I don’t know how I got to hear about the “flat earth” issue or what got me to actually listen to that side of the debate. I had always heard of it in derisive terms, always with a sneer, a view that the people who held such a view were dullards, stupid, retarded. But something had peaked my interest about it, maybe a suggested video on the side of a video I was actually watching. Since I’m in the path of questioning why I hold certain things to be true, I thought I’d give it a listen.
Now let me set this straight now: I have not adopted the flat earth position.
Did I hear a sigh of relief? David’s not gone totally crazy, right? I won’t pretend I’m now acceptable to those who see my views as stupid, Luddite, “pre-scientific.”
But …
Yes, there’s a “but.”
But I no longer see the globe idea as the “true truth” either.
…
What, you’re still here? Not signed off? Not zoned out? Oh, wow. Errrr … do I … do I go on?
Oh yeah, I write this primarily for me, right? So at least if I’m talking to myself, I’ll always have an audience. (Damn, that sounds conceited … actually, not fully. I talk to myself a lot of the time, so writing my thoughts isn’t too distant from that.)
So, yes, looking into the flat earth subject revealed something to me that I should have known, that I know, but I didn’t fully. It showed me that I still take certain ideas for granted, accepting them as true, when I’ve never had a good basis for it.
For example, why did I accept that the earth was a ball? Because it’s what I was always told. That was simply and only it. It was always in the books or pictures around me as I grew up. If someone challenged me on why it is a globe and not another shape, or flat, I could provide no rationally compelling reason, no evidence. I had taken the words of people on faith. Added to that, I personally had never seen any curve to the place I live on. Added to that, I’ve never felt the alleged spin of the place I live, or its alleged orbit around a sun, or its speed around some galactic centre or its universal movement. Yet I took the words of people on faith.
But I had done that before. Many times. And many times, that faith or confidence was shown to be unfounded and false. So, apart from the comfort of having a viewpoint acceptable to the majority of people around me, why did I accept this teaching about a ball earth?
In the standard understanding of the “local” planetary system, the ball has people and an atmosphere stuck to it by means of a force called “gravity,” yet it spins at its equator at a speed of over 1,000mph, orbiting a gigantic fireball at a speed of 67,000mph, and that fireball is moving at a speed of 448,000mph with planets surrounding it, orbiting it, each planet having moons and there also being an asteroid belt in that system. And it all sticks together because of “gravity.” And the galaxy that the fireball is in is also moving at a speed of 1.34 million miles per hour.
People accustomed to looking at the numbers or who are acquiescent to what they’re told, those with an imagination to picture such a thing in the mind as if they were watching a sci-fi movie may shrug their shoulders and say, “so what?” I look at such an idea and realise one thing, a thing that I mentioned in a previous article: I know where I am and what I’ve experienced. I’m not a cameraman in space, in a place of perfect and absolute rest from which I can judge absolute universal motion. That would be a metaphysical position. That’s another way of saying I’m not in the position of God. I’m here, stuck on the land, looking out around me.
From my position, from the human position, I don’t experience any of that gloriously insane picture. Since humans live on this “plane” of existence, no person has ever experienced such a universe either, neither can they. They can theorise such a picture. They can calculate and create based on assumptions such a picture. They can use their computers to model such a scenario. But, as I’ve learned, science is a method that can be used to create tentative models, but it yields no dogmatic truth beyond what we experience.
Oh, added to that, the idea of the ball earth came with some evidences that don’t hold up, such as objects becoming hidden due to going over the earth’s alleged curvature? Binoculars and telescopes contradict that idea.
I’m not gonna go through the short list of evidences given. The issue is not that I’m convinced one way or another – or maybe I am convinced of something – but that I took an idea for granted and that I now have a skeptical view of all or both ideas.
“DUDE, ARE YOU DENYING GRAVITY?”
Depends what you mean. Do I deny that things tend to fall downwards, to the ground, unless enough thrust is applied? That’s what we experience. Do I believe, therefore, that gas can join together to become a fragment of rock which then attracts other rocks, like a non-metal-attracting magnet, and then becomes a great big rock that both manages to become an almost perfect sphere and ignites its insides to make a molten core, and then manages to get another massive rock to orbit it rather that just be attracted to it to become a bigger clump of rock? I’ve never experienced that or anything like it. And it doesn’t sound credible or plausible to me.
“DUDE, ARE YOU DENYING SCIENCE?”
See, now I’m glad you asked that question because this helps reveal to me the authority, the “god” that many bow to today.
When a person asks this question, here’s what they both imply yet can never truly mean:
“Are you denying the obvious and absolute truth?”
There’s something … That’s the elevation that’s been given to “science” in that it is now the measure of the truth. But what can science never give? The truth! It is a method, one method or a group of methods, that a person can use to investigate the world. But it is limited by the user, a user of imperfect knowledge and limited perception, affected by biases and internal and external pressures cannot hope to get “the Truth” from it, only plausible ideas that are subject to change or abandonment.
But also note, a person can also mean, when they ask such a question, this: “how can you deny what the consensus of the authorities say?” It’s an appeal to authority and consensus as if that too is a measure of a truth to be invested in. In order for such an appeal to be valid, the authority (understood as “experts” not the controllers or owners) must be valid. The expertise must be based on truth. In order for consensus to be worth anything, the individuals and establishment must be bereft of bias or agenda.
The authority/expertise fails immediately in this context. The subjects I’m pondering are not within human experience but are outside of human experience, involving something metaphysical: absolute motion.
And the scientific endeavour would have to have a sufficient record of morality, truth and correctness. But it’s a house built on inferior foundations. Every so often there is a paradigm shift and it’s not based on correctness or truth but popularity and politics. Its method necessitates falsifiability and probability, and its history is strewn with the many carcasses of theories once held dear but were falsified. The science industry, normally a tool of the powers that be to control the people, much like the priesthood of old if not its direct descendant, the science community is set apart from the rest of us humans as objective and selflessly searching for truth when, in truth, it behaves like any religion. It gives a veneer of agreement and consensus, giving simpler statements of belief to outsiders and laypeople, but look deeper and there’ll be the same discord and dissent, disagreement and debate. Its edicts are meant to be taken as gospel with those questioning or rejecting those dictates being discarded and excommunicated, ridiculed and reviled like any religious heretic. Its adherents fancy themselves to be skeptics and claim to be testers (witch-hunters) using objective scrutiny when they are simply acolytes and followers of the words of the scientific prophets.
But the basis of the expertise is still earth-bound humans, the vast majority of which hasn’t left this “plane,” this earth, small minds of imperfect knowledge and limited perspective.
For some people, for many, the pomp attributed to the scientific priesthood is enough, even for declarations with no basis in everyday life or experience. Quantum fluctuations? The distortions in spacetime? A curved water layer, conforming to a curved surface, a notion that makes no experiential sense? For them, the experts know more than us and we must trust the experts. But experts in what? Experts in absolute motion? Experts in mathematical models? Experts in practicals ignorant of the underlying philosophy? Experts who are still earth-bound humans like you and me? Experts in a field with as much of a history of failure as that of success, if not more failure? Experts that demand we assign the appellations “absolute truth” and “fact” to the products of their endeavours which necessarily must be deemed tentative? Isn’t that last point a sign of deep ignorance within these “experts?”
And here I am. How much have I swallowed and absorbed in my youth, throughout my life without a second thought? How many times have I been guarded about and against the obvious religions in the world and ignored the secular one, and hence been unguarded?
The essence of this post is that, again, I’m made aware of things I’ve just assumed to be true simply because I was programmed so by the repetition of ideas from my youth, ideas for which I sought no basis, yet never challenged. And once again, what I saw as fact to be assumed is now seen as a claim needing sufficient reason to be adopted afresh, or else I’ll just flush it.
I think I’ll end this one with no disclaimer.
https://hesedyahu.wordpress.com/2019/02/13/taking-things-for-granted/
Topic: Taking things for granted (Read 1642 times)