On Medium: Atheism and the Burden of Refuting the Preposterous
Read on about how farcical debates spring up from atheistic statements of the obvious, and how the atheist is in the position of the boy who cries out that the emperor's wearing no clothes.
Theism is becoming less & less absurd every day because the Copernican principle (which is the only context within which modernity makes any sense) is being eroded away by the flat earth movement. A stationary, flat earth around which all the celestial bodies rotate practically demands God as an explanation. I don't know what it's like in Canada, but here in the US, FE cosmology is on the way to becoming as mainstream as Creationism. It's easy to dismiss someone as mentally ill when they're dressed in rags & smell of booze... but what if they are wearing nicer clothes than you & are running for city council? Who's the crank now?
ReplyDeleteHmm. That's interesting because I noticed that that absurd debate keeps popping up in a YouTube channel I like to peruse, called Modern-Day Debate. I haven't bothered to listen to any of those FE debates, and I've wondered why the editor deems such an extreme paranormal topic to be worth pursuing. Evidently, there's an audience for it. (There's also a new video out there called, "Is Gravity Fake?" as in a hoax.)
DeleteI used to work with a blue-collar fellow who subscribed to the flat-Earth delusion, though. I chalk up this delusion to extreme cynicism and postmodern incredulity. It's a consequence of social media, fast-paced and superficial internet mentality, consumerist decadence, hyperfeminine pampering and overprotectiveness, and the like.
FE cosmology would be a symptom of this deeper problem that also gives us Trumpian populism. I'd suspect it's not so much that these paranormal "skeptics" believe the Earth is flat, but that it's harder to hold on to modern epistemology in the context of late-modern technology and economics. What exactly is a belief and what is meant by the truth? Stephen Colbert pointed to the rise of truthiness. That's a big part of it, plus distrust of the deep state and of the elites, plus disenchantment with modern metanarratives about progress.
I doubt a FE believer would be able to provide a sensible modern epistemic account of how beliefs work. They don't just subscribe to one conspiracy theory, but they think generally in paranoid conspiratorial terms.
I think your reasons why people are dumb has just some validity. Oftentimes, all these specific reasons are just correct to their respective contexts because the main reason is a chronically lower rational skills.
DeleteSay "one of the reason why people 'start' to believe gravity is fake is because gay marriage". Not at all. It's just because they are rationally dumb and also has been specifically target by clever psychos. Just look how the far right has mobilized people via social networks??
If they live in old conserv society and were specifically targeted by cult leaders, they would believe in the same bullshit. Of course, the chaotic world we live also increased by the gigant amount of accessible information have intimidate people specially those with not many cognitive and emotional resources to lead it. But most people have believe in bullshit since always. Even thought all human cultures and ideologies are like collective brainwashing-induced cults.
Ben, it's indeed hard to accept that some people believe that the Earth is flat in the same way that I believe the Earth is curved. The latter belief is based on simple observations while the former seems to be, as you said, rooted in distrust of the officially sanctioned authorities (NASA) & a conspiratorial mindset. That said, I take it that when they say "the earth is flat" they mean it in the same sense that I do when I insist it's round. I really can't think of how else the statement could be understood.
DeleteThiago, I don't think there is any one correct explanation here.
Some people are just ignorant, stupid, or both. In this case, however, they are unlikely to cling to their irrational belief once proven wrong.
There are others, however, who will never reject a false belief no matter how thoroughly it has been refuted. Believers in Q-anon, for example, have witnessed that Q's predictions repeatedly fail to come to pass & yet they still have faith in him/her. People like that aren't clinging to their belief out of ignorance or stupidity, but out of psychosis. And I'm not using that word colloquially. I mean that their condition fulfills the clinical definition of psychosis in that they are captive to a fixed belief that not only lacks evidence to support it, but which is evidently false.
Any thoughts on this conversation:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.reddit.com/r/BirthandDeathEthics/comments/qhxt8o/continuation_of_discussion_from/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Since you've said that efilism could stem from mental illness, I thought you might find this post interesting. I've debated this guy for a long time. He's a staunch promortalist/efilist and vehemently opposes psychiatry.
My response to that previous post on psychiatry would be that, even if it isn't rational to call a depressed person to be mentally ill, it's possible for a person to be erroneously believe that their life cannot be improved when that's not the case. Presuming that they want to be happy, I think that it can be justified to suggest that they might not have taken everything into account that could be hindering their ability to grasp the bigger picture, which is why depression could be irrational in terms of the analysis of the potential outcomes possible.
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