did not have a democracy of centres any more than its concept of government was democratic. The Earth was the centre of creation not a centre. Democracy, whether social or cosmological, was an unnatural idea in a feudal context. 

However, things could change and so I must mention here the so called “Axis of Evil”: Some of the latest high tolerance measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background have discovered asymmetries which give a hint that we may yet be able to conclude that the Earth occupies a special position in the cosmos  - See Wikipedia for a brief account of the “axis of evil”.  The Axis of Evil suggests that the Earth is at an exclusive axis of cosmic symmetry.  It would be nice to find that the Earth’s position and orientation is somehow special after all and that its centrality is not just a case of trivial coordinate system levelling allowing any observer to claim to be at “a centre”. Quoting Wiki:

Data from the Planck Telescope published in 2013 has since found stronger evidence for the anisotropy. "For a long time, part of the community was hoping that this would go away, but it hasn’t," says Dominik Schwarz of the University of Bielefeld in Germany.

But let’s not hold our breath because these results may still prove to be an artefact of measurement:

There is no consensus on the nature of this and other observed anomalies and their statistical significance is unclear. For example, a study that includes the Planck mission results shows how masking techniques could introduce errors that when taken into account can render several anomalies, including the Axis of Evil, not statistically significant. A 2016 study compared isotropic and anisotropic cosmological models against WMAP and Planck data and found no evidence for anisotropy.

Although at this stage it is clearly unwise for theists to laud these observations as restoring the special cosmic status of the Earth in human eyes, what the furore over the “Axis of Evil” reveals is just how far in the minds of (wo)men the status of the Earth’s place in the cosmic scheme of things has fallen since the medieval period and this is at least in part down to the revelations of astrophysics and generalisations of Copernicanism. Evidence of this fall is implicit in the reception among scientist of the so-called "Axis of Evil": For whether the apparent CMB large scale asymmetries are actually there or not, the mere hint of it is clearly a big shock to many scientists and in fact an unpleasant surprise to at least some of them for whom the whole affair sticks in the gullet; it’s not called the Axis of Evil for nothing!  The "Axis of Evil" affair shows us that restoring the Earth to some kind of "preferred" frame of reference would be a huge turn around in the thinking of Western scientific cosmology. Such has the cosmic insignificance of the Earth’s position gripped many a Western mind since Copernicus!

As Kenneth Clarke says; We have long rough voyage ahead of us and we can't say how it will end because it isn't over yet. We are still the offspring of the Romantic movement.

New Ager Capitalizes on Spiritual Thirst and Disaffection with the Science Establishment

The false assumptions of science according to New Ager Gregg Braden
Personally I don't know what he's talking about. 

This post fits into my series on New-Ageism of which there have only been two other posts so far. That is:

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/whats-gone-wrong.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/new-agers-and-fundamentalists.html

The above picture was posted on Facebook by my New Age friend I identified as "Frank Saucepan" in the first of the above links. It appears that he had photographed his screen whilst looking at the website of a New Age guru (More about him later). Frank's accompanying comment to the above picture was:

I trust science to keep me in a safe plane, heat my house and let me communicate via a telephone.

When I was at school 20 years ago these 5 assumptions were taught as scientific fact- now disproved

This is why I don't trust science for the more mystical questions of life - it fails

What I think Frank is trying to tell us is that although he trusts science when it comes to putting his life in its hands when he flies he nevertheless feels let down, even lied to, by established science's failure to address his spiritual need for meaning, purpose and sacred mystery.

But Frank is inconsistent. Frank has a history of interest in conspiracy theorism and as my first link above shows, the flat earth conspiracy theory is something that has attracted him. It seems, therefore, he has ambivalent feelings toward science. On the one hand he trusts science when he uses an aircraft, a technology that necessarily, by the way, depends on the global model of the Earth and yet on the other hand he distrusts science's spherical Earth theory. This model, in fact, ties into a coherent intelligible whole a myriad evidences. Some of those evidences are even apparent to the man in the street if he cares to look; from views across the sea to celestial observations. But the trouble is that the global model, except for the minority that journey a long way into space, cannot be taken in with one sweep of the eye: For the Earth bound the evidences of the global model are joined together by what to the suspicious science-alienated laymen can appear as beguiling, convoluted and complex logic.

I could take Frank in hand and say, "Look Frank, what quantified sense to do you make of these evidences?".  But I may as well go herding cats and than channel Frank's thoughts into a rigorous scientific line of inquiry. He wants clear and obvious answers: He will simply say "Spherical Earth? Show it to me!" And I can't do that without reference to the data provided by various scientific authorities, authorities he would distrust. Moreover, he would probably have little patience in being guided through the logic which links all this data into a coherent and elegant whole; to him it could all be sleight of hand with me as a stooge whose mind has been manipulated by the Illuminati.

It is striking how similar all this is to Christian fundamentalist diffidence toward science and  like Frank these fundamentalists have ambivalent feelings about society's scientific authorities. On the one hand they oppose so many conclusions of science and on the other hand they don't want to look like anti-intellectual rubes. So they invent the distinction between "observational" science and "historical science"; the former they think of as rigorous & respectable evidence based science whereas the latter is regarded as dubious speculative science based on presuppositions driven by an a priori worldview, perhaps even a product of a conspiracy. Certainly, the Christian fundamentalist flat earthers have to resort to conspiracy theorism as part and parcel with their theory of cosmology.

But as I have said before all science is at once both observational & historical, and non-trivial scientific objects seldom, if ever, classify as directly observational.  This is really far too subtle a point for the average fundamentalist who is looking for a pretext to do away with science which contradicts his world view fundamentalism. (I've posted on this subject many times before. See here for example)

***

The screen shot above actually comes from a New Ager called Gregg Braden. It is clear that he has set up a straw man that he can then knock down in front of his gullible fans. Let me comment on each point:

1. Evolution: explains life/human life. Evolution, in its most basic sense of being natural history, that is a history of change,  is "settled science" although just what mechanism drives evolution is not quite so settled - see here, here and here. So exactly what concept of evolution is Braden claiming to be false? 

2. Civilization began about 5000 years ago: In as much as this idea is the best construction that can be placed on the evidence it still holds good in my opinion. Both written history and archaeology point in this direction. However, I have always had a reservation at the back of my mind that perhaps the end of the ice age flooded continental shelves which hosted civilized societies - although if the continental shelves did host such societies they weren't big enough and/or civilized enough to leave a strong global trace in the archaeological and historical records.

3. Consciousness is separate from the physical world. This seems to be an allusion to the so-called "ghost-in-the-machine", a concept that  isn't readily testable and so not likely to classify as the object of formal science. If anything I would have said that scientific opinion and especially philosophical opinions attached to scientific culture are rather diffident about such an idea. In fact I myself have long since come to the conclusion that consciousness cannot be divorced from some kind of material nexus which expresses it. So Braden seems to have got this wrong; science doesn't dogmatically teach a clear distinction between consciousness and the physical world.  The jury seems to be out on this one. 

4.The space between things is empty: My scientific background has never lead me to this view. Initially, in geometry, space was taken to be a set of relations between points, relations that had all sorts of interesting mathematical properties; that hardly classifies as "empty" to my mind. And of course since the advent of quantum  mechanics space seems anything but empty! So once again I don't know what Braden is talking about. It's just a straw man. 

5. Nature is based on the survival of the strongest. If you modify this statement to include something to the effect that "Nature is based on the survival of the luckiest" then Braden's accusation might be approximately right! But therein lies the rub: It is this kind of statement which spiritual (wo)man finds difficult to swallow because it seems to entail an empty, meaningless, purposeless world teetering on the edge of the nihilistic chasm.  To many people this seems morally repugnant and so it is no surprise that those who offer spiritual hope get a hearing.

***

It is true that the modern cosmological picture is a big intellectual challenge to those (like myself) who wish to make anthropic sense and purpose of the cosmos (but I find it a welcome challenge because I like mysteries).  New Agers and Fundamentalists are trying to do this in their inimitable, emphatic and suave way, devoid of self-doubt as they exploit disaffection with the scientific establishment. They attempt to give reality a spiritual gloss and if science gets in their way then so much the worse for science.

It is ironic that New Agers and Christian Fundies have so much in common. Whimsical it may be but it is appropriate, then, that Gregg Braden has a passing resemblance to Christian fundamentalist Ray Comfort! As a Christian myself, however, I can understand the appeal of both: They head up a reaction against the current scientific establishment which either leaves one with a sense of abandonment at the edge of thecosmos, facing an existential crisis and postmodern nihilism or having to interpret life with a teeth gritting atheism determined to make the best of a bad job. 

Is it just me or does Gregg Braden bear a resemblance to Ray Comfort?
Suave and persuasive they lead their flocks into spiritual vistas 

New Agers and Fundamentalists

 Two anti-establishment, anti-science publicists: David Wolfe and Ken Ham both challenge the establishment with their radically different version of "science". 




I have recently become acquainted with the name David "Avocado" Wolfe, a new age alternative concepts salesman and pundit. According to his Wiki page his ideas revolve around the following subject areas (most of  which I quote directly from Wiki):

1. Nutrition, in particular organic food and raw foodism

2. Kirlian photography

3. He promotes a variety of conspiracy theories

3 . He promotes a diet based on raw plants, stating that this has a "detoxification" effect.

4. He advocates that people with cancer take dietary supplements instead of getting medical treatment, which he describes as “largely a fraud".

5. He believes that "chemtrails" exist and are harmful to people and animals.

6. He has considered cocoa to be one of several "superfoods"

7. He says that deer antler spray is "levitational" and an "androgenic force", which he promotes and sells.

8. He claims that mushrooms have an "advanced intelligence and consciousness". He has stated that mushroom spores can "levitate off the planet" and believes they are trying to "get to the center of the sun". He has stated that mushroom spores originally came from "distant planets" and were "carried by cosmic winds or meteors into the Earth's atmosphere", stating "the preliminary work develops as the mushroom mycelium sets itself up to network and nourish multi-celled carbohydrate-forming organisms". He has also stated that the mushrooms that grow in trees are "medicinal mushrooms".

9. He believes vaccines are dangerous and may not work.

10. He believes that the Earth is flat and that gravity is a hoax. (see also here for this one)

It has only recently become clear to me that these new agers have a lot in common with Christian fundamentalists, not only in their attitude to the scientific establishment but also in some of the theories they promulgate. The list above has an overlap with ideas that do the rounds among Christian fundamentalists Viz: Nutrition and supplements as the right way to treat cancer, conspiracy theories such as the chem-trail conspiracy, anti vaccination concepts and flat earthism are all alternative "theories" I have seen promoted by Christian fundamentalists.  In particular, one fundamentalist of my acquaintance has, on one occasion or another, promoted the millennium bug conspiracy, the chem-trail conspiracy, anti-vaxing, young earthism and also proclaims that the standard medical treatment of cancer is fraud and should be replaced by treatment using diet and supplements. Significantly this same person was a one time new ager who promoted new age ideas and new age diets.  

The common theme running through both subcultures seems to be disaffection with and rejection of the academic establishment, in particular the scientific establishment. But in spite of this overlap it is ironic that Christian fundamentalists and new agers would otherwise not see eye to eye; far from it in fact. 

An important question is this; how do these fundamentalists and new agers know all this alternative stuff? Do they have alternative research departments scientifically testing their ideas and remedies? More likely, however, is that they have conspiracy theory generating pundits who join the data dots in bizarre and convoluted ways. These constructions may seem arbitrary but they primarily serve an important purpose for the disaffected and alienated; they furnish an argued platform on which the deep disillusionment with established authority can find a home and provide the pretexts needed to espouse an opposing world view to challenge the  powers that be. 

The take home lesson here is that whatever is at the bottom of the malaise afflicting people as diverse as new agers and Christian fundies there are, nevertheless, significant commonalities*.  I am not really sure what  it is about our society that causes of this general disaffection; perhaps it's a rebellion against the apparent demystification and desanctification of the cosmos. After all, H. G. Wells once wrote:

Science is a match that man has just got alight. He thought he was in a room - in moments of devotion, a temple - and that this light would be reflected from and display walls inscribed with wonderful secrets and pillars carved with philosophical systems wrought into harmony. It is a curious sensation, now that the preliminary splutter is over and the flame burns up clear, to see his hands lit and just a glimpse of himself and the patch he stands on visible, and around him, in place of all that human comfort and beauty he anticipated - darkness still

On that basis it is no surprise there is a reaction against a science that is easy to interpret in nihilistic and post modern terms (See also here). But in the final analysis this nihilism and postmodernism undermines the very science on which nihilistic and postmodern claims are based (See here).

Footnote:
* An interesting question arises in connection with climate change: Christian fundies tend to see climate change science, as they do old earth theory, as a conspiracy of establishment control, whereas in contrast, I would expect new agers to be pro green energy. But either way both use the subject as a stick with which to beat the establishment: Fundamentalists will accuse the establishment of lying over it and the new agers will accuse the techno-industrial establishment  as being the cause of it. 

What's Gone Wrong?

The Copernican cosmos as promoted by Thomas Digges in the 16th Century

During a BBC Horizon program on the Stars historian of science Stephen Pumphrey of Lancaster University said that the Copernican Solar System was the beginning of both a scientific and social revolution in as much as it heralded a profound shift in humanity's perception of its place in the universe. To support his point Pumphrey quoted  two lines of a poem by John Donne (1573-1631). This poem was called An Anatomy of the World. Below I quote the latter quarter of the poem and this contains the quotes used by the Pumphrey; these I have emphasized in bold

Be more than man, or thou'rt less than an ant.

Then, as mankind, so is the world's whole frame

Quite out of joint, almost created lame,

For, before God had made up all the rest,

Corruption ent'red, and deprav'd the best;

It seiz'd the angels, and then first of all

The world did in her cradle take a fall,

And turn'd her brains, and took a general maim,

Wronging each joint of th'universal frame.

The noblest part, man, felt it first; and then

Both beasts and plants, curs'd in the curse of man.

So did the world from the first hour decay,

That evening was beginning of the day,

And now the springs and summers which we see,

Like sons of women after fifty be.

And new philosophy calls all in doubt,

The element of fire is quite put out,

The sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's wit

Can well direct him where to look for it.

And freely men confess that this world's spent,

When in the planets and the firmament

They seek so many new; they see that this

Is crumbled out again to his atomies.

'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,

All just supply, and all relation;

Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,

For every man alone thinks he hath got

To be a phoenix, and that then can be

None of that kind, of which he is, but he.

This is the world's condition now, and now

She that should all parts to reunion bow,

She that had all magnetic force alone,

To draw, and fasten sund'red parts in one;

She whom wise nature had invented then

When she observ'd that every sort of men

Did in their voyage in this world's sea stray,

And needed a new compass for their way;

She that was best and first original

Of all fair copies, and the general

Steward to fate; she whose rich eyes and breast

Gilt the West Indies, and perfum'd the East;

Whose having breath'd in this world, did bestow

Spice on those Isles, and bade them still smell so,

And that rich India which doth gold inter,

Is but as single money, coin'd from her;

She to whom this world must it self refer,

As suburbs or the microcosm of her,

She, she is dead; she's dead: when thou know'st this, 

Pumphrey puts his quotes firmly in the context the Copernican revolution,  I have to confess that I find poetry difficult to read and so I'll have to take Pumphrey's word for it that these lines are allusions to the Copernican revolution, for revolution it definitely was. Pumphrey also implies that the medieval thought form "As-above-so-below" meant that Copernicus had help clear the way for a social revolution and not just a scientific one. It was the start of a history of scientific endeavor that in stages removed humanity from its Ptolemaic place of being centre stage, the focus of the Cosmos, to apparently - and I stress "apparently" - a mere incidental side show in the great Cosmic perspective.  For many the new philosophy no longer made sense and so in this context the lines: "And new philosophy calls all in doubt,...Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,..." are very appropriate. 

My understanding of the final quarter of Donne's poem is that it starts by lamenting the fall of humanity and the consequent corruptions it lead to; if I'm reading Donne right then included in this wide ranging field of corruption is the discomfiture generated by the Copernican revolution; that is, he appears to see Copernicanism as an outcome of the fall!

One coping strategy, when faced with difficult truths, is, of course, to go into denial; We can see this in the anti-science of the Christian Fundamentalists who in some cases have gone so far as too revert to the cosy stage-set of a geocentric cosmos. (See also here, here, here and here)

But things are even worse than that; we've already seen on this blog how some Christian fundamentalists are going even further and are turning to flat earth theory. When this happens flat earthists necessarily explicitly employ conspiracy theorism in order to give account of how the scientific establishment could be so systematically deceived (or deceiving!). Now, what is interesting is that flat-earth conspiracy theorism is not the exclusive domain of Christian fundamentalists, but, it seems, it is part of much more general anti-establishment malaise. Evidence for this has recently come to light on my Facebook account where one of my friends leans toward new-age ideas. I have been vaguely aware that there are new-age conspiracy theorists out there and moreover I knew that my Facebook friend, if not and out and out conspiracy theorist, was drawn toward conspiracy theorism. This came apparent when he announced on Facebook that some flat earth postings had caught his interest. In his  subsequent FB posts which stimulated a lively debate, I was not sure whether he was trying to troll his friends or whether he was seriously countenancing flat earth theory: I came to the conclusion that he was rather intellectually blown-away by flat earth apologetics as he hadn't seen it before, but he kept up the demeanor of a troll in order to hedge his bets.

Below I publish  posts from my friend (whom I shall call "Frank Saucepan") and two other Facebook users who reacted to my friend's provocative posts and who also had new-age and conspiracy theorist sympathies:

Frank Saucepan: I have to say this 'flat earth' business has seriously got my attention!
Johnny Duckpond: There are no photos of a globe earth only composites no video footage from any of the supposed 25000 satellites I'm not a flat earther but you gotta question that shit! … I've decided to believe nothing until it's proved! I want to say it's round but then there's this 😏 not sure it's exactly the right one but check it out. Remember this deception has been going on for hundreds of years so well ingrained into popular culture. I'm just looking at all the evidence on everything & it's only becoming obvious that there are some major lies going on, I'm not sure of all the answers but I'd rather say I don't know than trust what I know to be bullshit!

Frank Saucepan: Yep! Flat earth, globe. Can't say I'm 100% on either. One thing I can say is I know we've been lied to on so many layers on many topics

Frank Saucepan: I believe the 'Truth' is ultimately defined by the level of acceptance that the individual is willing to adopt. For me, I'm on the journey of accepting that maybe, just perhaps my entire life has been lead by corrosive and corrupt minds of maniacs

In response to some video taken from the space station Johnny, who seems to be a full blown conspiracy theorist, responding as follows to critics of flat earth:

Johnny Duckpond: Like I said, prove that's real! My posts are tests you can do yourself. Don't know about you but I can only just afford a flight to Portugal this year. Get the point? It's total crap fabricated by idiots, NASA. If you sincerely believe that to be real Eta then I'm simply lost for words buddy!!!

Between them Frank and Johnny stimulated a large number of thread comments, by and large hostile to flat earthism, I'm glad to say. However, I couldn't quite dispel the feeling that Frank was pulling everyone's leg, but then again his leaning toward new-age antiestablishmentarianism and conspiracy theorism sets him up for a belief in flat-earthism.

I could't resist joining the fray by responding to one of Frank's threads which he apologetically headed as:

Frank Saucepan: All I did was say this flat earth business has caught my interest!

Timothy V Reeves It caught mine too, but it only works if you add huge dollops of conspiracy theorism. But conspiracy theorism has inner contradictions: Once you believe conspiracy theory A you can always find conspiracy theory B which explains conspiracy theory A as a product of a conspiracy of deception. In short conspiracy theorism completely phux-up any attempt to arrive at the truth. Any so called "truth" arrived at via conspiracy theory A is easily undermined by conspiracy theory B. Here's a video showing how easy it is to invent fanciful but plausible conspiracy theories : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEPazLTGceI.  [This was a link to the clever Star Wars tongue in cheek conspiracy - unfortunately the sound track has been copyrighted]

Timothy V Reeves See also: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/hovind-defends-science-against-flat.html

Timothy V Reeves And this:http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/the-anti-establishmentarian-malaise-and.html

Johnny Duckpond: Kent Hovind the Creationist? Anti Evolutionist?

Timothy V Reeves: Among fundamentalists irony piles on irony

Johnny Duckpond: I'm neither but simply looking for the truth & it certainly isn't in the mainstream! I don't think it's in scripture either but somewhere in between the lies of mainstream & metaphor of scriptures ( all scriptures ) as a lot can be contrived over several thousand years of indoctrination & tradition! Only a few have eyes to see...

Timothy V Reeves: So what's your take on "flat earth"?

Johnny Duckpond: It's an interesting concept personally I can't prove it either way but I don't ' Believe ' it is flat. I also don't believe what NASA showed us is real in fact I know it isn't real n that is a fact. What earth looks like I don't know.

Timothy V Reeves: So do you think that NASA, ESA, the Chinese, the Russians, map makers and numerous satellite operators etc etc are all lying in unison? That sounds like quite a sweeping catch all theory in itself! If you can't believe anything why even believe that?

In response to that I got some come-back from an all-out Flat-Earther and "NASA is fake news" conspiracy theorist:

Johnson Kaputski: I don't see flat earth as a conspiracy theory. Was Plato a conspiracy theorist?? Anything that doesn't confirm to the religion of science is conspiracy.. talk about anything not given in text books or presented by mainstream media and you are a crackpot. So many lies told to so many fools... me included...

Timothy V Reeves Plato didn't have satellites, aircraft, sophisticated navigation, radar etc etc all technologies that to work take into account the curvature of the earth. Moreover do you think that NASA, ESA, the Chinese, the Russians, map makers and numerous satellite operators, aircraft software writers etc etc are all lying in unison? If so then that sounds like quite a sweeping catch-all-theory in itself! To imagine that such organisational feats are possible is a highly theoretical stance that surpasses the relatively simple abstractions entailed in spherical Earth theory.

Timothy V Reeves PS: The Greeks were the first to propose a spherical Earth theory. So Plato likely believed in a spherical Earth.

Shortly afterwards Kaputski deleted his entry and my replies went with it. I've been in half a mind to reinstate it on Frank's thread, but perhaps that would be too nasty.

In someways Frank succinctly summed up his take on antiestablishmentarianism when he posted:

Frank Saucepan:  I believe the 'Truth' is ultimately defined by the level of acceptance that the individual is willing to adopt. For me, I'm on the journey of accepting that maybe, just perhaps my entire life has been lead by corrosive and corrupt minds of maniacs

I think Frank is serious! He has absolutely no trust or respect for the system that has educated him. But there may be an inconsistency in Frank's thinking: It is unlikely that the corrupt minds of a set of maniacs could be coherent, coordinated and disciplined enough to wrought such a huge systematic deception!

***

So just what has gone wrong with our Western education? Why do we have Christian fundies and new-agers  who  are so disaffected as to totally despise the educational institutions of their societies? The difficulties that the human spirit has with anchoring its soul in a post Ptolemaic cosmos probably has something to do with it, as Stephen Pumphrey has implied: Copernicanism had an inherent tendency to eventually subvert any notion that the cosmos is some kind of cosy stage set.  Thomas Digges (1546-1595) was among the first to start subverting the old order, although he retained a spiritual perspective on the meaning of it all:

"This orb of stars fixed infinitely up extends itself in altitude spherically, and therefore immovable the palace of felicity garnished with perpetual shining glorious lights innumerable, far excelling over [the] sun both in quantity and quality the very court of celestial angels, devoid of grief and replenished with perfect endless joy, the habitacle for the elect."

But I think the antiestablishmentarianism I'm talking about here is fairly recent. Whilst spiritual hope existed alongside post Ptolemaic science it seems that faith and trust remained largely intact. But now, of course Western societies teeter in the brink of noetic nihilism, a nihilism which in some cases even denies the reality of human consciousness and promotes the notion that life is ultimately empty of meaning apart from some self-defined fickle subjective goals.  If that is what some educators are trying to teach us it is no surprise that some reject the whole caboodle.*

Footnote:
* Let's assume we operate the epistemic filter I described here and in time arrive at a full law and disorder (L&D) description of the Cosmos. Could we then claim that the job of science is complete and has furnished us with a full solution as to the nature of the Cosmos? Very doubtful: Firstly it is conceivable that more than one L&D scheme will join the dots of data, or that further "data compression" could take place in terms of a more succinct L&D scheme. But more philosophically profound is the question as to whether L&D constitutes a complete explanation at all; after all, in the final analysis it's mere flat description; useful, yes, but it only addresses part of the intuitive sense of mystery.  For some mentalities, however, this may feel enough; full explanation in terms of L&D dispels all their curiosity; mystery solved! But for other mentalities (myself included) who feel that only purposeful, teleological and personality based explanation stands a chance of  addressing mystery the job of explanation is only just starting.