Flat Earth

Everyone has their "flat earth" belief(s) based on their upbringing, culture, or just plain internal oddness. Someone telling the flat earth guy they are crazy for believing that (they are) then checking their horoscope to see what's going to happen to them is riding right along on the crazy bus.

The earth is flat, Ford is better than Chevy, ZJs were designed for off road, people shouldn't eat beef, One loss Alabama deserves to be in the college football playoffs, etc., etc., etc.; you name it, the world is full of odd people with silly beliefs.

That's before we touch on vaccinations and circumcisions.
 
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JMT said:
You seem to believe in the concept of neutrality, and that you, yourself are neutral. Neutrality is a myth, even in the supposedly most rational of all disciplines, mathematics. Mathematician Godet died with his final proven assumption that any equation that has addition or subtraction cannot be proven. This was the end of rationalism in the 1930's. Go read his proof if interested. It lead to a dying off of theoretical mathematics and an increase in practical mathematics. Russell's dream was over...Others have published proofs showing that mathematics is not even religiously neutral. It is all very interesting for a small subset of the population that cares about these things. And what about the question of geometry? We all studied Euclid, did we not? What about Lobatchevskian or Riemannian geometry? Which one has the truth when they all propose contradictory axioms? Maybe there is a practical application in different contexts (i.e. it works), but there is certainly no logical coherence between them.

Anyway, I'm not ashamed of once being a part of a conservative think tank. People who claim to be a part of one that is neutral is much more suspect. You shold only applaud those who are being truthful about where they are coming from. We are all coming from somewhere. Fossils don't have tags on them identifying the animal or plant they came from and little notes about their age. This stuff has to be interpreted under some lens. Usually that lens is the past is the key to the present. This is not a new idea.

What I mean by politicized science is special interest groups funding research and researchers that will produce statistics that support their political agenda. This is happening.
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I believe that research and investigation should be done through a neutral lens, but I certainly don't claim to *be* neutral.

I mean, I'm certainly no saint, but that doesn't mean I don't believe in doing good in life and adhering to moral/ethical behavior.

There's nothing inherently wrong with having a bias or preference to a certain perspective, but the whole reason we have science and logical thought is to be able to discover outcomes independently of what outcomes we want to discover.

Facts and reason should lead to one's beliefs. Not the other way around.
 
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InOmaha said:
Everyone has their "flat earth" belief(s) based on their upbringing, culture, or just plain internal oddness. Someone telling the flat earth guy they are crazy for believing that (they are) then checking their horoscope to see what's going to happen to them is riding right along on the crazy bus.

The earth is flat, Ford is better than Chevy, ZJs were designed for off road, people shouldn't eat beef, One loss Alabama deserves to be in the college football playoffs, etc., etc., etc.; you name it, the world is full of odd people with silly beliefs.

That's before we touch on vaccinations and circumcisions.
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How do we determine if something is odd? 😉
 
Equilibrium31 said:
I believe that research and investigation should be done through a neutral lens, but I certainly don't claim to *be* neutral.

I mean, I'm certainly no saint, but that doesn't mean I don't believe in doing good in life and adhering to moral/ethical behavior.

There's nothing inherently wrong with having a bias or preference to a certain perspective, but the whole reason we have science and logical thought is to be able to discover outcomes independently of what outcomes we want to discover.

Facts and reason should lead to one's beliefs. Not the other way around.
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I agree with you 100%. I'd just add that so-called "facts" are interpreted.
 
Shwane said:
Also, they don't believe in gravity.
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Maybe they don't because gravity wouldn't be a necessary magical, unseen, non-felt, non-measurable force on the flat earth, as things heavier than the density of the air will of course fall back down, but it is very much needed for the ball earth to exist as without it would make the whole thing, that would otherwise be impossible, possible.
 
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mrblaine said:
I don't want to live in a world where nothing is real. That's all yours, you can have it, all of it.
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That's good. I don't live in an unreal world, but most people reconstruct the world according to their faulty interpretation of it in order to hide from reality, which is their greatest fear.
 
Equilibrium31 said:
He's largely describing relativism, which I tend to see as an excuse to avoid facing facts when they're too inconvenient.
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I don't believe in relativism at all, I believe in absolutes. For starters, I don't believe my statement is relative. There is nothing that is true for me and not true for you. Reality is. But people do interpret reality, as previous comment. And no, Einstein didn't believe in relativism either, as idiots suppose. The theory of relativity meant that everything was determined by a mechanistic universe. It's fun watching y'all try to find out what I believe though.

Are other people here believing in absolutes? Or relativism? Knowing that might help a discussion.
 
Two very different relativisms. The one you have been making a case for this whole time is the one that says nothing can be known.
 
If you are talking about what philosophers call "brute" fact, no I don't believe in that. That is the idea that there are things that don't have an explanation. That is an excuse to avoid reality because it is not how you want to see it. @Equilibrium31
 
jjvw said:
Two very different relativisms. The one you have been making a case for this whole time is the one that says nothing can be known.
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Actually I have never said that. I have simply said that the scientific method can't explain everything because there are things that are beyond the range of science to deal with.
 
JMT said:
If I am ignorant, my degrees in biology and chemistry are not evidence enough. I worked in plant physiology with genetics and cropping research for five years after my university work. I had a great interest in all the sciences though, particularly geology, and have retained some of that interest over the years.
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Not to derail the thread, but there was enough discussion about the margins of science that it reminded me of my favorite crazy idea that is just sciencey enough to make it fun

https://m.phys.org/news/2013-07-chimp-pig-hybrid-humans.html
 
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JMT said:
Actually I have never said that. I have simply said that the scientific method can't explain everything because there are things that are beyond the range of science to deal with.
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Like the age of the Earth?
 
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