Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I bet you thought that Flat Earthers—those who deny that the Earth is spherical—were long gone. But flat-Earthism persisted into the 20th century, and some of the loons are still with us. There are serious (and also parody) flat-Earth societies; one of the serious ones is the International Flat Earth Research Society (IFERS; header on bar says that link is not secure). That one is connected, as you might guess, with religiosity, anti-Semitism, and other conspiracy theories. Some adherents who are strict Biblical fundamentalists deny a spherical earth because some passages in scripture can be interpreted as describing a disk or plane.)
Here’s a screenshot from the IFERS site:
And here, according to Wikipedia, is the IFERS’s “model”:
The Flat Earth Society’s most recent world model is that humanity lives on a disc, with the North Pole at its center and a 150-foot (45 m) high wall of ice, Antarctica, at the outer edge. The resulting map resembles the symbol of the United Nations, which Johnson [Charles K. Johnson, the former president of IFERS] used as evidence for his position. In this model, the Sun and Moon are each 32 miles (52 km) in diameter. [JAC: if that were the case, then you could explain eclipses only by asserting that the Sun and Moon are about equidistant from Earth!]
Flat Earth Society recruited members by speaking against the U.S. government and all its agencies, particularly NASA. Much of the society’s literature in its early days focused on interpreting the Bible to mean that the Earth is flat, although they did try to offer scientific explanations and evidence.
And they’re in America! As the Denver Post reported just yesterday, there’s a group of three dozen flat-Earthers (FEs) in Fort Collins, Colorado, and the “movement” is supposedly growing, with several thousand people accepting this pseudoscience:
Every Tuesday at 6 p.m., three dozen Coloradans from every corner of the state assemble in the windowless back room of a small Fort Collins coffee shop. They have met 16 times since March, most nights talking through the ins and outs of their shared faith until the owners kick them out at closing.
They have no leaders, no formal hierarchy and no enforced ideology, save a common quest for answers to questions about the stars. Their membership has slowly swelled in the past three years, though persecution and widespread public derision keep them mostly underground. Many use pseudonyms, or only give first names.
Indeed, it surely is a faith, because there are no facts supporting it. The article describes how it was founded, links to YouTube videos that have converted people (see the GlobeBusters channel), and describes their “theory”. Two more excerpts:
In Colorado, Ptolemaic-science revivalists have lofty ambitions: raising $6,000 to put up a billboard along Interstate 25 broadcasting their worldview. A GoFundMe site quickly raised more than $400 but has recently stalled. Anyone can contribute funds or submit billboard ideas, and the group has promised $100 to the winning submitter.
“This is not something you can force down others’ throats,” Vnuk says. “They have to come to it on their own journey. A billboard is a nonaggressive way to introduce people to the idea.”
(All scientists and educators consulted for this story rejected the idea of a flat earth.)
At the Tuesday night meet-ups, dubbed “Flat Earth or Other Forbidden Topics,” believers invite fellow adherents to open discussions in which the like-minded confirm one another’s hunches and laugh at the folly of those still stuck in the Enlightenment.
Here are two photos of the Fort Collins branch. The people look normal to me:
Members of Flat Earth Fort Collins watch YouTube videos on the topic at a meet up on June 27, 2017 at the Purple Cup in Fort Collins. The group is skeptical of the science behind the Earth being a spinning sphere.
John Vnuk, 54, founder of Flat Earth Fort Collins, speaks at their meet up on June 27, 2017 at the Purple Cup in Fort Collins. The group is skeptical of the science behind the Earth being a spinning sphere. Photo by Gabriel Scarlett, the Denver Post.
But wait! There’s more!:
“There’s so much evidence once you set aside your preprogrammed learning and begin to look at things objectively with a critical eye,” says Bob Knodel, a Denver resident and featured guest at a recent Tuesday meeting. “You learn soon that what we’re taught is mainly propaganda.”
. . . The movement, though, is not a monolith. Differences of opinion divide the community on matters of scientific interpretation, cosmology, strategy and even the most fundamental questions of geology, such as: what shape is our planet?
Many subscribe to the “ice wall theory,” or the belief that the world is circumscribed by giant ice barriers, like the walls of a bowl, that then extend infinitely along a flat plane. Sargent envisions Earth as “a giant circular disc covered by a dome.” He likens the planet to a snow globe, similar to the one depicted in “The Truman Show,” a fictitious 1998 existential drama about an insurance salesman unknowingly living in an artificially constructed dome.
What then lies on the other side of the ice walls or beyond the glassy dome enclosing our world?
Flat Earthers don’t claim to know with certainty, instead paying lip service to “common sense” evidence they claim can be proved. When skeptics demand proof, though, Flat Earthers wield reams of figures from so-called curvature tests and gyroscope calibrations that seem to buttress their views. Leaders want Flat Earthism to be an accessible creed for the common man, an egalitarian movement that gives life meaning by punching back at scientific disenchantment.
“They want you to think you’re insignificant, a speck on the earth, a cosmic mistake,” Sargent says. “The flat earth says you are special, we are special, there is a creator, this isn’t some accident.”
This would seem to be the height of lunacy, even dumber than creationism, but it’s not all that surprising. If you can deny the evidence for evolution, which is as strong as that for a spherical Earth, why not deny that round Earth? I recently met an evolutionary biologist who made significant contributions to writing science textbooks in an Anglophone country, but he believed strongly that the 9/11 hijackings were a ruse: the destruction of the World Trade Center was done by the U.S. government with the help of the Jews. He was dead serious.
How can this be? Well, Michael Shermer wrote a book on the subject, Why People Believe Weird Things, and I’ll refer you to that. It’s nor surprising that this kind of movement is growing in the Trump era. With the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories, the resentment of a scientific “elite”, the feeling that your group is persecuted, and the idea that the media is constantly deceiving us, it’s not too hard to see how people can buy “alternative facts.” Even if those facts involve the Earth being shaped like a Necco Wafer.
Here’s the ultimate disproof, courtesy of reader Laurie, that the Earth isn’t flat:
Interesting nuttery and outrage have been thin on the ground this week, and I have but three four attempted comments to present.
First, reader SIDNEY COAD WILLIAMS (yes, in caps) is REALLY EXCITED about evolution, so he writes in CAPSLOCK. This is a comment on the post “Ways of knowing“:
ALL FAUNA AND FLORA EVOLVE THROUGH EVOLUTIONARY PROCESSES.
IN FAUNA WE HAVE THE BIRTH PROCESS OF THE NEW BORN
IN FLORA THE PLANTS ARE FERTILIZED BY BIRDS, INSECTS, SOME ANIMALS AND THE WIND THE FERTILIZED PLANT PRODUCES SEEDS WHICH FALL ON THE GROUND. WHEN IT RAINS THE SEEDS GERMINATE AND NEW PLANTS ARE BORN. THESE ARE EVOLUTION PROCESSES. EVOLUTION IS A BIOLOGICAL FACT.
Well, all the sentences are true except for the penultimate one, though the first is a bit tautological. But there’s the little matter of changes in the frequencies of gene forms from one generation to the next. . .
Anyone can use the scientific method.
You are no more a scientist than anyone.
Evolution is a Theory. Not a provable law.
What is the mathematical probability that the universe evolved from nothing from 0 to infinity.
Starting with nothing and evolving into the infinite universe….0/infinity…not a probable number.
God/infinity =1 a very probable number infact the perfect number.
God divided by infinity is one? I didn’t know God was a number; we’d probably better check that out with Karen Armstrong and David Bentley Hart, who really know what God is.
To anyone who has read much about terrorism and extremism, the association between nihilism and extremism is a commonplace. Read Conrad. Read Dostoevsky. The association is old: dating back to the bomb-throwing anarchist scare at the turn of the last century. Real true believers become traditionalist establishment figures, even if in very modest ways; desperate people drowning in a sea of meaninglessness become thugs and suicide bombers. How else do you explain secular Westerners becoming ISIS executioners? It’s not the traditional hold of religion–it is the preferability of fake meaning to real meaninglessness, at least for some people. And when it comes to fake meaning, extremist Islam is the method actor of fake meaning. Generally, Jerry Coyne’s speculations on sociology and psychology are about as valuable as mine on population genetics, and until he starts sparing time to give me a call to hear my speculations, he really ought to have a bit more modesty about his own.
You know, although I think he’s wrong, I would have put this one up if the person had a civil neuron on his head. It was the last sentence that consigned him to the hell of being Forever Separated from Professor Ceiling Cat, as well as his arrogant claim that I should “spare time to call” him to “hear his speculations.” Yeah,like that’s gonna happen!
Sometimes I think that when people address a writer on the internet, they completely lack the ability to put themselves in the post-creator’s shoes, and to imagine how one’s words might make the other person feel. Would Eric Hines talk to me like this in my living room? I doubt it.
As for nihilism, perhaps some of those who despair become extremists, but I doubt that much of the nefarious behavior of ISIS itself, which marches under the banner of Islam, stems from nihilism, which, as defined by the Oxford English dictionary, is the following:
Note the first definition. One would be hard pressed to claim that ISIS rejects religious beliefs, morals, and laws, which of course they try to impose on the people they conquer. Nor do I think that most extremist Muslims see life as devoid of meaning. Just ask them.
And really, this?: “[E]xtremist Islam is the method actor of fake meaning.” Why is it fake: because Allah doesn’t exist? If so, then all religions are fake, and all believers are nihilists. Yes, certainly some people may join extremist jihadists because they find it gives meaning to their lives, but once they do so they are no longer nihilists. They have a belief, probably in the Caliphate. The other definitions of “nihilism” don’t apply here at all.
Well, we can argue about this, which is really a semantic issue, but Mr. Hines won’t be able to engage on this site, for he’s violated the basic canons of civility.
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Whoops, one more came in just this minute, from reader D M. Wolfe, commenting on Matthew’s post “Lamprey schreckstoff“. This is a good one:
Stop using “nom”, “nomming”, “nommed”, and other variants involving the prefix “nom-” in your writings please, or I will be forced to find another blog that offers an equally interesting evolutionary-biological perspective on things, without cringe-inducing contemporary neologisms.
It’s an order! An order from an arrogant jerk! Are people like this completely oblivious how they come across to others? I guess so. . . .
My response is this:
Dear Mr. Wolfe,
Do you think I give a rat’s patootie about whether you frequent this website or not? In fact, I’m delighted to ensure that you’ll never post here, because I like to maintain an atmosphere of civility, and entitled twits like you don’t get to come into the living room.
Don’t let the door hit your sorry tuchus on the way out.
Some of the nastiest emails and comments I get are from defenders of woomeisters like Rupert Sheldrake (who complained to my provost about me a few weeks ago) and Deepak Chopra. There’s a penchant for woo that runs deep in some people.
From reader “Someone who knows,” commenting on a post about Tanzi and Deepak Chopra’s theory of “self-directed evolution”. I love the aside that I’ve never been in a lab. Note that in none of these comments so far—and this one includes a gratuitous insult—do the readers have the guts to identify themselves with their real names. If the person was forced to use his real name (I’m assuming it’s a male), do you suppose he would have added the last word? I again would urge readers to use their real names while commenting, though I understand why many will not and will respect their reasons to remain pseudonymous.
“What mystifies me is that this article is co-written with Rudolph Tanzi, a neuroscientist at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital, described in the article as “Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit and Vice-Chair of the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is also the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Co author with Deepak Chopra, Super Brain.” Why would a respectable scientist lend his name to..”
Perhaps because this is cutting edge science and is in fact….. real.
Are you a qualified doctor or neuroscientist? What qualifies you to talk about scientific data and theories with no qualifications or knowledge? Do I see you in a lab? No.
Did you think science would just ‘stop’ finding out new things. Undermining someone else and their research doesn’t automatically intelligent, it makes you automatically ignorant. Ignorance by the way, means you are with the absolute stupidest people on the whole planet, congratulations on your ignorance!! Bravo! Cunt.
Note that the theory I was posting about, “self-directed evolution,” is about genetics and evolution—precisely my area of expertise. Being an M.D. doesn’t provide any more credibility to discuss that. Note as well that this commenter plays the “credentials card” to defend Tanzi and Chopra’s theory, even though I raised real scientific arguments against it (arguments that “One Who Knows” doesn’t seem to understand, or care about).
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Reader Mark, an obvious sympathizer with Intelligent Design, comments on a post critical of Stephen Meyer’s interpretation of the Cambrian “explosion” as the handiwork of Jesus, “A paleontologist’s response to Darwin’s Dilemma“:
You assume there was 40 million years to play with. There is no known study that I have ever seen that dates the exact time it had taken. It could have been as short as 200 thousand or even overnight nobody knows yet. They are setting up more accurate ways of measurement to see just how long it did take, so I will wait and see before I stick my head out only to get it stepped on when that data comes out. Something in the plus or minus range of 5% will do.
Second, it doesn’t answer why we have the Yunnan Cambrian find producing embryonic cell and embryos once thought impossible to find in the fossil records. It clearly can be seen and observed under an electron microscope. So the theory that no soft body animals could be found is false.
I might add the study saying evolution was 5 times greater then the Big Bang would require “Special Evolution” to happen only once then stop. That is not Darwinian or even Neo Darwinian theory as it breaks all the rules of simple naturalistic, random mutations, unguided process mechanism. It’s not even reducible to smaller simple cell proteins or amino acids that could account for this special evolution to even happen without special modeling and certain human fudging on restrictions they’ve applied to get the result they wanted. I might add they did it so quick I was even amazed it had only taken 4 or 5 years with no hypotheses was ever established much less a theory where others could follow along on the progress. It just appeared as if it was planed in secret.
One thing we can definitely say about the Cambrian “Explosion” is that it didn’t take place overnight. Estimates range from 10-40 million years, one can absolutely rule out 200,000 years. And while the length of the explosion is subject to debate (it’s somewhat subjective, of course), the dating of the Cambrian is not subject to debate.
As for the “theory” that no “soft body animals” could be found, that’s just bunk, of course. Nobody ever argued that; what we claim is that the process of fossilization is such that it makes the preservation of animals with only soft parts much rarer, as they are eaten or eroded away before they can be mineralized. But of course we find them. It’s curious that this comment somehow sees this as a refutation of evolutionary theory.
As for the last paragraph, it’s incoherent. This, of course, is common among fulminating creationists.
Well that was an exhausting business, reading through all of those totally false claims about Adolf Hitler. I have not come across such a frighteningly absurd bunch of ideas about the Third Reich, since I was caught up in a difference with an MSNBC group of bigots. Apart from one or two exceptions, there is not one word of truth or reality in this example of brain-dead received notions about WW2. De Valera himself sent a letter to the Germans expressing his sadness, on hearing of the death of Hitler. I have only one thing to say here. Of all the countries which took part in WW2 Hitler and the German people, were by far the most honourable of them all.
One can argue about whether De Valera’s neutrality was an expression of support for the Nazis, or simply just a refusal to take sides, but the same can’t be said for the many Irish who hoped that Hitler would defeat the allies in World War II, a hope fueled by hatred of the British. And, surprisingly, some of that admiration for Hitler remains seventy years after the war ended, a fact documented in my earlier post. This commenter, by saying that Hitler and the German people were more admirable than any country who participated in the war, shows himself or herself to be a contemptible human being.
