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Flat Earth Q&A / the definitive burden of proof thread

« on: November 14, 2006, 08:15:35 AM »

again, here is an excerpt from michael shermers "why people believe weird things".  i'm writing this because FEers still like to say that REers have the burden of proof, which is simply not so.  btw, michael shermer has a phd in psychology and the history of science.

burden of proof:
"who has to prove what to whom?  the person making the extraordinary claim has the burden of proving to the experts and to the community at large that his or her belief has more validity than the one almost everyone else accepts.  you have to lobby for your opinion to be heard.  they you have to marshal experts on your side so you can convince the majority to support your claim over the one that they have always supported.  finally, when you are in the majority, the burden of proof switches to the outsider who wants to challenge you with his or her unusual claim.  evolutionists had the burden of proof for half a century after Darwin, but now the burden of proof is on creationists.  it is up to creationists to show why the theory of evolutionis wrong and why creationism is right, and it is not up to evolutionists to defend evolution.  the burden of proof is on the holocaust deniers to prove the holocaust did not happen, not on holocaust historians to prove that it did.  the rationale for this is that mountains of evidence prove that evolution and the holocaust are facts.  in other words, it is not enough to have evidence.  you must convince others of the validity of your evidence.  and when you are an outsider this is the price you pay, regardless of whethere you are right or wrong."

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Flat Earth Q&A / GOOGLE EARTH

« on: November 12, 2006, 12:17:34 PM »

for those of you who don't know, google earth is "a free-of-charge, downloadable virtual globe program. It maps the earth by superimposing images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS over a 3D globe." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_earth).  so for FEers, is google in on the conspiracy too?  if so why?  if not, then why are you an FEer?

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Flat Earth Q&A / HOW THINKING GOES WRONG: 25 fallacies...

« on: November 12, 2006, 11:26:38 AM »

that lead us to believe weird things.  these are taken out of michael shermers "why people believe weird things.  anyone notice any similarities between this list and the methods used by FEers??  i am just going to list them, but if anyone has a question about one of them just ask me and i'll expand on it from the book, i just don't want to write 25 paragraphs at the moment.

1.  theory influences observations
2.  the observer changes the observed
3.  equipment constructs results
4.  anecdotes do not make a science
5.  scientific language does not make a science
6.  bold statements do not make claimes true
7.  heresy does not equal correctness
8.  burden of proof
9.  rumors do not equal reality
10.  unexplained is not inexplicable
11.  failures are rationalized
12.  after-the-fact reasoning
13.  coincidence
14.  representativeness
15.  emotive words and false analogies
16.  ad ignorantiam
17.  ad hominem and tu quoque
18.  hasty generalizations
19.  overreliance on authorities
20.  either-or
21.  circular reasoning
22.  reductio ad absurdum and the silppery slope
23.  effort inadequacies and the need for certainty, control, and simplicity
24.  problem-solving inadequacies
25.  idiological immunity, or the planck problem

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Flat Earth Q&A / questions about FE argument

« on: November 12, 2006, 01:16:21 AM »

this is from the flat earth website as linked to the flat earth society wikipedia page:

"Once again, picture in your mind a round world. Now imagine that there are two people on this world, one at each pole. For the person at the top of the world, (the North Pole), gravity is pulling him down, towards the South Pole. But for the person at the South Pole, shouldn't gravity pull him down as well? What keeps our person at the South Pole from falling completely off the face of the "globe"?"

i have just recently been introduced to the idea of flat earth as a current scientific position, so forgive me if i ask questions that might have been asked numerous times in the past by others.  but here is my question (regarding the aforementioned argument for flat earth): doesn't this thought experiment portray a grossly misunderstood use of the concept of gravity?  gravity states that the body of mass (this being the earth) attracts other bodies (these being the two people).  so to answer the posed question "But for the person at the South Pole, shouldn't gravity pull him down as well?" the answer is simply "yes."  and it does, gravity pulls him down, HIS down (ie towards his feet ie towards the earth beneath him).  the attraction of gravity is between him and the earth beneath him, so why  would he be pulled into space??