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Lets set aside for a moment that the flat earth movement is actually a religious movement disguised as science-based. FE videos might be removed because they e

Lets set aside for a moment that the flat earth movement is actually a religious movement disguised as science-based. FE videos might be removed because they explicitly promote falsehoods as fact. By that standard, religious videos would be similar.

baddox 6y ago
I don't think it's particularly "disguised as science-based" any more than, say, Christian apologetics groups like Answers in Genesis. Both groups seem pretty honest about the fact that their fundamental beliefs are religious, and the pseudoscience they do is pretty explicitly in service of that.
- metalliqaz 6y ago
  Really? At least on YouTube, the main channels seem to put up exclusively pseudoscience. I didn't know how religious the movement was until I saw "Behind the Curve" from HBO.
  - derefr 6y ago
    People don't tend to bother believing something weird without a motivation. I mean, there's contrarians, who believe all sorts of weird things just because they like the satisfaction of being proven right (which means they tend to only believe things that it seems like some fringe has evidence for somewhere.) But other than them, if you're taking a heterodox position on something, it tends to be because it confirms or fits in better with the rest of your existing world-view in some way. And in what world-view, does hypothesizing the Earth to be flat make things you already believe make more sense? A Creationist one.
    - tsegratis 6y ago
      Cool! Could you show me where in Genesis? The best I've found: He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers Or: He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing -- Funnily enough, Big Bang started as a Christian theory
      - macintux 6y ago
        https://christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c017.html https://christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c017.html
      - brlewis 6y ago
        > Funnily enough, Big Bang started as a Christian theory I don't think that's completely accurate, but it would be fair to say that resistance to the Big Bang theory was exacerbated by anti-religious sentiment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle#Rejection_of_the_Big_Bang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle#Rejection_of_the_Bi...
ErikVandeWater 6y ago
Serious question: Is a baby turning water into wine a falsehood that should be removed?
- brlewis 6y ago
  Also a serious question: How do you know it's false? How do we know the truth of events that aren't reproducible by empirical science?
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    Well, there are scientists who know an awful lot about the chemistry of wine; certainly much more so than people did 2000 years ago. If it were possible to instantly convert water into wine, we'd know about it, or at least have some idea about how it was conceivably performed. For the fantastical accomplishments of people of thousands of years ago to be believed, there needs to be more concrete evidence than stories passed down for generations. In this situation, it's unlikely that such evidence survived, so the best we could do is replicate what happened in the past and determine whether or not such an accomplishment could have happened given the technology of the past. I believe that people 5000 years ago could build awe-inspiring structures from stone because there's plenty of evidence of such capabilities (i.e., the great pyramids). I don't believe that someone turned water into wine instantly, because, afaik that is not possible, thus, at best, the event in question was some sleight-of-hand magic trick.
    - malka 6y ago
      to me, it was Jesus being a nice bro, and bringing lots of wine to the party, coz he was cool.
    - 1123581321 6y ago
      Christianity teaches that Jesus was God, so in that story, the same person who created all the atoms in the universe turned water into wine, presumably with the same power. That’s only to say you have a more fundamental disagreement than the truth about this one incident.
Alupis 6y ago
> FE videos might be removed because they explicitly promote falsehoods as fact. By that standard, religious videos would be similar. You have to be careful here, because you cannot prove God isn't real or that a religion is false. You can prove the earth is not flat, however.
- Sessions 6y ago
  There are plenty of bible literalist traditions that present falsifiable events/ideas as historical facts. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    You cannot prove something does not exist. Therefore you cannot prove God does not exist. QED. There is a possibility somewhere there is a God, therefore it is necessary true that there is possibly a God. QED again. You can get trapped in logical fallacies all day with this stuff. > bible literalist traditions Which is where this argument falls apart. Just because some church, group, etc decides to interpret religious writings or lore a certain way, doesn't falsify all religions. As we've already seen - new scientific evidence reveals some truth about the Universe, and interpretations of religion, world-wide, are modified to co-exist with the new information. How you interpret some particular religion is up to you.
    - Sessions 6y ago
      I don't think gp was claiming that all religious beliefs are false and all religious videos should be removed under this standard; or at least that's not the claim I'm making. I'm saying many religious traditions explicitly promote falsehoods as facts, and videos that espouse those teachings should be removed, if we follow this standard.
    - dang 6y ago
      Please don't perpetuate religious flamewars on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
catalogia 6y ago
> Lets set aside for a moment that the flat earth movement is actually a religious movement disguised as science-based. Flat eartherism is probably 99% trolls masquerading as a movement.

baddox 6y ago

I don't think it's particularly "disguised as science-based" any more than, say, Christian apologetics groups like Answers in Genesis. Both groups seem pretty honest about the fact that their fundamental beliefs are religious, and the pseudoscience they do is pretty explicitly in service of that.

metalliqaz 6y ago
Really? At least on YouTube, the main channels seem to put up exclusively pseudoscience. I didn't know how religious the movement was until I saw "Behind the Curve" from HBO.
- derefr 6y ago
  People don't tend to bother believing something weird without a motivation. I mean, there's contrarians, who believe all sorts of weird things just because they like the satisfaction of being proven right (which means they tend to only believe things that it seems like some fringe has evidence for somewhere.) But other than them, if you're taking a heterodox position on something, it tends to be because it confirms or fits in better with the rest of your existing world-view in some way. And in what world-view, does hypothesizing the Earth to be flat make things you already believe make more sense? A Creationist one.
  - tsegratis 6y ago
    Cool! Could you show me where in Genesis? The best I've found: He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers Or: He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing -- Funnily enough, Big Bang started as a Christian theory
    - macintux 6y ago
      https://christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c017.html https://christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c017.html
    - brlewis 6y ago
      > Funnily enough, Big Bang started as a Christian theory I don't think that's completely accurate, but it would be fair to say that resistance to the Big Bang theory was exacerbated by anti-religious sentiment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle#Rejection_of_the_Big_Bang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle#Rejection_of_the_Bi...

ErikVandeWater 6y ago

Serious question: Is a baby turning water into wine a falsehood that should be removed?

brlewis 6y ago
Also a serious question: How do you know it's false? How do we know the truth of events that aren't reproducible by empirical science?
- mywittyname 6y ago
  Well, there are scientists who know an awful lot about the chemistry of wine; certainly much more so than people did 2000 years ago. If it were possible to instantly convert water into wine, we'd know about it, or at least have some idea about how it was conceivably performed. For the fantastical accomplishments of people of thousands of years ago to be believed, there needs to be more concrete evidence than stories passed down for generations. In this situation, it's unlikely that such evidence survived, so the best we could do is replicate what happened in the past and determine whether or not such an accomplishment could have happened given the technology of the past. I believe that people 5000 years ago could build awe-inspiring structures from stone because there's plenty of evidence of such capabilities (i.e., the great pyramids). I don't believe that someone turned water into wine instantly, because, afaik that is not possible, thus, at best, the event in question was some sleight-of-hand magic trick.
  - malka 6y ago
    to me, it was Jesus being a nice bro, and bringing lots of wine to the party, coz he was cool.
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    Christianity teaches that Jesus was God, so in that story, the same person who created all the atoms in the universe turned water into wine, presumably with the same power. That’s only to say you have a more fundamental disagreement than the truth about this one incident.

Alupis 6y ago

> FE videos might be removed because they explicitly promote falsehoods as fact. By that standard, religious videos would be similar. You have to be careful here, because you cannot prove God isn't real or that a religion is false. You can prove the earth is not flat, however.

Sessions 6y ago
There are plenty of bible literalist traditions that present falsifiable events/ideas as historical facts. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism.
- Alupis 6y ago
  You cannot prove something does not exist. Therefore you cannot prove God does not exist. QED. There is a possibility somewhere there is a God, therefore it is necessary true that there is possibly a God. QED again. You can get trapped in logical fallacies all day with this stuff. > bible literalist traditions Which is where this argument falls apart. Just because some church, group, etc decides to interpret religious writings or lore a certain way, doesn't falsify all religions. As we've already seen - new scientific evidence reveals some truth about the Universe, and interpretations of religion, world-wide, are modified to co-exist with the new information. How you interpret some particular religion is up to you.
  - Sessions 6y ago
    I don't think gp was claiming that all religious beliefs are false and all religious videos should be removed under this standard; or at least that's not the claim I'm making. I'm saying many religious traditions explicitly promote falsehoods as facts, and videos that espouse those teachings should be removed, if we follow this standard.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't perpetuate religious flamewars on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

catalogia 6y ago

> Lets set aside for a moment that the flat earth movement is actually a religious movement disguised as science-based. Flat eartherism is probably 99% trolls masquerading as a movement.