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, I can't speak for the flat-earthers) and to dismiss them as idiots who will just go away is a serious mistake. They are very good at presenting convincing-sounding arguments, and refuting them can actually be quite challenging.
2. The root of their reasoning is a tacit acceptance of teleology, which cannot be logically refuted. They approach existential questions with the assumption that there has to be some kind of point to existence, some transcendent meaning or purpose. If you accept this premise, then there is actually a logically defensible line of reasoning that leads you to Christianity and thence to the inerrancy of the Bible, and thence to YEC (and even a flat earth if you're really being intellectually honest!) A failure to appreciate this is IMHO one of the reasons that the secular world is having such a hard time effectively resisting these movements. A life without purpose makes no sense to these people, just as a theory at odds with the data makes no sense to someone with a scientific mindset. So if science leads you to the conclusion that life has no transcendent purpose (and it does) then, on their world-view, science must be wrong, full stop. No amount of data is going to persuade them otherwise.
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 thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
This verse is interpreted to mean that it is inerrant. There’s a wide gap between inerrant and useful for teaching from my own reading. There are many people wiser than me who disagree on the subject.
My own interpretation is simply that Jesus constantly spoke in metaphor because it was more useful for teaching. Why would we assume that the creation of everything, that involves so many intricate details, would be any different? Would we expect books on microbiology and geology to accompany Genesis?
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.
Bookenders as I call them, people who only want to argue about Genesis and Revelation, are a concern because they take away from the real message to pursue an argument that nobody can win. It’s not productive and it’s not useful.
If everyone was convinced that the earth was or wasn’t 6,000 years old tomorrow it wouldn’t change a single facet of life on earth for anyone. It would only remove one argument. IMO, that makes it a pointless subject to debate and only creates friction.
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."
The problem seems to me more fundamental than that: if the Bible potentially contains errors then you need some process or mechanism to figure out what those errors are if you're going to use the Bible as a guide to action. What could that process or mechanism possibly be? It obviously can't be the Bible.
The Bible is a collection of books though. Taken one verse at a time, out of context, errors with interpretation are easy. Context is huge.
That’s really the root of it. If you read the entire Bible, you’ll see common themes that are reiterated over and over. You’ll see patterns of human behavior that haven’t changed in thousands of years.
Reading the entire Bible provides so much more context. There’s not nearly as much left up to discussion after that because you’ll have a much better understanding of e everything.
I mean, nobody talks about it but one of the biggest themes of the entire Old Testament is idolatry. We think about that today as worshiping gold statues but it’s just as easy to frame in terms of political parties, our own anger and biases, etc.
You may enjoy some of Pete Enns' books. Namely "The Bible Tells Me So", Which dives into biblical inaccuracy head first. It's not a "Oh well, if you apply some mental gymnast it's okay" book. It's "Here's a bunch of reasons inerrancy makes zero sense and here is why that's okay and doesn't mean God isn't real".
You may be interested in a detailed breakdown of authorship of various parts of the Bible [0]. In summary, to a first approximation, only the books written during the Babylonian Exile and during the preaching of Peter and Paul were written during the events that they describe, and most other books were written much later. The Gospels are decades after Jesus' life and death, and all of the Bronze Age stories are set centuries before they were recorded.
It’s still not a good explanation to say “humans must have some purpose, therefore this one very specific made-up thing must be true.” What about all the other made-up things which also purport to explain the purpose of humans?
Explanations of this form are extremely easy to vary, which is why they are not good explanations.
But that only matters if you think that explanations are what matters. That is an assumption. That's the whole point: some people value purpose more than they value explanation.
> 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 the epistemological status of these claims, which is largely independent of whether one derives a sense of purpose.
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.
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.
The axiom is that the Bible is true. The conclusion is that evolution is false. The arguments are about how to reconcile the "fact" that evolution is false with the existence of data that appear at first glance to support its truth.
Now, I am not going to defend Kent Hovind's intellectual honesty. I think he does have a not-so-hidden ulterior motive (tax evasion). But you cannot legitimately accuse him -- or any YEC that I've encountered -- of trying to paper over the fact that he assumes the truth of the Bible.
> The axiom is that the Bible is true. The conclusion is that evolution is false. The arguments are about how to reconcile the "fact" that evolution is false with the existence of data that appear at first glance to support its truth.
But there is no intellectually honest way to reconcile that factual claim except to reiterate that it is an axiom (or, if you like, a trivial corollary from the axiom that the Bible is true). The supposed existence of missing links is completely irrelevant, because even if those links weren't missing, his conclusion would be that evolution is false. Ancient flood myths are completely irrelevant, because even if such myths weren't widespread, his conclusion would be that evolution is false.
To clarify, I'm not claiming that creationists conceal their beliefs about the Bible. I'm referring to intellectual dishonesty.
In a different fashion, I found myself physically surrounded by YECs at a job many years ago. It was a surreal experience. They definitely aren't idiots, many were among the best I've seen at technical work.
But like you said in (2), they start with different assumptions. Their logic is totally sound if you agree with the assumptions. I spent some time reading and watching YEC material to have a better understanding of their positions. While there were certainly some really stupid arguments, most were sound but based on either an assumption of the existence of God (unprovable either way) and some implications of that, or a flawed understanding of physics/chemistry/biology. The latter were the only arguments that could be refuted because they were the only ones where you could point out the specific flaw in reasoning.
Until you find the difference in assumptions, you can't effectively argue against their position. And, then, only by talking about the assumptions and not the conclusions/implications.
A lot of these beliefs arise from very fundamental axioms of belief that only show up through these high-order belief systems.
If you fundamentally believe you should follow the evidence no matter what and THAT is the highest priority of your belief, then you are (more likely) going to fall into the camps of hard science and nothing but the science.
Or perhaps in a different vein, do you fundamentally believe you are a good person fighting evil? Then anyone who disagrees is THE ENEMY and must be DESTROYED. And not only are they doing bad things, but they are fundamentally BAD PEOPLE. They're not just baby killers, they're Satanic Baby Killers.
Of course, we are all a vibrant mix of these beliefs, and some may change over time with enough exposure. And many often hold beliefs counter to other base axioms and a careful walk may help expose and nudge their higher-order beliefs. But recognizing that it isn't just about Evolution or just about the world being flat, it's actually built on layers and layers of logic from very low-fundamental beliefs is key.
Because even if you prune some of the top facts, the base layers will remain, and they'll adapt to stay aligned with their core beliefs.
At one time I flirted with the YEC point of view as a Christian. What helped me change both (I'm an atheist now) was exposure to more points of view and modest experiments applying biblical teachings personally. After years of twisting logic I could no longer justify the magical thinking. Because none of the experiments were convincing. (Don't forget that God can't be tested! Except when it comes to donating to his chosen leaders.)
And within the Christian communities I saw so much harm from the various biases and non-critical methods it was heart breaking. Sadly it can still be hard to leave when you're taught you're choosing pleasure, hell fire, selfishness, and abandoning absolute truth and love.
Do you have a theory of purpose that is consistent with the laws of physics? Because that would be a major breakthrough. All of the evidence (AFAICT) indicates that nature is utterly indifferent to our existence.
Science leads you to the conclusion that we are here as the result of a series of chance events. Not because of any "decision" to put us here. If we're all just here by fluke, and when we're gone we're gone entirely and completely, what transcendence could there be?
How does science exclude the possibility of a decision to put us here? It seems to me that science (paired with a good bunch of epistemological assumptions) gives us the laws our universe follows. But as for why such laws are like that, or who possibly decided them and with which purpose, I'd say such questions do not even make sense for science.
Science can only "lead" you to that conclusion if you already think in specific philosophical ways. In this case it sounds like you are presuming materialism.
You put into very readable language what I have felt to be true for some time.
What I appreciate about your comment also is you mention the necessity to understand their presuppositions and reason that way (at least sometimes). I feel like the issue with many discourses going on right now is a lack of good faith understanding of the other "sides" presuppositions.
And yet, it can be so painful for someone to even pretend they can identify with the following belief for example this belief
> So if science leads you to the conclusion that life has no transcendent purpose (and it does) then, on their world-view, science must be wrong, full stop
The much easier tact for lets say a standard pro-science metropolitan is to decide the YEC-er person actually knows what is "true" (e.g. what the metropolitan thinks is obvious) but is actively choosing to do wrong. Then you can refute their point as purposely provoking _and_ also put them in the "bad people" box with one little mental facade.
I'm not trying to build a purposely weak example of either group, I think all humans have a simplifying mechanism when it comes to viewpoints/ideas and that we need that to survive in some sense- and that we do it all the time probably in benign ways. But acknowledging what other people believe is a great skill to build I think.
I can't really find any word for "No amount of data is going to persuade them otherwise." than "idiot". They may be able to constrain their idiocy to certain domains -- after all the early history of the planet (whether 5,000 or 5 billion years ago) has no real effect on your daily life.
But in my experience, it nonetheless creeps out to affect other areas of their life. YECs are often afflicted with other conspiracy theories, not just flat earthers but also climate denialsm, and these days, COVID denialism.
I find that the assumption isn't so much the teleology as the group superiority. It's not so much that the Bible is inerrant as that they are the ones who hold the truth, and those who disagree must in all cases be wrong -- and not merely wrong, but out to get them. The appeal to teleology is more about literal divine right, that "God shed his grace on thee". That leads them to make alliance with those who don't accept young-earth creationism but nonetheless share their nationalistic, chauvinist, xenophobic aims.
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 repeatedly that they wish to use it to harm me, and my names for them are going to be negative.
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.
True. It just illustrates how deep a problem we've got here: once you've gone down the rabbit hole, there's no way back.
The only solution, if any, is democratic: containing the damage and reducing the numbers. They cannot be persuaded, but other people can. And unfortunately, I don't think that's all that effective, either -- in part because they ally themselves with other conspiracy theorists who insulate them from some of the consequences of their actions. They may not agree, but don't attack each other, and bolster common causes. Enough to win elections, especially when geographic, demographic, and historic quirks assign more political power to some regions than others.
If it were just creationists, they'd be (relatively) harmless kooks. As it is, they're always a step away from theocracy.
Well, epistemologically, there is a big difference between YEC and flat-earth.
Flat earth can be confidently debunked in quite a large number of ways, including direct experience.
YEC is, at its core, fundementally undisprovable. There really no way to prove that the universe wasn't recently created by some force with a consistent apparent history. Indeed, there are philosophers who have made strong arguments that we live in a simulation which makes such a "created with history" scenario seem more plausible.
> If you accept this premise, then there is actually a logically defensible line of reasoning that leads you to Christianity
I rather doubt that. You may be able to show that some of these beliefs are logically consistent given that premise, but that is a far cry from showing that they are logically derivable from that premise as you seem to be saying.
I do think there is data that will persuade these people, but nobody is willing to out the time and effort in to do so. (Since these are quite divergent beliefs, any education program would probably need to be customized on a per person basis.)
Take the parallel postulate. It holds in Euclidean geometry but not in others. Am I an idiot for not using that postulate (and its implications)? No, I'm starting from a different set of assumptions than someone studying Euclidean geometry. As a consequence I'll reach different conclusions than someone studying Euclidean geometry.
Neither of us are idiots, we both know what we're doing. The conflict is when I make an assertion about geometry (general) that doesn't hold for geometry (Euclidean) (or the reverse, the other person makes a general assertion that doesn't hold for non-Euclidean geometry). Unless we sit down and compare our base assumptions (axioms), we cannot resolve this apparent conflict.
I'm not saying this is universally the case, there are contrarian trolls and idiots out there, but oftentimes people are reasonably rational but are starting from different positions. This leads to conflicts in politics, economics, religion, and, yes, the understanding of the physical world. It's not helpful to call them all idiots because many times they aren't, they just have different base assumptions (or priorities, often, in the case of politics and economics). And calling them idiots only leads to an emotional, not rational, "discussion". Take a step back, don't be a jerk, and listen to them, work backward to the actual point of disagreement and then focus on it (or not, once discovered you may realize there is no resolution that will satisfy either or both of you).
In math we have an proof technique called reductio ad absurdum that deals with this situation. They seem to be doing it wrong though, because they don't reject the faulty hypothesis after the conclusion is logically inconsistent with reality.
I can apply the same argument to science: all of the laws of physics are symmetric with respect to time and space. But all of the data I have direct access to comes to me from a privileged frame of reference that I call "here and now". Therefore, all of this data is in direct conflict with physics, and so physics must be wrong.
Everything starts with an assumption. However, in science, if the assumption's conclusion doesn't match the observed evidence, we reject our assumption as true, and we start with a new assumption.
As so, science doesn't have a "foundational" assumption (because it's willing to change its assumptions). Rather, science subjects assumptions to evidence - not the other way around...
"evidence" and "truth" are very semantically related. By semantics, "evidence is a reliable guide to truth" is not nearly an assumption... as it is a logical definition.
It's a bit like saying: "it assumes reddish color indicates red".
EDIT: "Reliable" is the problem word here. Remove it from your statement, and it certainly is no longer an assumption. That said, I don't see where science inherently makes the assumption that evidence is reliable...
Your having to hedge with "nearly" is an indication of the weakness of your position.
First, there is no such thing as a "logical definition". There are only definitions. Perhaps you meant "logical tautology" but in fact the idea that evidence is a reliable guide to truth is neither a definition nor a tautology, it is an assumption. And it is an assumption that is open to reasonable doubt. To wit:
> it assumes reddish color indicates red
It is far from clear that this is true. What does "reddish color" even mean? How can you define it without begging the question? How do you know that your subjective perception of "reddish color" is the same as mine?
A better example: solid objects are in fact not solid, they are mostly empty space. So the assumption that "solid appearance indicates solid" is actually false.
It's important to understand that definitions are not assumptions. Definitions and assumptions are two different things. Now, we could also define them to be the same thing if we wanted, but typically definitions aren't about truth. They're about meaning.
Now, if you'd rather use "logical tautology" that's fine by mean. It's close to what I meant. "Evidence" and "Truth" are very semantically related... so much that your statement earlier is almost a definition, not an assumption. By definition, Evidence is something that indicates truth. Again I think the word reliable does make the statement an assumption. But again, I don't see where science ever made the assumption that evidence is reliable...
As for your second example, it is not much better. I will again attempt to show you the problem with your argument.
>solid objects are in fact not solid, they are mostly empty space. So the assumption that "solid appearance indicates solid" is actually false
For your argument to hold, your definition of solid in your second statement must be incongruent. I'll try to show how.
> solid objects are in fact not solid, they are mostly empty space
Here you've tacked on some definition to the word solid. That added definition being: "they are mostly empty space". Now let's look at your next statement
>So the assumption that "solid appearance indicates solid" is actually false
This only logically true if you use two different definitions of the word solid. Otherwise your statement is nonsense, when substituting your implied definition of solid:
something that appears as not empty, but is in actually mostly empty space appearance indicates something that appears as not empty, but is in actually mostly empty space is actually false
This is part of why I go directly for discrediting the Bible as part of my refutation. There's no point in letting folks shelter themselves behind the delusion that the Bible is historically accurate enough to be useful for scientific predictions. We should be willing to crack open those religious beliefs, and not let them hide behind some sort of special motte-and-bailey construction just for the sole purpose of making bogus historical/cosmological/etc. claims.
I just don't get this at all. Could you explain how they refute things like ISS camera footage showing a clearly round earth with the station going around it? Are you saying that they just refute science outright because it conflicts with their teleology beliefs? If that is the case, they actually are idiots, regardless of how erudite their arguments may be.
Young Earth Creationism isn’t the same as Flat Earth.
An argument I’ve heard before is that God made the universe relatively recently (10k years ago or so) but with the appearance of age. Something like God “fast forwarded” through time to skip to the part where humans started recording history. In that theory both the majority of modern science and a strangely literal interpretation of the Bible can both be true at the same time. The scientists are unable to measure that God “fast-forwarded” the universe because he didn’t leave any evidence of it.
In my experience the majority of Christians don’t hold that view, but instead see Genesis as metaphorical, and thus it actually fits in rather well with the current Big Bang model. So well, in fact, that early on a lot of scientists rejected the Big Bang as “creationist rubbish.”
YEC is not closely related to Flat earthers. I know many YEC that refute flat earth theory completely. The overlap of the two is small, but maybe there are a few outspoken ones on Reddit (it’s always the outspoken ones isn’t it?)
They are more closely related than you think. Flat-earth is actually a natural conclusion from the assumption of Biblical inerrancy (e.g. 1Sm2:8, Mat4:8, Isa11:12).
I'm not a YE but I am a thinking Christian. You can imagine this sort of thinking as a game of 20 questions, where you ask a series of questions to try to "home in" on what kind of worldview you think is likely.
So the first question is, "Is there something besides the physical world -- besides atoms and energy and time?" If you say "yes", then you've ruled out materialism (which some people confuse with science).
There are a number of things in our human experience which (in my opinion) are inconsistent with a materialistic worldview. The sense of meaning and purpose is one. Morality is another. (Not trying to argue this here, just trying to answer the question.)
Then you can say, OK, but that could be Buddhism or Shintoism or Islam or anything. So the next set of questions might filter out reincarnation-style religions and get you down to the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam); and then you might look specifically at evidence about Jesus' resurrection.
Not all Christians are Young Earthers; and Young Earthers are certainly not Flat Earthers. But there is this similarity: Christianity gives people something that atheism and materialism do not. And so when modern atheists say, "Belief in evolution is incompatible with belief in God -- you have to choose one or the other", then a lot of people will say, "Well if I have to choose, I'm going with God."
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.)
I was hoping for something more precise tbh. Christian apologetics web sites and local churches also offer answers to lots of questions I don't care about, so if you already sifted through them, I was hoping you could share that advantage with the broader public.
- https://creation.com/why-christianity says Christianity correctly diagnoses a humanity's fault (moral inconsistency), and then declares it superior because of which solution it chooses
They don't seem to answer "why is Christianity the source of meaning", but rather "why choose Christianity as religion", which is a different question, so I might have misrepresented them. Either way, none of them seem very logically conclusive to me.
> They don't seem to answer "why is Christianity the source of meaning", but rather "why choose Christianity as religion"
That's right. The original question was:
> Why would some point of existence or meaning lead specifically to Christianity?
If you want to know "why is Christianity the source of meaning" that's an easier question to answer: it's because the omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent Creator of the Universe loves you, and will give you everlasting life in paradise conditioned only on your acceptance of His sacrifice on the cross. Or something like that.
I think that's not actually the point that was made by cma (and my paraphrased question was imprecise).
"Why would some point of existence or meaning lead specifically to Christianity?" presumes starting with no preferred solution: "existence has a meaning. Who discovered it?". It's much more interesting than "Christianity says existence has a meaning. What makes it right?"
If you're looking for the Christian answer to this, it is: no one discovered it. The meaning of life is not discoverable knowledge. It is instead revealed by God.
Because they come to the discussion wearing a filter that tells them that some things are Truth and other things are Heresy: notably, that stories from their culture are True and cannot even be compared to stories from other cultures, because that is Heresy.
It seems my short statement has been taken by some to be flippant rather than serious, it's not.
In history there have been thousands of religions with various beliefs, many of which ascribed purpose to the actions of believers which was considered significant how specifically does the purpose given to those who follow Christianity provide "a logically defensible line of reasoning that leads you to Christianity and thence to the inerrancy of the Bible" over any one of those other religions?
And if every religion gains equal weight then why not follow all of them equally using that same rationale?
I mean I don't particularly care what people believe, but that's a pretty strong statement.
> one of the reasons that the secular world is having such a hard time effectively resisting these movements
It depends on the country. These movements are non - existant in France for instance. When we hear of them or is usually about the ones in the US (I do not think I heard about another country).
When we hear of them it is because something happened (the death of one of the leaders who blew up in his rocket IIRC), never because we have a hard time resisting them.
Out of curiosity I search in French for flat earth. All the hits are about the US (and sometimes UK) based movement.
This is the same for the young earth one, and creationism generally speaking.
But fear not, we have homeopathy as a national sport (and plenty of other alternative "medicine", taken seriously here)
Sure, there are religious extremists (and we painfully felt it ove the terrorist attacks).
I was talking about either flat earth, or the idea that earth is young. These are concepts which are completely foreign to France and not even carried by the religious extremists (maybe someone is telling this, but they have zero traction).
Specifically, I was commenting on
> one of the reasons that the secular world is having such a hard time effectively resisting these movements
It's fine to come up with some magician who created our world and is looking at us through his/her terrarium, if that makes you feel warm and cosy. It's a whole other level to claim the world is flat and/or just a couple of thousand yours old. Than you're just an idiot.
I used to be a flat earther. No, I didn't actually believe the earth was flat, but I loved the outrage it provoked and the attention I got when I told people I was a flat earther. I also enjoyed trying to defend my position and call out (valid) logical fallacies round earthers were making. It really forces you to improve your debate skills when you have to defend an impossible position. Lastly, there was a social aspect of it, a camaraderie with other flat earthers that made me feel like I belonged to a "secret" organization that was fun and influential. I eventually outgrew that hobby.
I'm sure there are many "genuine" flat earthers, but I suspect there are a lot of flat earthers like me as well. Of course, part of the "game" is pretending you really believe it, so good luck proving it.
My headcanon is that most people that proclaim to be flat-earthers are like you - they don't actually believe it.
From the Ancient Greeks to the 19th century, people believed the world was round. That story you heard in history class about how people in the 1400s were afraid to sail west because they'd fall off? Not true. They were afraid to sail west because they didn't know that the Americas existed, and without those they knew there was no way they'd survive a trip to China.
Flat earth in modern discourse was a strawman from the start. There may be some true believers - there always are - but it hasn't been a serious worldview in 2000 years or more.
I wouldn't be so sure, more likely people who make money of it are all BS masters.
Leader of the 'movement' selling books, youtube ads etc.
I had only once a pleasure to talk with flat earther, and apart from his flat theories, his view of how world works could be called... interesting, if not naive.
It reminded me of conversation with my primary school friends (back when we were 10), we tried to invent invisibility cloak by mixing 'chemicals' like sulpher, mercury and melted titanium (since those were the coolest substances we come up with) and coat a cloth with it. Kids stuff.
That was when we were around 10, this guy was close to 30 and was basically using same level of understanding of how to do things.
Its hard to believe sometimes bu a lot of people grow up never questioning or poking at the reality surrounding them.
You don't need that to grow up and get by in life, but then you end up not being able to distinguish reality from snake oil.
And all of those snake oil salesmen know exactly what buttons to push.
"Secret knowledge", "hidden truth", offer them glimpse into world that secret cabal never wants them to see. Convince them how much smarter and cleverer they are for "figuring out" the reality that other are blind to.
And then the 'blind fools' come to try to convince them that the earth is round...
I wonder if you had a strategy for reconciling the theory of the flat moon with flat Earth?
Believing in both at the same time is extra-tricky, and that's what caused me to get banned from the Facebook flat-Earthers.
If the moon is flat, perspective distortion should make it disk-like, and nobody's observed a disk-like moon. So either the moon is round (and the fact it only shows us one face is some extra-fancy trickery with mirrors or lenses or something), or the moon is a flat disk facing Earth, but the Earth is a ball rotating under the moon.
(Clarification: none of this is things I believe. I spent time debating flat-Earthers as an exercise in logical consistency and alignment with observational evidence).
Even if the moon were a disk, the angle it makes relative to a normal vector coming out from ground demonstrates a spherical earth.
You don't even need to factor in the moon, this can be done with the stars. In a flat earth, the same stars would be visible when you're in the southern too of south America as in the northernmost top of north America. This isn't the case since the earth is spherical.
Heck, even just the timing of a sunrise is sufficient. In a flat earth the sun would rise simultaneously across the globe... er, disk. But of course that's not the case. It's daytime in half of the world at any given time.
I have no clue about any arguments flat earthers make, but I am curious how they would object to some of the fundamental concepts like you provided. I suppose it doesn't make much sense that they would use science to refute your points...
The gist of that is in the article. They never need and rarely do object to "fundamental concepts". Rather, they object to what they perceive to be your belief in them. That way, they never have to address anything directly.
Personally I think that it's just the limits of geometric understanding for some peole. Personally I hit that limit when I tried to understand quaternions. Some people hit that limit with calculus. I guess others hit that limit when they try to understand perspective from a sphere.
They invent new scientific rules. With two caveats: first, the new rules are not independently tested by experiment (maybe they are vaguely justified by thought experiment; thought by them); second, their rules are just qualitative, nearly never quantitative, so that they basically everything can be true.
So, measuring angles is off limits. Then they admit you cannot see things that are far away and close to the horizon, but not by curvature. By perspective: perspective laws, they say, mandate that far away objects become very small, too small to be seen. Do you basically can see only a limited part of the sky, at a sufficiently high angle from the horizon on the flat earth. That is why you can't see the whole sky.
>It really forces you to improve your debate skills when you have to defend an impossible position.
I've been on the opposite of this debate. I don't know how much it compares to being on the wrong side of the debate, but I'd still say it noticeably honed my debate skills and it's humbling once you realize that you don't actually learn that much in school about how we can actually prove the earth is round and how to explain some of the discrepancies flat earthers use as arguments.
I found it confusing that he still openly identified to be part of the flat Earth group, even outside of his trolling persona. If I pretended to be religious for the purpose of trolling evolutionists, I would never say I was at any point a creationist. Surely Santa Clause at the mall doesn't believe he's Santa Clause, nor would he seriously identify as him, but he trolls kids every year to put a smile on their face. I suppose I found it a bit bizarre to still seriously identify as a flat-earther, and from that, I didn't want to offend.
Well, there's an identity based on belief system and an identity based on group. I took his statement to be that he was part of the group, but not part of the (true) belief system.
If you joined a group of YECs and participated in the community, you might consider yourself a YEC (group member) even though you never truly believed, but only argued and trolled. I do agree that it's a bit bizarre, but knowing many contrarian and troll types this seems a pretty consistent part of their MO.
I believe polite people call us "contrarians" while everyone else calls us "assholes". But yeah I get it, I truly enjoy taking opposite sides of arguments against people that are passionately arguing their position for much the same reasons you have described above.
I think everyone has a bit of a contrarian inside them. I used to express it more readily, because, let's face it, it's fun! But I noticed that increasingly I was just encouraging "true believers", so I stopped. The reality check for me was that, starting a few years ago, increasingly frequently when I started to try to make up ridiculous sounding arguments and not even logically sound ones, people on both sides would think I was being serious. The world doesn't need me adding to the insanity.
The straw that broke the camel's back was when I tried to make up an obviously ridiculous constitutional legal argument as a joke and accidentally hit something where a court clerk told me sovereign citizens actually use the argument. If you can roll a d10 for the Bill of Rights and a conclusion you want and land on something that someone actually tries to argue, then... well, that's today's reality.
Maybe in fact you are the consummate true believer.
To possess something to the point it is the total sum of your knowledge, would that be belief? Or would that merely be a lack. No belief is required when there is no alternative.
So let us then imagine how many people 'believe' in exactly this same way about human rights or freedom or democracy, and perhaps suddenly the state of the world at any given time becomes much clearer.
At least there’s something to be said for your honesty now.
Though having both witnessed and perpetrated the very real human damage that dishonest/irrational/delusional belief systems can and will do, you’ll forgive me if I do not congratulate you on the rest.
> All this is to say that rational questions and arguments miss the point entirely. These are not rational beliefs, nor even really beliefs. They are more like identities, firmly established and fiercely defended. Their existence is not a happy one, either. It seemed to me that they were commonly the product of deep personal and social tragedy.
This seems to me to be the chief problem of social media. We live in a post-truth world that is more intensely tribal than ever before. Reason, and the ability to form consensus, seem to be dying or dead already. That worries me rather a lot, as it is the foundation of democratic society, and without it I’m not sure how long democratic society can continue.
In the authors description of the flat earth ers he says:
> ...you operate from a position where your worldview is driven by your identity, not from what can be scientifically or objectively observed, or what the experts tell you.
We can sit here and scoff at the tiny minority of fringe conspiracy theorists out there, but my observation is that people have taken this same approach to mainstream politics, deciding on an identity that aligns them to one side or the other, and then losing all ability to see that it is possible for their side to get something wrong, or the other side to get something right.
They can be internally-consistent beliefs, which is what makes them tricky (both for the believer and the rational contradictorian). But internally-consistent isn't quite the same as rational.
Where they deviate from rational is either failure to align to observational reality or an Occam's Razor argument (but be aware that Occam's Razor doesn't apply for a true believer; if something is true, it doesn't matter if it's complicated! ;) ).
Honestly, hanging out in the Flat Earth FB group was extremely educational. In that actual physics and cosmology has a very solid, self-consistent grounding, and the hoops the group has to jump through to make it match to their alternate theory of a flat Earth are illuminating about how the real Earth works.
I'd never really noticed before that no satellite dishes tuned to talk to geostationary targets point north in the northern hemisphere, or south in the southern hemisphere. A bit of thought immediately clarifies why, but the flat-Earthers have to imagine an incredibly large conspiracy of governments hiding radio towers taller than anything humanity has ever built to explain it.
When I think back to how I was first introduced to the concept of a flat earth I can't help but feel that it's one of the bigger epistemic own-goals in history. My introduction was in school, where the concept of a flat earth was trotted out as something that everyone believed in the middle ages that we eventually learned was totally wrong. The message was simple: don't be those people, listen to the scientific evidence. At the time I thought it was a compelling story, then I found out the story is a myth. [0] Ancient Greeks knew in the 5th century BC that it was round, by the 600s it was more or less unanimously supported by scholars. I've struggled to find a time in history when there was a serious, organized group that believed the earth was flat. Except for now that is, the uncomfortable truth is that this, right now, in 2020, is the peak of flat earth belief in human history. The lesson, to me, is this: be careful what you lie about in the name of pedagogy, lies have a way of backfiring on you when people realize they're being lied to.
In my real life I've never met a flat-earth guy (I live in India). I genuinely tried hard but couldn't find one in real life.
Most flat-earth people I found online seem to be Americans. This is possibly anecdotal but I'm puzzled as to why they are all Americans. It is coincidence or there is something about America?
I did not pay a lot of attention to this. In my mind flat earthers were an odd group of people participating for fun in an elaborate make believe. Sort of like watching WWE together with beers pretending those are real fights.
I mean, contrary to a popular parable, people knew that the earth is round for a very long time and Eratosthenes made an estimate of earth radius 2200 years ago.
Sometimes this type of long form journalism is nice because it lets you marinate in a different world. Here I can't help but feel like I just want them to get to the point because I don't really want to marinate in the Flat Earth world.
If a super intelligent AI came to me and said, "I'm going to take over the world and destroy humanity, but first I wanted to see if there was anything you needed." One of the things that I would ask it to do in order to buy time would be to annotate all the background details of every movie. For example, in Jurassic Park when Hammond is trying to get Dr. Grant to come to the park, the trailer they are in has a bunch of newspapers on the walls. What do those say? Who are all the extras that are hanging out at the dig site? Like who are the actors and can we give their characters any backstories that are consistent with the world of Jurassic Park.
I can't help but want the same thing from a story about a Flat Earth conference. How many other people went there just to see what was up. Who is there as a joke. Occasionally people send fake articles to journals to see if they can get them published. Does the same thing happen to Flat Earth conferences? People try to see how much of an outlandish presentation they can get away with? And finally, how many people go there, have a good time, pretend to buy into the whole Flat Earth business, but then when they get back and are cornered indicate that they only went because their friend went / to see what it was like / because they make fun of them later / etc.
Finally, this whole business feels very similar to me as the whole Evolution in education stuff. Sure people believe in the wrong thing, but at the end of the day very few people actually understand how the right thing works and even if they get that far they don't see what any of the implications are. Yeah, I would prefer people believe things that are true, but they don't understand it either way and they refuse to think about the implications.
I greatly appreciate the world building in things like Lord of the Rings or Avatar the last airbender. Everything works together in great detail to create a holistic world where actions have consequences that echo through the centuries. It feels like most people are just as happy to watch Michael Bay's Transformers. Maybe they like Avatar as well, but they don't understand why the shyamalan movie "adaptation" is bad. So I have a hard time caring that they agree with me that the cartoon was good as well.
I was a little surprised that there was no mention of mental illness. A human/reptile hybrid race is secretly controlling us all to serve an unknown agenda? I know that could be used for humor, but really it's just sad.
I'm sure this won't be a popular comment, but based on the descriptions in the article, the flat earthers seem very similar to the Trump supporters I know (family, not by choice).
The clear distinction is the absolute unwillingness to listen logic without screaming what-a-about conspiracy A, or conspiracy B, or C. Or the classic "your just a socialist" inbetween talking about their social security and medicare benefits.
There's clearly a segment of the population that has the inability to compute simple logic without triggering a fight/flight/amygdala response.
I used to think education was the problem.
But I'm starting to think this inability to control their emotional response when hearing anything that conflicts with their "belief system" is the hack that various organizations leverage to build a cult-like following.
Edit: thanks for all the fanfare(sarcasm towards the downvotes), I think that it proves my point.
> But I'm starting to think this inability to control their emotional response when hearing anything that conflicts with their "belief system" is the hack that various organizations leverage to build a cult-like following.
Jonathan Haidt describes this as "morality binds and blinds". The full quote being:
"Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say."
I also like Haidt's interpretation of Hume's "reason is a slave to the passions". Haidt descibes logical thinking as like a press secretary of emotion; with as much power over emotion as a rider has over an elephant. - The elephant goes where it wants to.
> each team is composed of good people who have something important to say
This is what makes this "abuse of the amygdala" a hack. The flat-earthers/trump-supporters don't have anything "important" to say unless you want to give credit to their conspiracies.
That said, they are indeed screaming loud and clear that there is a significantly large segment of people with certain mental dispositions that are being abused by leaders in the top ranks of our government and society.
Well, they actually do, and that's the problem. And I say that as someone who thinks Trump is an utter arse.
For example, they're not keen on a huge influx of foreigners from a different culture. Maybe you're dismissive of that, but it's because you're not listening.
Or, for example, they want to keep their jobs, e.g. coal miners. Maybe you're dismissive of that, but it's because you're not listening.
Or, for example, they're tired of politicians saying they'll do something but then nothing actually happening. Mainly because there are downsides to that action, e.g. because mass immigration now drives growth due to falling birth rates, there are no real attempts to stop it. Maybe you're dismissive of that, but it's because you're not listening.
Look at what happened recently in most western countries and it comes across as rigged. Mass immigration even though the population opposes it, no consequences for bankers in the 2008 crash, widening wealth inequality, falling wages when you take account of inflation. And America has really weird political dynasties, Kennedys, Bushes, Clintons. It's supposed to be a democracy and yet somehow you almost have feudal-esque ruler inheritance.
You can see why Trump's anti-establishment message worked.
This actually would explain a lot from my environment as well. Different country, different parties and issues, but that triggered responses - same story
If only "Thinking fast and slow" (kahneman) was distilled into something easier to swallow.
These concepts aren't new. They're also universal truths about human nature.
Everyone wants to think that they're in control, at least in their head. But until they come to terms with the fact that they are not in control, they will continue to do detriment to themselves and others. See "alcoholics anonymous" (AA) for evidence of this.
I always thought it's a natural thing: once everybody matures they'll stop their knee jerk, emotional responses and only allow those well thought out, analytical ones.
It seems though, there is an opposing and totally intentional force to that.
Somehow I feel that removing the emotional reactions could lead to collapse of some bigger social structures, cause it seems that this is the main glue that holds them together
Thankfully, I haven't known one of those since he got run out of the state for committing loan fraud. He seemed like an intelligent guy. Was even interested in startups. Then he started asking me about the "intellectual dark web." I was like, I know quite a bit about computers and I think I would've heard if there really was any legitimate intellect only accessible on the dark web. That was the last I remember of him besides that he committed fraud and moved back to his parents house in Wisconsin.
What is the implication here? Is it bad to have friends who are Trump supporters?
EDIT: I see my point of political bias proven, complete with intolerance, rationalization of said intolerance, gross assumptions, and overall it leaves me disappointed that the HN crowd allows this.
I judge people (not solely) based on who they choose to associate with, so for me ya it is bad. To put it more bluntly, if you surround yourself with shitty people, I'll assume you're a shitty person.
You surround yourself with 7.8 billion people who shit nearly every day.
To put it bluntly, you are judging yourself when you take yourself to be judging others, you claim an excuse that associating with others leads to your own self-admitted "badness"... You judge yourself, and rather than taking sentence with those aspects within, you externalize it and make assumptions based upon comparisons of your ideal shitty person, which deep down we both know that we are our own worst critics.
This only leads down one road, self-annihilatory behavior.
Learn to love yourself completely, you are not lacking, and to be honest, you taking yourself to be one that thinks of others or yourself as a shitty person is one of the most lovable parts about you.
That's lovely. I accrue some great insights from this sites river, but I should probably start curating my own river again. The insightful:judgemental signal-noise ratio is trending in a direction I simply fine unstimulating of productive discourse.
That you'd ask yourself if this reply is coherent is a function of your own mind seeking meaning from what appears to be unresolved processing of a response you received from the owners of a phishing website. Given you used to frequent said site and received a text you deem similar when questioning them about BLM, is understandable, given that the narratives and subtopics generated are still in flux, history is continuing to be written and the echos of the past keep crowning into our collective reality by the mere attention placed upon them.
A world where one loves themselves completely and thoroughly is often seen as incoherent due to the limitations one finds themselves confined in--usually in the form of narratives, beliefs, values aka the "already dead driftwood" of the mind--by taking themselves to be other than what they are, the past self in cahoots with the present self vying for the spotlight of consciousness, really just another form of communication, really.
Where it breaks down and a text seems incoherent is when such attention is placed upon a text... perhaps you've been looking for incoherence ever since you received that response on that website you spoke of and couldn't bear the mind to let it go, so you carry it with you everywhere, perhaps not realizing that this gets triggered every time a text taps on the walls of your own self constructed limitations--in this case it's one of inner reflection and unconditional love for oneself in a world where everyone and everything is interconnected.
You mean Scientology-Lite? Those folks are lit, love them.
Nah, you see, promotion is very much based in spacetime, a fourth dimensional manifold. The speed of light in this system is much too slow for my preference. And the desire systems to ride those rainbows of light are very rudimentary and will never fulfill their sirens promise, no matter where you look.
May the Sun Open upon you, May it fill your Heart with a radiance so brilliant that it breaks infinitely only to fill the cracks with the Love that is you, May You Be Love.
One can choose friends, and when one chooses some friends, it casts strong suspicions on one's character. This is not new to human behavior or social structure.
> EDIT: I see my point of political bias proven, complete with intolerance, rationalization of said intolerance, gross assumptions, and overall it leaves me disappointed that the HN crowd allows this
I would expect such a strong statement like this to be better explained.
What has confirmed what? What is the logic behind your conclusion? Please share.
What I'm saying is I appreciate intelligent discourse from the people I choose to surround myself with.
I'd love to hear from a credible left-leaning person about an example of intelligent discourse they had with a trump-supporter(not just a conservative, there's a difference).
This morning, I walked pass a Trump 2020 campaign flag with the slogan "No more bullshit." What kind of intelligence went into displaying that kind of message in public?
> When a worldview grows in a group of people that requires the belief that this trust has been fundamentally broken by the institutions of modern society, modern society feels the effects
I think this causality is backwards. These people already feel that the social contract has been broken, and then FE falls into their lap as an explanation for what they're feeling.
The disillusionment with our modern social structures is entirely valid and personally healthy. The real question is how to keep that feeling from collapsing into simplistic red herrings like FE, "jet fuel can't melt steel beams", or Trumpism. It's more difficult to hold nuanced anti-mainstream-propaganda opinions in your head, than to rally around a counter-fiction.
Then again, maybe this has been the genesis of all religion - reassuring narratives to assuage cognitive dissonance between what the rulers say and how you're actually treated. And the ones that end up being memetically successful are the ones that at least inspire people to do productive things.
Joshua 10:13, Joshua commands the sun and moon to stand still for about a whole day. Isaiah 38:8 God brings the sun backwards to set the shadow of the sundail of Ahaz back 10 degrees. Genesis God sets the sun, moon and stars inside the firmament with us. Or the great flood that is recorded with similar versions all across the world. Even the Roman Catholics believed the earth was flat at the time of Christopher Columbus. There's a reason why sea level is always at zero. Point being its about worshipping our heavenly Father that created all things, and set aside all of man's teachings to forsake the things of this world to have enternal life.
Sadly, this is another topic of questions to add to job interview filters - ask about the moon landings & vaccines.
Anyone subscribing to any of this conspiracy nonsense, especially as an identity is (pardon the language) too effin stupid to work in any serious technical endeavor - if they're deeply willing to ignore those facts & reason, what will they ignore on your project?
Plus, their deeply ingrained ideas that any authority is trying to control them has a high probabilty of turning against any employer lie a rabid dog, creating at least a costly series of problems and toxicity.
I'd even filter them out for manufacturing or fast food work.
edit: should add I'm talking about willful stupidity - deliberate cultivation of ignorance, as distinguished from naturally low intellectual horsepower
Keep in mind that things such as mass surveillance or the US government drugging its own citizens would have gotten you in an institution for suffering from paranoid delusions until these things came to light. There is always more and sometimes interesting perspective to consider.
"Stupid" is not a useful way to generally describe the people vulnerable to conspiracy theories. I have met people who are relatively intelligent who fall into these. See also: religion, politics.
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.
I have met stupid intelligent people. Sometimes knowledge just doesn't seem to translate to actual behavior and decisions (it's mostly about the lack of decisions, IMHO).
The irony happens when it is education itself that compromises the critical faculties of someone, as the article mentions.
Intelligent people are sometimes loyal to an ideology built during their upbringing and belong to their circle. Sometimes the exact opposite happens and drives them to a complete rejection of said ideas. Religion, culture, and politics are prone to create blind spots, where otherwise critical, highly educated, and intelligent individuals don't question specific biases because they are too closely related to their identity.
Sure, if "Stupid" is limited to the inability to form a sequence of connected thoughts, it is probably the wrong word.
If it encompasses the inability to reliably connect thoughts to reality, inability to trust anything other than naive constructs and actively distrusting others (which will certainly limit the problem space in which they can work), then it serves as a good shorthand.
Do you have any better suggestions (that aren't full sentences or paragraphs)?
It's easy to explain -- just not to people whose salary whose salary depends on not understanding it, who keep shaking their heads as the predictable results of the boat they won't rock roll in.
> people want some understanding of what's happening, but they're not getting it from the media, they're not getting it from the intellectual classes, they're certainly not getting it from the government
[..]
> it's happening all over and I think you can trace a good deal of it to the effect of neo-liberalism. It had a goal remember: the goal of neo-liberalism was to transfer decisions away from the public to the hands of private power and to atomize the population.
> the individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making. And I think that, in itself, leads to a good deal of political lethargy and stupidity. It is true that one has to think first and then to act - but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid.
With religion ymmv. A lot of people do not believe in some super-being, but do believe in belief and the benefits it brings them. A feeling of happiness, a social group to belong to, and a way of coping with the bigger philosophical questions around death and the meaning of life.
Religion is too broad a term to sweep everyone under. It’s very diverse.
Now creationists, who believe the world is 5.000 years old - yeah, that’s a whole other bag-of-fish.
To your first point, even creationists believe in empirical science and I doubt you'll find any meaningful disagreement between a die hard creationist and an evolutionary biologist on the empirical data. The line between empirical and circumstantial or interpretive evidence is often very blurry, however.
My 3rd though 6th grade education was at a private Christian school. We were explicitly taught that the Earth is ~6,000 years old and that fossils are a test of faith in that belief. Fundamentalist creationists exist.
This isn't my field so forgive me if this is a little confusing, but consider the big bang's origin. We have empirical data that suggests that the universe is expanding. To be clear, the interpretation of the data is that it's expanding, but it's non-controversial since virtually everyone accepts that almost all galaxies are moving away from each other. It's also not controversial to suggest the idea to creationists that everything could have come from one point, and that point expanded in all 3 dimentions (time, space) then matter.
The belief on the creationist side is that this original event must have a cause, because everything else in the universe that we can empirically study obeys that principle.
The belief on the atheist side, for lack of a better label, is that the universe was/got created out of nothing. It must be possible for it to occur without God, in the purest sense of the word atheist.
But whether God created it or it created itself, there are only interpretations and no direct empirical evidence.
That doesn't help with the direction from my Seventh-day Adventist teachers that I should ignore empirical evidence. They specifically taught that any evidence found which would falsify their calculated age of the Earth should be ignored.
Yes, one can be a creationist and choose to believe that God created the universe with a big bang. But some creationists literally believe that the Earth was created in six days.
Ah yes, the famous "I don't like them so they shouldn't be able to live"...
Since you're willing to deny people's basic rights such as "working", following your logic, someone could argue that you obviously lack empathy and shouldn't be in a managing position or anywhere above the very bottom of the hierarchy ladder
No matter how smart you think you are there will always be someone who think you're as dumb as a rock, hopefully they're not in a position to chose if you're allowed to get a job or not
if you live in a place where being allowed to work by other people is a prerequisite for living, I suggest doing something about your barbaric local culture.
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'd even filter them out for manufacturing or fast food work.
Barking insanity. You've just suggested sending people with completely harmless beliefs to the gulag. Either that or starving them to death; feel free to clarify how you expect these people to live. What would you consider appropriate treatment for people with what you consider actively "harmful" beliefs? Pull their fingernails out until they agree?
Intolerant assholes who would cashier harmless nincompoop flat earthers are the ones who should be unhirable outside of shoveling holes in the ground and scrubbing pots and pans: nobody wants a tin pot fascist in a management chain -for liability reasons if nothing else. This level of intolerance for nonconforming beliefs would have suggested burning Giordano Bruno or Galileo at the stake for their heresies in a different era, for precisely the same "reasons."
> I'd even filter them out for manufacturing or fast food work.
Would shoveling manure be a fitting enough means for them to earn their living in your eyes or is there something even lower that you think would be appropriate?
"I'd even filter them out for manufacturing or fast food work."
What an awful approach to hiring. But, perhaps you see it as a good way to make sure that all of your colleagues are the "right" sort of people and that you never have to work with someone as lowly as a manufacturer or restaurant server.
Considering that I AM a manufacturer, and also enjoy the company of restaurant servers and practice tipping well, that's a quite ignorant accusation.
The point is that if I'm hiring for manufacturing, or restaurant, I don't want someone in a shop with many hazards who makes a major practice in their life to 1) ignore actual facts, and 2) actively foment mistrust of any 'authority'.
Remember, as an employer, you'll be asking people to come to your place, and accomplish things alongside of you.
The first qualification of the "right" sort of people is integrity and an ability to trust them.
As Warren Buffet said:
"Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don't have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it's true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy."
Deep belief in conspiracy theories demonstrates maintained willful ignorance in the face of overwhelming facts -- i.e., a complete lack of intellectual integrity
It also shows an overwhelming distrust of anyone in authority, which would include an employer. A persons ability to trust shows their own trustworthiness - and in this case, it is for all practical purposes, zero. The second the conspiracist perceives that you are somehow slighting him, he will turn on you.
Why would anyone pay a person to work alongside them when their ability to think is self-constrained, they lack intellectual integrity to think clearly, and they are actively working to mistrust you?
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.
You could have picked any number of brilliant iconoclasts, but Terry Davis didn't have "uncommon beliefs," he had schizophrenia and it ruined his life and may have driven him to suicide.
And at the end of the day, his operating system is an interesting novelty and little more. Manic obsession and technical skill aren't equivalent to genius.
1. These people are not idiots (at least the YECs aren't, I can't speak for the flat-earthers) and to dismiss them as idiots who will just go away is a serious mistake. They are very good at presenting convincing-sounding arguments, and refuting them can actually be quite challenging.
2. The root of their reasoning is a tacit acceptance of teleology, which cannot be logically refuted. They approach existential questions with the assumption that there has to be some kind of point to existence, some transcendent meaning or purpose. If you accept this premise, then there is actually a logically defensible line of reasoning that leads you to Christianity and thence to the inerrancy of the Bible, and thence to YEC (and even a flat earth if you're really being intellectually honest!) A failure to appreciate this is IMHO one of the reasons that the secular world is having such a hard time effectively resisting these movements. A life without purpose makes no sense to these people, just as a theory at odds with the data makes no sense to someone with a scientific mindset. So if science leads you to the conclusion that life has no transcendent purpose (and it does) then, on their world-view, science must be wrong, full stop. No amount of data is going to persuade them otherwise.