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Is non-acceptance of evolution any different from believing in a flat Earth?

partdavid 4y ago
Only in terms of popularity.
heavyset_go 4y ago
Functionally, no. Denial of evolution often goes hand in hand with denial of the age of the Earth, which requires mental gymnastics to explain away the blatant evidence of Earth's age that are similar to the mental gymnastics required to explain why a spherical Earth is flat.
lolinder 4y ago
Flat-earthers have invented a modern controversy over a topic that has been considered settled ever since Aristotle, while evolution has only been widely accepted in the last 200 years. The one is a recently invented conspiracy theory, while the other is a rejection of a relatively recent scientific development.
standardUser 4y ago
Does anyone truly believe in a flat Earth in this day and age? I think it's mostly a joke, except maybe for some people with actual mental illnesses.
- partdavid 4y ago
  Yes.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  Yes, unfortunately. It's one of those things where an ironic meme/movement eventually gets coopted by people who don't pick up on the irony and are sincere. It's similar to 4chan/TheDonald ironically meme-ing about Trump until it wasn't ironic, and boomers unironically taking shit they read on anonymous message boards as fact.
- jsrcout 4y ago
  My friend works for a major aerospace corp and likes to engage (politely) with people who believe it's impossible to go into space and so forth, in hopes of possibly educating someone whose mind isn't already made up. I was surprised to learn there is a very large proportion of flat Earthers in this group. They genuinely believe what they say. They also argue using every logical fallacy possible. He said he only had one genuine conversation, i.e. with someone trying to understand his argument and not just refute it, in several years. Numerous people with these beliefs show up to ridicule the very idea of space travel or a spherical Earth on pretty much every single relevant video and article ever that has a comment section. That would seem to indicate that a lot of people hold these beliefs.
bmacho 4y ago
Is believing in a flat Earth any different from being religious?
- zdragnar 4y ago
  Very much so. Both are not rational, but for different reasons. Flat earth is something that you can readily disprove through both personal experience and physical evidence. Fly around the world in an air plane or sail by boat, see the curvature from high elevation or low orbit, etc. Religious belief is, practically by definition, belief in something that is not falsifiable. It is inherently not rational (otherwise it would be acceptance rather than belief). There are rationalizations and arguments that some will accept, but the heart of the matter is that belief is the difference between religion and science.
  - mbg721 4y ago
    As a religious believer, I upvoted this because I think you have a very good point--denying sensory evidence without a good reason is weak. The strongest argument for religion, the Aquinas-style one, is that faith fills in the missing pieces of what we see and hear, not that it replaces them with outrageous lies.
  - partdavid 4y ago
    This is a conciliation, it's not real. Of course religious beliefs are falsifiable. Religions make falsifiable predictions all the time. Gods live on Mount Olympus? Go meet them. Oh, they're not there? Hypothesis falsified. An angel protects you from harm. You're harmed? Hypothesis falsified. Prayer makes it more likely for a divine force to intercede on someone's behalf. Medical outcomes in a double-blind prayer study do not differ between groups? Hypothesis falsified. The fact that we have not invented the craft which can travel to heaven, or created the instrument that can detect a djinn, does not mean that those things are not falsifiable from a first principles perspective: they are technological and practical challenges, not philosophical ones. If you think otherwise, you must think that the definition of religious belief inherently incorporates its non-observability and non-potency: that which cannot be detected and which has no effect. In which case, it's clearly not "real" in any useful sense that you can share with someone else. It's just that it's such an obnoxious and antagonistic thing to say to people who keep religion, and sometimes to ourselves, so we bend our discourse around it in an effort to preserve peace and avoid saying it directly: a conciliation.
zaphar 4y ago
Flat Earth is trivially falsifiable. Beliefs about the origins of the universe are not so it's not really the same thing.
- standardUser 4y ago
  Evolution doesn't say anything about the origin of the universe. It explains how populations of living organisms change over generations.
  - zaphar 4y ago
    Disbelief in Evolution as the origin of life is rooted in a belief about the origins of the universe that is fundamentally impossible to falsify either way. In fact you can believe evolution exists and also believe that it is not the ultimate origin of life without in any way disagreeing with established scientific fact.
- _dain_ 4y ago
  >Flat Earth is trivially falsifiable. It's falsifiable, but not trivially. For example, due to atmospheric refraction we can see some distance around the curvature of the Earth. A common Flat Earth "demonstration" / "gotcha" is to show examples of photographs taken of distant objects, that shouldn't be visible because they'd be below the horizon (checkmate, Globalists). The optics phenomena are complicated, and most people have to take it on faith that the physicists aren't lying. And if you already think there's a global conspiracy to deny the Flat Earth, that's a non-starter. There are a lot of things like this where it's actually a bit more complicated -- some second-order effect that isn't satisfactorily explainable with high school physics. And they have them all memorized as talking points. So a naive debater can get caught unawares and look foolish.
  - zaphar 4y ago
    Today when we can go into space and fly literally around the world it's trivially falsifiable. So no, it's not the same thing in any sense of the word.
michaelmrose 4y ago
Yes. Although both are false non-acceptance of evolution is disbelief in abstract analysis of a world that was and cannot be directly perceived. Belief in a flat earth requires disregarding the direct evidence of your own eyeballs and perception of the concrete world as it is. The former is regrettable. The latter suggests that perhaps you belong in a facility with someone looking after you.
mavili 4y ago
Very different. The earth being a globe is observable and is a fact. Evolution is a theory and is not observable at all. It is all based on a huge assumption (we THINK that is how things happened). The wide-spread acceptance of evolution is because of lack of another explanation of how life must have come into existence when you cannot bring yourself to give any possibility to a supernatural entity.
- orwin 4y ago
  No, it's based on observation and mathematical models. Computer science helped a lot in this regards, and i found myself at a loss when people on "Hacker"news don't seems to know about a whole field of their discipline. Hell, we recently had a computer simulation that demonstrated HGT. I thought any engineer would have been interested on this story, but apparently not.
  - mavili 4y ago
    A computer simulation, programmed to simulate based on rules you have provided beforehand, and did you ever question that?! Artificial intelligence models trained on content derived from society will produce content that conforms to what it was trained with. Likewise simulations given similar rules will of course result in an outcome favourable to the rules specified. But of course you will take things at face value because "it's all science"!
    - orwin 4y ago
      Wow, that's aggressive. I merely pointed out that in my opinion, the fact that HGT appeared from scratch in a computer simulation was interesting enough for engineers who feel strongly about the subject to be aware of it. This isn't particulary interesting to me and I know about it. Also, when I was a student and had to much time, we built a genetic algorithm to train a connect 4 IA, and it helped me understand how a very simplified evolution theory actually work. I would advise you to do the same (let's face it, CS courses are a joke and you probably could do this during classes)
- criddell 4y ago
Strilanc 4y ago
I think one major difference is that flat earth-ism requires blatant worldwide conspiracies whereas young earth-ism could be compatible with mere worldwide incompetence. It's not so hard to accidentally screw up radiocarbon dating of a sample. And it's not unheard of for a whole field of study to royally screw up (e.g. the replication crisis in psychology). But it's very hard to accidentally screw up "this weather satellite takes a picture of the earth every hour and it clearly shows a sphere". And the flight paths of planes. And and and and ...

Only in terms of popularity.

Functionally, no. Denial of evolution often goes hand in hand with denial of the age of the Earth, which requires mental gymnastics to explain away the blatant evidence of Earth's age that are similar to the mental gymnastics required to explain why a spherical Earth is flat.

lolinder 4y ago

Flat-earthers have invented a modern controversy over a topic that has been considered settled ever since Aristotle, while evolution has only been widely accepted in the last 200 years. The one is a recently invented conspiracy theory, while the other is a rejection of a relatively recent scientific development.

standardUser 4y ago

Does anyone truly believe in a flat Earth in this day and age? I think it's mostly a joke, except maybe for some people with actual mental illnesses.

partdavid 4y ago
Yes.
heavyset_go 4y ago
Yes, unfortunately. It's one of those things where an ironic meme/movement eventually gets coopted by people who don't pick up on the irony and are sincere. It's similar to 4chan/TheDonald ironically meme-ing about Trump until it wasn't ironic, and boomers unironically taking shit they read on anonymous message boards as fact.
jsrcout 4y ago
My friend works for a major aerospace corp and likes to engage (politely) with people who believe it's impossible to go into space and so forth, in hopes of possibly educating someone whose mind isn't already made up. I was surprised to learn there is a very large proportion of flat Earthers in this group. They genuinely believe what they say. They also argue using every logical fallacy possible. He said he only had one genuine conversation, i.e. with someone trying to understand his argument and not just refute it, in several years. Numerous people with these beliefs show up to ridicule the very idea of space travel or a spherical Earth on pretty much every single relevant video and article ever that has a comment section. That would seem to indicate that a lot of people hold these beliefs.

bmacho 4y ago

Is believing in a flat Earth any different from being religious?

zdragnar 4y ago
Very much so. Both are not rational, but for different reasons. Flat earth is something that you can readily disprove through both personal experience and physical evidence. Fly around the world in an air plane or sail by boat, see the curvature from high elevation or low orbit, etc. Religious belief is, practically by definition, belief in something that is not falsifiable. It is inherently not rational (otherwise it would be acceptance rather than belief). There are rationalizations and arguments that some will accept, but the heart of the matter is that belief is the difference between religion and science.
- mbg721 4y ago
  As a religious believer, I upvoted this because I think you have a very good point--denying sensory evidence without a good reason is weak. The strongest argument for religion, the Aquinas-style one, is that faith fills in the missing pieces of what we see and hear, not that it replaces them with outrageous lies.
- partdavid 4y ago
  This is a conciliation, it's not real. Of course religious beliefs are falsifiable. Religions make falsifiable predictions all the time. Gods live on Mount Olympus? Go meet them. Oh, they're not there? Hypothesis falsified. An angel protects you from harm. You're harmed? Hypothesis falsified. Prayer makes it more likely for a divine force to intercede on someone's behalf. Medical outcomes in a double-blind prayer study do not differ between groups? Hypothesis falsified. The fact that we have not invented the craft which can travel to heaven, or created the instrument that can detect a djinn, does not mean that those things are not falsifiable from a first principles perspective: they are technological and practical challenges, not philosophical ones. If you think otherwise, you must think that the definition of religious belief inherently incorporates its non-observability and non-potency: that which cannot be detected and which has no effect. In which case, it's clearly not "real" in any useful sense that you can share with someone else. It's just that it's such an obnoxious and antagonistic thing to say to people who keep religion, and sometimes to ourselves, so we bend our discourse around it in an effort to preserve peace and avoid saying it directly: a conciliation.

zaphar 4y ago

Flat Earth is trivially falsifiable. Beliefs about the origins of the universe are not so it's not really the same thing.

standardUser 4y ago
Evolution doesn't say anything about the origin of the universe. It explains how populations of living organisms change over generations.
- zaphar 4y ago
  Disbelief in Evolution as the origin of life is rooted in a belief about the origins of the universe that is fundamentally impossible to falsify either way. In fact you can believe evolution exists and also believe that it is not the ultimate origin of life without in any way disagreeing with established scientific fact.
_dain_ 4y ago
>Flat Earth is trivially falsifiable. It's falsifiable, but not trivially. For example, due to atmospheric refraction we can see some distance around the curvature of the Earth. A common Flat Earth "demonstration" / "gotcha" is to show examples of photographs taken of distant objects, that shouldn't be visible because they'd be below the horizon (checkmate, Globalists). The optics phenomena are complicated, and most people have to take it on faith that the physicists aren't lying. And if you already think there's a global conspiracy to deny the Flat Earth, that's a non-starter. There are a lot of things like this where it's actually a bit more complicated -- some second-order effect that isn't satisfactorily explainable with high school physics. And they have them all memorized as talking points. So a naive debater can get caught unawares and look foolish.
- zaphar 4y ago
  Today when we can go into space and fly literally around the world it's trivially falsifiable. So no, it's not the same thing in any sense of the word.

michaelmrose 4y ago

Yes. Although both are false non-acceptance of evolution is disbelief in abstract analysis of a world that was and cannot be directly perceived. Belief in a flat earth requires disregarding the direct evidence of your own eyeballs and perception of the concrete world as it is. The former is regrettable. The latter suggests that perhaps you belong in a facility with someone looking after you.

mavili 4y ago

Very different. The earth being a globe is observable and is a fact. Evolution is a theory and is not observable at all. It is all based on a huge assumption (we THINK that is how things happened). The wide-spread acceptance of evolution is because of lack of another explanation of how life must have come into existence when you cannot bring yourself to give any possibility to a supernatural entity.

orwin 4y ago
No, it's based on observation and mathematical models. Computer science helped a lot in this regards, and i found myself at a loss when people on "Hacker"news don't seems to know about a whole field of their discipline. Hell, we recently had a computer simulation that demonstrated HGT. I thought any engineer would have been interested on this story, but apparently not.
- mavili 4y ago
  A computer simulation, programmed to simulate based on rules you have provided beforehand, and did you ever question that?! Artificial intelligence models trained on content derived from society will produce content that conforms to what it was trained with. Likewise simulations given similar rules will of course result in an outcome favourable to the rules specified. But of course you will take things at face value because "it's all science"!
  - orwin 4y ago
    Wow, that's aggressive. I merely pointed out that in my opinion, the fact that HGT appeared from scratch in a computer simulation was interesting enough for engineers who feel strongly about the subject to be aware of it. This isn't particulary interesting to me and I know about it. Also, when I was a student and had to much time, we built a genetic algorithm to train a connect 4 IA, and it helped me understand how a very simplified evolution theory actually work. I would advise you to do the same (let's face it, CS courses are a joke and you probably could do this during classes)
criddell 4y ago

Strilanc 4y ago

I think one major difference is that flat earth-ism requires blatant worldwide conspiracies whereas young earth-ism could be compatible with mere worldwide incompetence. It's not so hard to accidentally screw up radiocarbon dating of a sample. And it's not unheard of for a whole field of study to royally screw up (e.g. the replication crisis in psychology). But it's very hard to accidentally screw up "this weather satellite takes a picture of the earth every hour and it clearly shows a sphere". And the flight paths of planes. And and and and ...