Comment on Gravity!

• BCsven@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  After a few years of marriage, it came to light that my wife thought the earth was flat. It wasn’t some religious thing or cult thing, she had no affiliations. She just came to that conclusion based on visual cues in the world (like ground looks flat) and believed it without it ever being challenged in it.

  It came up when she mentioned that a plane fkying near the sun must be getting hot, and I’m like Whaa? I explained the sun is so far outside the earth that that plane isn’t feeling much different than us. She revealed she though the sun was inside the earth (like we lived in a snow globe on a flat planar surface) and the sun just went down behind the mountains at night like half hour away.

  I was stunned. We had a 4hour talk about the earth as a planet and the solar system and how gravity works.

  She curled up in a fetal position and had an existental crisis for the rest of the day.

  Somehow she missed school for the gravity, solar system etc. And I’d destroyed her entire core belief system; that she had developed herself.

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  • tomiant@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Whenever someone curls up in a fetal position and has an existential crisis, I KNOW that they are doing something right.

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  • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    Good job lad

    Relevant xkcd

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  • Zorque@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    But hey, she listened. Thats something most never do.

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  • Iunnrais@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I think your wife’s case was actually significantly different from “flat earthers”, as a community. There’s ignorance, which can be corrected with knowledge and information and reasoning, and there’s willful defiance, which cannot. The very fact that she was freaked out and had a crisis, which enabled facts to enter her head, demonstrates that.

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    did you tell her if the sun was so small it can fit inside the earth, everything wouldve been vaporized near its vicinity, let alone the gravitational effects being to a object that small.

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• FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Also, they believe the earth is flat because the Bible says so; and the earth is young because the Bible says so, and that science is the devil’s work because it contradicts a book written by Bronze Age goat herders retconned by a guy in the Iron Age that got killed for telling the Roman’s he was king of the Jews.

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  • forrgott@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This is one of my favorite summaries of just how ridiculous religion can become. Only thing I want to fund a way to add would a condemnation of monotheism. Seems that had a whole lot to do with how the concept of religion has become so corruptible. Instead of the point being the betterment of your own tribe it becomes about how every other tribe is less than you.

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    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      yeah. its ridiculous. Rather than accept that there’s some inaccuracies and that parts of the bible contain mistakes and say something like “but most of it is true” … they double down, triple and quadruple down. They have to get increasingly improbable theories to explain how all this evidence isn’t really real. Fossils are planted by satan, to lead people astray; there’s a massive World Order whose sole job is to keep this secret for some strange reason.

      like. they could just build a rocket and launch it into space and see for themselves. Or some really simple experiments involving sticks and shadows. that allowed them to determine the distance of the sun from the earth, it’s circumference, and can be replicated with some lumber and fifty bucks in the gastank.

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    • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Technically, this isn’t even a case of religion going crazy. The flat Earth conspiracy actually started out in the German Nazi party and were eventually pushed out because even the Nazis thought they were too crazy.

      Notice how many of them mention a vague “they” as the ones maintaining the conspiracy. That’s them referring to Jewish people. While this is notmal for most conspiracy theories, few directly originated from the Nazis.

      If you want more detail, there’s a couple episodes of Behind the Bastards explaining it. I definitely recommend giving them a listen

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• InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  they don’t believe the earth is flat because evidence shows it, they find evidence to support the earth being flat

  Similar with the anarcho capitalist types

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    exactly like cult beliefs. dont believe with your eyes and ears.

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