The World is Flat (No, Really)

*Blink*

*Blink*

WTF!!!

She never thought about this kind of stuff? How do you go about life without even being even little curious about the world around you?

How? How can you go through life without even learning if the fucking world is round or not?

It is amazing how little people know. My fiancee asked me recently, “What’s below the solar system?” I said, “What are you talking about ‘below’?” “You know, below the Solar System, under it. Why do we keep sending probes straight outward, and not below us, there might be things there we’re missing.”

Now, keep in mind we have been to some of the best planetariums together, seen scale models of the solar system, went to the Hayden, the Adler, seen representations of what the Universe may look like, as we know it so far. All of that, and she doesn’t understand the relatively linear nature of the solar system, that we are out on an arm of a spiral galaxy, sitting in a corner of an ever expanding universe. She then asked, “What if there were no gravity, where would earth fall to?” I said, “What are you talking about? If there were no gravity, why would Earth fall? If there were no gravity, there would be no Universe, it’s a fundamental property of our Universe, at least so far as we’d be able to observe it. If there were no gravity, would we have an orbit around a star? Would stars form at all? Would the Universe be an ever expanding cloud of dust, or of hydrogen?”

At least she didn’t ask, “Well, how do we know the Earth isn’t flat?”

I give public talks about astronomy and other sciences for a living, and the level of ignorance about such basic things never fails to astound me. (Although I haven’t actually met a flat earther yet.) Graduate students from major universities can have absurd misconceptions about what makes day and night or the phases of the moon, and you can forget about asking what makes seasons. General science education in this country is pretty sad. Remember all those stories about huge percentages of people not being able to find their own state on a map of the U.S, or the U.S. on a map of the world? It’s still true. Most people live on a flat world a few miles in diameter, the distance to the office, the market, or the watering hole.

According to Wikipedia: Raised a Jehovah’s Witness, Shepherd later became a born-again Christian after moving to Los Angeles.

Jehovah’s Witness
Born-again Christian
Los Angeles

If that doesn’t scream nut job, I don’t know what does!

It is amazing how little people know. My fiancee asked me recently, “What’s below the solar system?”

Oh I know! It’s the giant turtle holding up the flat earth, right?

I was ohhh sooo hoping to detect some bit of comic undertone from Shepherd, some shred of sarcasm, SOMETHING to make me feel as if this was a farce. But sadly, no.
I’m betting that if someone were to ask her how many wise men came to see Jesus, her answer would be “three”. If asked how does she know this, she would say because the bible tells her so (even though the bible doesn’t give an account of how many). Many people are extremely egocentric (I don’t mean in the selfish sense) to the point of having permanent blockers when it comes to information that doesn’t pertain to the immediate here and now. They are passive recievers of information that they unconciously filter, and they are rarely active in acquiring information. So I actually believe her when she says she hasn’t given any thought to the flatness or roundness of the earth, and that she doesn’t know.
This is what I see in many born-agains; at the time of conversion it’s a passive act, a giving up and letting an outsider supply the answers. I know this because I was once there myself.

I don’t know about baby Jesus, but that plus some of the other examples here sure made me want to cry.

@stogoe,

We have got to figure out a way to make humans ashamed of being stupid.

Stupidity and ignorance should be the teen-pregnancy of the 21st century – something your family sends you away for until it’s out of your system. Unfortunately, we’re going in the opposite direction. NOT knowing jack seems to be a badge of honor and is the currency of celebrity. Sadly, that has an influence.

I’ve had similar experiences to Bjorn’s.

– In high school one young woman was astounded to learn in science class that the moon and sun are separate objects. (She thought the sun became the moon at night.)

– I knew one lady who didn’t know stars were other suns. That isn’t too bad, but she never wondered to herself what the “lights in the sky” at night were. The lack of curiosity shocked me.

– I told another person that I saw a shooting star form an airplane, which confused her because she thought planes flew “above the stars”. (Explaining what shooting stars actually are was the least of my troubles.)

I think there is just a large number of people who have no curiosity about the world around them and their physical location in it. The must come across such information in school or on TV etc., but since they have zero interest it doesn’t stick.

severalspeciesof:

Many people are extremely egocentric (I don’t mean in the selfish sense) to the point of having permanent blockers when it comes to information that doesn’t pertain to the immediate here and now. They are passive recievers of information that they unconciously filter, and they are rarely active in acquiring information. So I actually believe her when she says she hasn’t given any thought to the flatness or roundness of the earth, and that she doesn’t know.
This is what I see in many born-agains; at the time of conversion it’s a passive act, a giving up and letting an outsider supply the answers. I know this because I was once there myself.

Exactly – that’s a terrific insight, and that’s how religion plays into ignorance and stupidity like this shameful display. I was taught explicitly NOT to question god or trust science, to accept his “mysterious” ways and to wait until I got to heaven, where I would get all the answers I wanted. Thinking about them was just a distraction from the real work of evangelism, so I consciously suppressed my doubts and questions. This is seen as “having faith,” the most positive attribute of the conservative evangelical Christian.

You can hear Sharri extol the virtues of faith, as laid out in Hebrews, in that clip. In other words, believe what you wish is true, despite having no evidence. It really turns my stomach now to see that trumpeted as a virtue. It’s sad and dangerous.

I forwarded a comment to ABC.com asking for a woman with a scientific background who could be a role model for today’s youth to replace Sherri.

PLEASE tell me who you sent it to, I would love to do a follow-up e-mail with my own concerns. I get very fired up over women-in-science issues and…yes, please let us know who you sent it to. I’d love to voice my concerns.

Hemant, I read this before my morning coffee and immediately got so depressed that I barely wanted to leave my apartment. I was also frightened – people like this (she CAN’T be the only one) DRIVE MOTOR VEHICLES.

Ahahahahahahaha Wikipedia has been nija-edited…check out the last line in this quote. 😉

Shepherd was the subject of controversy due to the September 18, 2007 broadcast of the View. An excerpted clip of the show was rebroadcast by numerous news programs in which she appears to express a neutral position on whether the Earth is flat. In the September 19 broadcast, she amended her apparent neutrality on the subject and stated that she is aware of the Earth being round (presumably meaning the traditionally accepted spherical shape of the planet) and that in the previous broadcast she had been too nervous, confused and stupid to answer the question adequately.

You’d think somewhere along the way she’d have seen an episode of Star Trek (maybe one of Whoopi’s) or seen at least a part of a Star Wars movie, enough to know that planets are spherical. This basic stuff is pervasive in popular culture.

I guess if one of the other girls back out of the reunion she could always have a singing career: as Stupid Spice

Speaking of teachers, how did I forget this.
At my wife’s preschool, one of her fellow TEACHERS asked whether the sun orbits the Earth or the Earth orbits the sun. (She didn’t use the word “orbit” I’ll tell you that.) My wife had to inform her that, indeed, the Earth goes around the sun.
So, I’m happy to report that they’ve now caught up to the 16th century. Somehow, I don’t feel like celebrating.

The most religious place I know is out in the Ozark boondocks. All the teenage girls in that particular school were pregnant one year and they adults were talking about sin and trying to make the kids repent for their sins and get married, which means going to the alter (given it is a blink once and you’ll miss it town there was, at the time, one predominent church) of “The Church of God”. Needless to say, they did not teach birth control in the one and only high school, much less the one and only junior high. Now that was a crime against humanity, because if they had dropped their dogmatics then the pregnancy rate might have been lower and no one would have had to have been shamed into religion.

BTW, I know this because my step-cousins were mixed up in that mess in that town. Even though I didn’t live there, they did and I heard the adults rant and rave about it all when I visited my grandmother.

This is true, but I do think we should not keep our children ignorant of their bodies either. So that should be on that list you made too. It’s not Evolution or basic earth science, but it is basic medical science that everyone should know and understand.

I’ll even answer the question you posed.
Her next question will be “why is that red light flashing on that camera?”
the one after that will be, “aren’t we lucky that Intelligent Falling is a fact otherwise we’d all float away?”

Oh crap I don’t know what the hell is going through her head, but it must be complete and utter bollocks and it depresses me that some people insist that the truth lies somewhere between her views and the truth.
A black wristband would be cool, but failing that any kind of pink or red would be just as sweet

Here’s the problem with narrow mindedness of Athiests

You go on and on about how ignorant believers are and how biased they are –that they just jump to conclusions and right here, right now, you show you ARE what you accuse others to be

Is not one person here inteliigent enough to see she was nervous? That she choked. She felt she was being traped with the question and lost her center. Obviously she is in the wrong business, on a talk show, but your making judgments on christians to make yourselves feel superior

You also use the logical fallacy of ascribing what she said as if it was the response every Christian would give. You also imply that the bible says the earth is flat when this woman didnt even say the earth was flat.

You dont strengthen your argument with such fallacies. You weaken them by showing you dont think clearly. Its lke someone having the opinion that all Men are murderers and then when you find one you say…see…I was right.

You bring up meaning less stats like–66% of the country believe we were created less than 10,000 years ago.–as if this proves some point you have. There is not one person I know that believes the earth is 10,000 years old and Im sure there are only athiests and bad pollsters who believe that stat. So again, fallacy to renenforce your belief.

I can easily say that 95% of the world believes your wrong in coming to the conclusion there is no creator. This large majority throughout time includes the greatest minds in history. This sheer volume of people obviously includes billions of humans in the higher IQ ranges —compared to your little insignificant number of believers, its like comparing a mountain to a pebble

So if you want to use stats to bolster your views you just make yourselves look foolish. Reason is decided by the reasonable. A pebble doesnt tell a moutain whats reasonable. The very definiton is defined by what is *Normal–and its normal to believe in God and abnormal to come to the conclusion that something in Spacetime came out of nothing

So have your beliefs. But having a little, “Im smarter than all of humanity” party, with points dripping with bias, fallicies, and lies, only makes you look pathetic.

batyah harris, please stick around.

batyah harris, I appreciate the thoughtful post. I second Richard Wade’s call for you to stay.

I see this incident as an EXAMPLE of general ignorance in our society. Sometimes humans need striking examples of things in order to be moved to do something about them.

We can talk about racial equality in the abstract all we want. But when the issue turned into a person by the name of Rosa Parks not allowed to keep her seat on the bus, there was an example. The issue caught not only the court’s ruling, but the nation’s CONSCIENCE.

Humans, by their nature, act on concrete examples much more forcefully and directly than they act on nebulous principles.

Yes, on principle, education should be better. Good luck rallying the troops with that cry.

BUT, show people an idiot on live tv, and instantly we’ve sparked a broader national discussion on where our scientific and educational proirities have fallen, how low the bar for base competence is set, who we choose for our on-air role-models, the state of quality television programming in this country, roles for women and questions of “why don’t we see more smart black women on tv?”, etc…

People jump to the fore on the evolution question because they just can’t see themselves as related to monkeys. If the Bible said that this was the truth, they might well shake their fist at God and refuse to believe it.

I’m getting sick of representing all views myself when it comes to matters of science.

Mriana:

She’s not as skeptical as I am, but she is getting more curious, at least she’s asking questions. She was a counselor at Camp Quest, I don’t think she’d buy angels holding up the planets.

I think there may be a notion that it’s cool to be dumb. On the opposite, I think there is a real fear of stupidity, or looking stupid. This fear can scare people enough that they don’t even bother learning basics of a subject, because they’d be stupid, and would rather remain ignorant. It isn’t easy to be curious, to look for answers, to not be satisfied.

When I tell my family that I keep my eye open for compelling evidence of a deity, any deity, not just the God of the Bible, Koran, and Torah, they see that as a positive thing, because there is still hope I’ll come over to “their side.” So far, I’ve led a pretty fulfilling life without believing in the divinity of Jesus, I don’t need to talk to him every day, or would be lost without him. So far, I can’t unknow what I know, and what I know tells me that there is no God, at least no God like the one depicted in Christianity. Quantum fluctuation, did that cause the Big Bang? Who knows? Was it sparked by some kind of multidimensional entity? The answer to that question is meaningless today, no basis for limiting gay marriage, choosing leaders, or justifying racism.

Bjorn and Mriana, I re-read Bjorn’s fiancee’s question, which she followed up with

“You know, below the Solar System, under it. Why do we keep sending probes straight outward, and not below us, there might be things there we’re missing.”

If I’m not reading too much into it, by “below” she might have meant “south” of the Earth away from the relatively flat disk of the Solar System where most of the nearby and interesting objects are. “Above” and “below” are often terms that lay people use to mean the regions of space north or south of the general plane of the Solar System. She’s right in that we do send most of our probes “out” along the orbital planes of the planets rather than into the regions north or south of them. Besides the fact that there seems to be relatively few interesting things out there, it’s very difficult to do, since we rely heavily on the “slinging” motion of the Earth and other planets to increase the probes’ velocities. To put a spacecraft into an orbit around the Sun perpendicular to the ecliptic takes a great deal more artificial thrust and it’s very expensive.

Bjorn, ask your fiancee if this is what she meant. If so, it’s a very astute question, and there very well may be things there that we’re missing.

So if you want to use stats to bolster your views you just make yourselves look foolish.

This is a GREAT line after throwing out a stat with no source and then using the argument by consensus.

As awful as it was that those comments left her mouth on national television, I am deeply insulted by the fact that she makes motherhood out to be this giant void where no learning, questioning, or growth occurs. Unless she in such dire circumstances where feeding her children was always in the forefront of her mind, using motherhood as an excuse for ignorance is deplorable.

I apologize if this is a stupid question, but who is Sherri Shepherd and why is she on TV? I feel so out of touch. 🙂

When people say stupid racist or sexist things on TV, they are often required to go to “sensitivity training.” Could something similar be required of Ms. Shepherd, and wouldn’t that be more to the point than shaming her? She could be required to do so many hours of community service at a planetarium, for example, or to invite an astronomer onto the show.

@Richard Wade,

by “below” she might have meant “south” of the Earth away from the relatively flat disk of the Solar System where most of the nearby and interesting objects are.

May I pick your brain? Aren’t the objects “below” or “above” light years away? At the speeds of our mechanical explorers it seems like it would take far too long to realize any benefit from sending probes out in those directions. I imagine the asteroid belt(s) as also (more or less) along the plane of the ecliptic. So, even the minor planets aren’t out that way.
Am I missing something?

These may be stupid questions to an astronomer; I’m aware of the irony. 🙂

Polly, they’re not stupid questions at all, and you’re correct that most of what we see north or south of the solar system are too far away to reach physically. That’s what I was saying, that there are not very many objects within our solar system that are north or south of the main plane, so we don’t have much interest in overcoming the physical difficulties of putting spacecraft out there.

But there are some solar system objects and some phenomena that are in those regions. Many comets come from the Oort cloud, which is a spherical cloud of billions of icy rocks beyond the orbits of the planets. The cloud is all around the solar system in all directions so comets from there can come from any direction. Also the north and south poles of the sun emit interesting electromagnetic radiation that is different from what the Earth receives. To study that we have to send a probe all the way to Jupiter to use it’s tremendous gravity to “make a sharp left turn” and go into an orbit perpendicular to the Solar System plane. Then the probe can pass over the north and south poles of the sun.

A question is not stupid simply because it reveals that the asker doesn’t understand something. The only stupid thing would be to not ask for fear of embarrassment and remain ignorant. I’m always asking experts in different fields questions that they would find elementary. Instead of saying “I have a stupid question for you,” I say “I have a very basic question for you.” I’ve never had one sneer down at me and chide me for my ignorance. Usually they’re delighted that a lay person is interested in their field.

Some of you pretentious, arrogant people need to get your facts straight. If an idiot out there thinks the world is flat, it has nothing to do with religion or the Bible. The Bible specifically states that the world is a sphere and it said so way before you and all of your precious scientist heroes jumped on the sphere bandwagon. So before you go talking about things that you don’t know and judging people who believe in God and calling them “nutjobs,” how about you practice a little bit of your own scientific method and get your facts straight first, unless you’re content to go making comments that make you look just as stupid as the people you’re making fun of. Sure, there are religious idiots out there. But there are plenty of atheist idiots out there too, as is evidenced by comments made within this topic, such as: “Either that, or she just believes anything her Bible tells her.” Riiiight. Hey, maybe you should try reading it before you go assuming that someone’s moronic beliefs originated out of it. Just because someone tells you something came out of the Bible doesn’t mean it’s true. But hey, let’s not let the facts color our opinions when sarcasm and snide remarks flow so much more easily from our fingertips without them.

Yeah… whatever you say, nutjob.