The Flat Earth Myth

[Gracchus]

You're not going to get people here to stay on topic in any thread for any length of time.

That's right. I mean you can be discussing evolution and all of a sudden someone will start a rant about Pluto, thalidomide, "embedded age"(?) or "The Bible"(tm).

I'm speaking from experience here.

That is certainly true.

Even when I beg people to please limit the conversation to one chapter of the Bible -- they want to talk virtually every chapter, scenario and doctrine outside of that chapter.

It must be very frustrating when people want to talk about the physical and life sciences in the Physical and Life Sciences forum, or when they counter one Biblical reference that supports one position with another reference that supports the opposite opinion.

Even simple YES or NO questions can generate pages and pages of multiple posting that never get answered.

An answer should usually be as simple as possible, but no simpler, even if it means that simpletons can't understand it.

Science doesn't deal in YES or NO -- science deals in woulda, coulda, shoulda, yadda-yak here-today-gone-tomorrow rhetoric and spin.

Science deals in the search for truth about reality. It has provided us with more useful tools in the last hundred years than religions and theologians have provided in the last three millenia.

 

[Febble]

Even simple YES or NO questions can generate pages and pages of multiple posting that never get answered.

Science doesn't deal in YES or NO -- science deals in woulda, coulda, shoulda, yadda-yak here-today-gone-tomorrow rhetoric and spin.

This is true. Science fits models to data. We never achieve a perfect fit. What we achieve is an ever-increasingly close fit.

 

[Split Rock]

Science doesn't deal in YES or NO -- science deals in woulda, coulda, shoulda, yadda-yak here-today-gone-tomorrow rhetoric and spin.

Yeah, we don't have conviction in science and claim it is a great boon to determining The Truth. You Fundies like to think of everything in terms of Black and White, Yes and No, Good and Evil, but the universe is filled with greys.

Rhetoric and spin, huh? Sounds like creationist apologetics. When your yes-no fantasy world doesn't match up with reality, that's when you guys break out the rhetoric and spin. If you think that is all science is, then just look around you at all the technology you take for granted. That is the proof of science's worth... where is yours? Oh... that's right... we find out after we are all dead. Too bad the dead can't come back and ask for a refund, huh?

 

[Split Rock]

Why do you use the term Darwinist, its not like its a religion or political movement lol

It's called Rhetoric. One of the hallmarks of creationism.

 

[AV1611VET]

Too bad the dead can't come back and ask for a refund, huh?

Ya -- too bad -- or the crew of the Challenger would have come back a long time ago for their apology.

 

[Split Rock]

Ya -- too bad -- or the crew of the Challenger would have come back a long time ago for their apology.

They should be grateful... no? If they were Christian, they are all in heaven now.

So those evil, dumb, foolish, corrupt, SATAN-following scientists *opps* engineers*opps* bureaucrats did them all a favor.

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

Yeah, we don't have conviction in science and claim it is a great boon to determining The Truth.

LOL.

"In fairy land we avoid the word 'law'; but in the land of science they are singularly fond of it." -- G. K. Chesterton, philosopher, Orthodoxy, Chapter IV: The Ethics of Elfland, 1909

"Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.'" -- Max Planck, physicist, 1932

You Fundies like to think of everything in terms of Black and White, Yes and No, Good and Evil, but the universe is filled with greys.

Scientists are fundies.

 

[thaumaturgy]

Science doesn't deal in YES or NO -- science deals in woulda, coulda, shoulda, yadda-yak here-today-gone-tomorrow rhetoric and spin.

Science is done by humans which means we know we are prone to possible error. That is called "being true to ones' own self".

Anyone who claims absolute knowledge of Truth-with-a-capital-T, and is themselves a human you have to ask why it is that they don't seem to be capable of being in error.

The only being in this game of CandyLand who knows absolute truth perfectly would be God, and to my knowledge all of God's sayings were recorded by humans.

Has God ever written anything that people can see today? I mean directly by his own hand?

Even the rocks and the fossil record seem to tell a story quite different from what is written by humans in the Holy book. So apparently the stuff God made with his own hands can't be interpretted to say what it appears to say!

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

It's called Rhetoric. One of the hallmarks of creationism.

Philosophy is the hallmark of creationism; Rhetoric is the hallmark of atheist Sophistry...

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

I feel that this topic deserves it's own thread since The Flat Earth Myth strawman fallacy is a cornerstone of the Darwinist fairy tale.

... since we have a lamentable tendency to view our own age as best, these divisions often saddle the past with pejorative names while designating successively more modern epochs with words of light and progress." -- Stephen J. Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack, Late Birth of a Flat Earth, 1995

"Our conventional divisions of Western history are mired in these twinned errors of false categorization and pejorative designation." -- Stephen J. Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack, Late Birth of a Flat Earth, 1995

"I write this essay to point out that the most prominent of all scientific stories in this mode -- the supposed Dark and Medieval consensus for a flat earth -- is entirely mythological." -- Stephen J. Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack, Late Birth of a Flat Earth, 1995

"Classical scholars, of course, had no doubt about the earth's sphericity." -- Stephen J. Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack, Late Birth of a Flat Earth, 1995

"There was never a period of 'flat earth darkness' among scholars (regardless of how many uneducated people may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the earth's roundness as an established fact of cosmology." -- Stephen J. Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack, Late Birth of a Flat Earth, 1995

"Virtually all major scholars affirmed the earth's roundness." -- Stephen J. Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack, Late Birth of a Flat Earth, 1995

"Purveyors of the flat-earth myth could never deny this plain testimony of Bede, Bacon, Aquinas, and others -- so they argued that these men acted as rare beacons of light in pervasive darkness. But consider the absurdity of such a position. Who formed the orthodoxy representing the consensus of ignorance? Two pip-squeaks named Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes? Bede, Bacon, Aquinas, and their ilk were not brave iconocalasts. They formed the establishment, and their convictions about the earth's roundness stood canonical, while Lactantius and colleagues remained entirely marginal." -- Stephen J. Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack, Late Birth of a Flat Earth, 1995

http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/SS05/efs/materials/FlatEarth.pdf

And here I would thought that Cosmas Indicopleustes was just the sort of ancient writer you are so fond of endlessly quoting.
Cosmas Indicopleustes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

And here I would thought that Cosmas Indicopleustes was just the sort of ancient writer you are so fond of endlessly quoting.
Cosmas Indicopleustes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

LOL.

Cosmas Indicopleustes is a Darwinist saint.

"Purveyors of the flat-earth myth could never deny this plain testimony of Bede, Bacon, Aquinas, and others -- so they argued that these men acted as rare beacons of light in pervasive darkness. But consider the absurdity of such a position. Who formed the orthodoxy representing the consensus of ignorance? Two pip-squeaks named Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes? Bede, Bacon, Aquinas, and their ilk were not brave iconocalasts. They formed the establishment, and their convictions about the earth's roundness stood canonical, while Lactantius and colleagues remained entirely marginal." -- Stephen J. Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack, Late Birth of a Flat Earth, 1995

Cosmas Indicopleustes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cosmas's view has never been influential even in religious circles

However his influence in Darwinist circles is quite obvious based upon your obsession with him.

 

[Febble]

LOL.

Cosmas Indicopleustes is a Darwinist saint.

"Purveyors of the flat-earth myth could never deny this plain testimony of Bede, Bacon, Aquinas, and others -- so they argued that these men acted as rare beacons of light in pervasive darkness. But consider the absurdity of such a position. Who formed the orthodoxy representing the consensus of ignorance? Two pip-squeaks named Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes? Bede, Bacon, Aquinas, and their ilk were not brave iconocalasts. They formed the establishment, and their convictions about the earth's roundness stood canonical, while Lactantius and colleagues remained entirely marginal." -- Stephen J. Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack, Late Birth of a Flat Earth, 1995

Cosmas Indicopleustes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



However his influence in Darwinist circles is quite obvious based upon your obsession with him.

Agonaces of Susa, could you define what you mean by "Darwinist"? Because I don't think you are using the expression in a way that I recognise.

Thanks.

 

[AV1611VET]

Agonaces of Susa, could you define what you mean by "Darwinist"? Because I don't think you are using the expression in a way that I recognise.

Thanks.

I would take a guess and say a Darwinist is, as his book title says, one who believes in the preservation of favoured races.

 

[Febble]

Well, I myself think that Darwin is tautological there, or at least, was using an anthropomorphic figure of speech. It is simply logic that variants that reproduce better will be reproduced more often, and therefore will tend to persist over variants that reproduce less efficiently.

But what has insightful piece of logic got to do with a Flat Earth Myth?

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

LOL.

Cosmas Indicopleustes is a Darwinist saint.

"Purveyors of the flat-earth myth could never deny this plain testimony of Bede, Bacon, Aquinas, and others -- so they argued that these men acted as rare beacons of light in pervasive darkness. But consider the absurdity of such a position. Who formed the orthodoxy representing the consensus of ignorance? Two pip-squeaks named Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes? Bede, Bacon, Aquinas, and their ilk were not brave iconocalasts. They formed the establishment, and their convictions about the earth's roundness stood canonical, while Lactantius and colleagues remained entirely marginal." -- Stephen J. Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack, Late Birth of a Flat Earth, 1995

Cosmas Indicopleustes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



However his influence in Darwinist circles is quite obvious based upon your obsession with him.

Hmm. I wonder why you are suddenly so fond of the writings of that famous evolutionist Steven J. Gould. His writings were produced 200-3000 years after those of most of your favorite references.

 

[corvus_corax]

Hmm. I wonder why you are suddenly so fond of the writings of that famous evolutionist Steven J. Gould.

Link provided in picture.
Rather like believing that astrology or numerology actually consist of predictions that are more than 90% accurate.
Or believing fortune cookie papers.

Pick that selective fruit, AoS, pick it and leave the rest.

Actually, in this specific regard AoS is not unique among Holy-Scripture-Believing creationists.

 

[ReverendDG]

Philosophy is the hallmark of creationism; Rhetoric is the hallmark of atheist Sophistry...

so now you admit the truth then? you are an atheist? i mean you must be, since all your arguments are all sophistry and spin.

what else would you call the gibberish you post? quote-mines and straw-man are the very essence of sophistry.

 

[ReverendDG]

LOL.

Cosmas Indicopleustes is a Darwinist saint.

"Purveyors of the flat-earth myth could never deny this plain testimony of Bede, Bacon, Aquinas, and others -- so they argued that these men acted as rare beacons of light in pervasive darkness. But consider the absurdity of such a position. Who formed the orthodoxy representing the consensus of ignorance? Two pip-squeaks named Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes? Bede, Bacon, Aquinas, and their ilk were not brave iconocalasts. They formed the establishment, and their convictions about the earth's roundness stood canonical, while Lactantius and colleagues remained entirely marginal." -- Stephen J. Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack, Late Birth of a Flat Earth, 1995

Cosmas Indicopleustes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



However his influence in Darwinist circles is quite obvious based upon your obsession with him.

amazing, i've never heard of him, lol. nice delusion there.

 

[Flatland]

The part I don't understand is how the idea that Columbus's contemporaries thought the earth was flat (thanks for the wiki link, that's interesting) has anything to do with Darwin's evolutionary theory.

Creationists consider the Big Bang Theory and Abiogenesis to be Evolution. In fact, they consider everything that they disagree with to be Evolution.

 

[Febble]

Creationists consider the Big Bang Theory and Abiogenesis to be Evolution. In fact, they consider everything that they disagree with to be Evolution.

And the "cornerstone" of everything they disagree with is an erroneous 19th century belief that in the 15th century, people thought the earth was flat?

It makes no sense to me whatsoever.