Are we as a society headed into a new dark age? Flat Earth (FE) belief for example. In recent months, the FE belief system has apparently gained traction. It was once a fringe belief but has now acquired numerous followers thanks to slick Youtube videographers with little or no actual scientific knowledge. FE beliefs go against centuries of evidence gathered by people who devoted their lives to working to find out the true nature of the earth. As opposed to "Tuber's" probably not devoting their lives to anything but video making. Is flat Earth belief going mainstream?
Mainstream scientists and commentators tend to write these FE believers off as the fringe element they once comprised. But it is evident to me they do so at great expense to the scientific method. The method that has established a spherical Earth since the time of the ancient Greeks. In January, a rapper by the stage name B.o.B. weighed in as an FE advocate. When a celebrity or rapper weighs in, you know FE beliefs are worming their way into the mainstream. Just as comedian Joe Rogan no doubt helped spread lunar hoax beliefs in recent years. I know this from debating Lunar Hoax Advocates (LHA) who cited Rogan and other celebs as examples. Rogan has apparently decided the lunar landings were real.
Just by looking at the lyrics to B.o.B.s song "Flatline", one can see his FE advocacy. He has also apparently stated FE advocacy and Holocaust denial as evidenced by his Wikipedia page. Both positions would make it appear he is just seeking to be controversial as most deniers of anything are trying to do. Be a controversial maverick against the evil system or evil NASA as it were. Some of the lyrics just espouse a lot of stuff not even related to FE beliefs. One example being "Globalists see me as a threat". I realize as a major celebrity rapper, B.o.B. is important in society. But he must really think he's more important than warranted to think globalists give a shit about his opinions. That statement could be applied to any Conspiracy Theory (CT). Another example being "Free thinking, got the world at my neck". Give me a break. He has the world by the nads! He has a wiki page! The world is hardly at his neck. Free thinking is another sound bite people use who wish to be seen as "Free thinkers". A real free thinker rarely calls themselves that.
As with most FE advocates. One cannot really determine if B.o.B. really believes Earth is flat or if he is just advocating that position to make money off of a song. This is why I call the FE belief system advocacy rather than belief. How can I know anyone really believes Earth is flat? Unless I know them personally. Like me, he may have noticed the growing FE movement on Youtube and decided to cash in because as a popular entertainer, he could. Or he may really believe Earth is flat because some Youtube vid convinced him. His "Flatline" lyrics don't display much actual scientific knowledge on his part but then, songs are not supposed to be accurate scientific descriptions anyway. One reflection of that inaccuracy is the lyrics referring to NASA. He says "Why is NASA department of defense?". Most anti NASA types tout this line of reasoning. But saying NASA is Department Of Defense (DOD) is like saying Walmart is DOD because soldiers sometimes shop there in uniform and Walmart sells camouflage outfits. NASAs charter specifically made it a non military organization but did not prohibit it from getting military support in the form of tracking or Launch Vehicles (LV). If B.o.B. wants to see a space agency that IS military, he should look into the Russian space agency or Roscosmos.
B.o.B. of course slams science, as required of any FE advocate. The very thing that provided the technology that gave him worldwide exposure, he calls a club and cult. "Flatlines" lyrics state in part "Indoctrinated in a cult called science and graduated to a club full of liars". He has no idea what indoctrination is. He needs to go to N. Korea where indoctrination is a way of life. He apparently has no idea what science is either. Nobody in America or even the Western world is forced to accept science. That's why we have a nation full of scientific illiterates such as lunar hoax or FE advocates. That's why some 40% of Americans freely believe creationism over evolution. Even if one is scientific, they can become unscientific and leave the so called cult any time they choose. Try that with Scientology. Prominent Astrophysicist Neil De Grasse Tyson took B.o.B. on by using logic and reason. Something in short supply it seems. As a scientist, Tyson knows what he's talking about.
The broader problem is the question of whether society is entering some new dark age. The backlash against science has been ongoing for some four decades. Some reasons attributed to this backlash would be Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Challenger, to name the major ones. Another reason is the failure of many scientifically based predictions made in the 1960s, to come to pass. Predictions such as the famous flying cars, SuperSonic Transports (SST) and of course, humans to the planets. Indeed, seems we picked all the low hanging fruit science has to offer. The more difficult a pursuit becomes, the more it is inaccurately predicted and eventually misrepresented. This has happened to some extent with the space shuttle's history. This has also resulted in the current backlash against the one thing (Science) that has made progress along many avenues possible.
This backlash, ongoing as it has since at least the Apollo era, could be the first of several which in a century or so could result in a new dark age. Like the previous one, there would still be scientists trying to make new discoveries, but they could be even more a minority than they've always been. And science would be slowed down significantly. How does one fight this trend if indeed it can be fought? Using logic, high quality evidence and other scientific methods because unlike B.o.B.s assertions that science is a cult, science relies on a methodology to understand nature. Nothing more. So one should seek evidence of a flat Earth. The most obvious way to do this is to use NASA and other space agency imagery. Flat Earthers write NASA off as part of the conspiracy to suppress FE. But they fail to explain how we can know when a weather system is approaching when we didn't know prior to the space age. Or they fail to explain how we get satellite images looking directly down on an isolated nation such as North Korea. Or fail to explain something as simple as where do all the rockets go if they don't go to orbit? Some say the rockets are dumped into the ocean while failing to realize if a rocket makes it to the altitudes millions of eyewitnesses have seen them reach, why not to orbit? Where did 135 shuttle orbiters go when only 5 flight models were built? You'd have to trash 135 orbiters to dump them into the ocean. But if one insists on not using NASA or other space agency images, then go do some actual science. I'll even suggest the experiment. An experiment nobody can control. Not even me or the Illuminati. Consider lunar eclipses. It is not possible for lunar or solar eclipses to occur on the most commonly cited FE model shown below.
Consider the explanation in the FE model image just over the N. pole. The one about projections and an inner sun. I have an inner explorer, does that make it real? No. It's a state of mind. There is no evidence the Earth has a hole in the pole with projections and so on. Here, the state of mind of whomever proposed this chart shows they failed to think it through the way an actual scientist would. Sure they got the ecliptic stuff right and shadows work as they would on a sphere. But eclipses do not work, there is no explanation for the outer planets and why other planets have satellites similar to our moon. There is no explanation as to why most northern hemisphere stars cannot be seen from the southern hemisphere and vice versa. Try seeing Polaris from Tierra Del Fuego. Don't take my word for it, go there or construct a global model and see for yourself. Other FE models have the sun and moon revolving around the Earth as any good Geocentrist would have it. The problem here is FE advocates like B.o.B. claim you can see buildings many miles away. If that's the case, a lunar eclipse would certainly be visible from all over flat world. In reality, lunar eclipses do not work this way, but again just experiment and see why they don't. That's what science is about. Most importantly, while folks like B.o.B. want people to believe FE is real because the evil government, evil science and evil NASA are keeping it secret. The broader question is what difference would it make if the Earth is flat or round? At a time when most folks don't know or care what NASA is doing, Earths shape would be about as noteworthy as NASA activities. The so called globalists wouldn't care about the shape of the Earth either. Maybe one day if our populace becomes scientifically literate, the Earths shape will matter. What is more likely. The Earth is the only flat disc world in a solar system of spherical worlds and larger moons, asteroids and KBOs? Or first century thinkers simply got Earths shape wrong due to being too small to realize they are on a sphere.
Though it's admittedly not entirely scientific, it is a sort of Occams razor approach to a flat Earth. One flat disc world in a solar system of round worlds, moons and so on is about as likely as seeing one absolutely perfect square cloud, though the one in this example is admittedly not perfect.
Ideas such as a lunar hoax or flat Earth can certainly be discussed and such discussions would be more convincing when high quality evidence is cited. But those who are listening to such discussions should take heed that FE, LHA and other CT advocates almost always use words like "Proof" or "We've been lied to" in their hype titled videos and other media. The "We've been lied to" claims are simply a sort of mind trick to make people think they really have been lied to at all times. Does the government lie? Of course! But they usually lie about elections and promises. Not the shape of the Earth. As for science, nothing is ever entirely a hundred percent proven in scientific inquiry. However, some ideas are proven enough (Earths shape) that scientists don't waste time debating them when they could use that wasted time on debating and researching something more effectively like curing cancer or climate change. Earths shape is provable through lunar eclipses, stellar observations and constructing FE models which demonstrate problems with lunar eclipses. Non of which requires so called evil NASA, science or government. Time to get out of the first century and make the 21st century what it was thought it would be in 1968.
Written and illustrated by me, J. Dean unless otherwise noted.
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