Flat Earth

Someone challenged me to find a church - with a website - who believes we are in a flat earth today. This came out of a discussion whether the ancient bible writers had a divine concept of the universe as we understand it today. I believe they wrote of their best understanding of the cosmos in their day which is quite different from what we know now.

Does this invalidate the value of Christianity? I don’t think so, unless an apologist tries to defend the bible as being as perfect and infallible as their god. This leads to fantastical twists of logic as troublesome bible verses are reinterpreted to fit current knowledge. This pseudoscientific god is clownish in its twists and turns, and not a being I am inclined to admire. 

Anyways, back to the original challenge. The apologist stated that there are no preachers who declare a flat earth today. Besides this being a weak claim anyways (appeal to majority) saying there are none sounds like an easy challenge. After all, there are more denominations and flavours of belief than there is clover in the field. If I find just one, the statement is invalid. 

Well, it’s three days later and I’m still looking. 

I’ve found a divinity student blogging about the flat earth. There is a now defunct church that has reinvented itself and it remains silent about earths flatness. And I found a lengthy ecumenical  statement from another denomination where they debate whether to maintain a six literal day creation cycle. 

The point is moot as the apologist in question also stated unequivocally that there are no non-trinitarian churches. That was easy to disprove. There are Bible Students, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarians, and Christadelphians to name a few. The apologist tried to discredit these examples first by their minority and then that they are heretical. This is the “No True Scotsman” argument. Of course there are non-trinitarian churches. There are a nearly endless variety of shades of belief. The original statement is false.

Just because an apologist needs a fairly uniform set of beliefs doesn’t mean reality has to match his expectation. 

So I know going forward that even if I locate a flat earth church this particular apologist already has ways to dismiss my findings. 

But wouldn’t it be fun to find one?

The divinity student:  https://www.philipstallings.com/?m=1

The now defunct church: https://wiki.tfes.org/Christian_Catholic_Apostolic_Church

A church holding to a six day creation: https://www.narrowway.ca/what-we-believe 

A thesis that gives a good background on the forces that led to this type of apologism. 

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6ee7/e3d09cc478a2c61008f27e773ebf42cb24a6.pdf

Special

I have been thinking this weekend how humankind has been steadily demoted by scientific discovery in my lifetime.

The biblical origin story gives us divine origin, formed in clay but God-breathed. By the time we get to the New Testament, we have souls whose true life transcends the material and can even progress through heavenly states.

For a very long time it was thought we were made up of the four humours (related to the balance of fire, earth, air and water), and ailments could be linked to an imbalance of the same.

Then came the discovery of cells, atoms, and the periodic table. All of a sudden our makeup was both more complex and more simple.

It turns out that we share our DNA with every living thing on earth, having 90% in common with the lowly mouse. We don’t have the most complex DNA or the simplest DNA on the planet. Both awards go to a plant.

We don’t have the largest brain.

We are not the only creature with the facility for language.

We are not the only creatures capable of empathy.

It turns out we weren’t the only humans walking early earth (Neanderthal, Denisovian). It may be that  we dominated these cousins not by superior intellect but by the finest difference in survival strategies.

The location of the heavens have necessarily similarly evolved, no longer associated with the observable sky. Heaven is imagined today is an invisible ethereal state unobservable by any material means.

Keep in mind that the Heaven and the Sheol spoken of in the bible was imagined as the first half of the picture above. Observations that could only have happened in my lifetime put us on the tip of a thread of a universe that is nearly unbelievably massive. 

The scale and magnitude is awe inspiring. That life exists at all is incredible. 

But as human beings, we are not nearly as special as once supposed. We are made of the same stuff as the universe. This new picture of ourselves does allow for a whole new factor of humility, which may not be a bad thing. Being fragile and not so special may move us to take better care of all life. Especially if it turns out to be a rare thing, finer and more precious than gold. 

Populist Politics

I've been reflecting on how my emotions have rocked towards the red ever since the 2016 American Presidential election, and also how these emotions are pretty well useless in preventing similar outcomes here in Canada. I can't scream sense in to people who vote idiots in to power.

How can a stable, wealthy, democratic society descend so quickly? What were the triggers that sent me in to the red in the first place, and is there any way to politely knock sense in to my fellow Canadians?

I'm blogging this now to help me regain some equilibrium, and to document any effective strategies that can be learned from others.

An  article that helped me make some sense of what is going on was a reporter covering the Venezuelan election, that brought the populist Maduro in to power.

"[...] speeches are blunt and provocative, animated by a bumptious sense of humor and a voice that suggests someone who has spent a great deal of time rallying crowds without a microphone. As cameras rolled, he delivered an hour-long soliloquy—a mixture of folksy homilies, socialist slogans, jokes, and bluster, centered on his victory over his political opponents." New Yorker, December 2017

I can't find the article now, of course, but the reporter from that original article I read made a compelling argument that every outrageous statement by Maduro was mocked, repeated, amplified, and publicized by the media. Which ultimately served Maduro to give him the visibility he needed to launch him in to power.

The pattern is thus:
Candidate: Make unfounded, outrageous statement.
Media: Mocks and repeats.
Candidate: Make an unrelated outrageous claim.
Media: (Dropping last outrage), mocks and repeats.

The trigger that sends me in to the red is, "How can we have elected an idiot?" I want a safe, stable, secure country, and the best way to maintain that security is to elect the best we can get. The person should be a capable leader, intelligent, with demonstrable integrity and a sense of fair play. I am not so far gone to believe that such people don't exist, or that it is impossible for the best to survive the candidacy process.

Which leaves, where are the voters who will vote in an idiot, and why? May dad and I have discussed this at length, and I tend to agree with him that there are people who were forgotten during the preceding eight years, parts of the country where prosperity had passed them by, and hard working middle income earners were watching taxes rise while their prospects and the prospects for their children slipping away. You can see this in farming, mining, heavy industry, and primary manufacturing. It is this group who needed a voice, and saw an opportunity in Trump.

All the more tragic that their chosen candidate is a windbag, a limp noodle, who has backed down at every show down (Congress Budget, Chinese Tariffs, the Wall). Yet the President still speaks. How does he do it? I think one reason that Trump has not faded to obscurity is that he keeps building his Tsunami of outrageousness, where the last act is quickly overshadowed by the next. So here's my list of outrages, each one which I thought would surely disqualify Trump from leadership.

- The news conference questioning Obama's birth certificate (was it back in 2011 already)?
- Mocked a disabled reporter in 2015
- Credible evidence of multiple sexual harassment and assaults
- Colluding with the Russians to bring down his opponent
- Conflict of interest and self/family interest in appointments
- Obstructing house investigations
- Poor vetting of staff and the revolving door of staff
- Blatant racism
- Playing with nuclear weaponry
- Lies
- Continued, unfounded attacks on anyone he perceives as a threat. The projection is astounding. It is very likely wherever he has made accusations of of awful acts, he has done them.

Empires in the past have collapsed under the weight of incompetent leadership (China, Spain, Russia). I don't care how competent the courtiers are; the public knows that when the head is rotten the rest will surely follow. 

So how to go forward?

It's no use to yell at others for their choices. Anyone who is disaffected deserves to be heard and their concerns validated. I don't have to agree with their solutions, but their concerns deserve to be heard.

I don't have to agree with false conclusions (denying climate change, claiming conspiracy), but I can address the fears that are bolstering them. Socratic questioning can help engage people ensnared in fear.

How to deal with the compound outrage? I think I must decide that my outrage can go no deeper. The current President disqualified himself with his first deception. As hard as it may be, I must restrain myself from repeating, spreading, or mocking the message. 

I'll sleep better when due process runs it's course, the old king is gone, and America comes to it's senses.

I’m done with you

I’m going to gloss over the obvious, that I’m spending far too much time on Twitter these days. I’m getting something out of the exchanges. The reward of near instant feedback is addicting.  At the same time I crave dialogue, a genuine exchange of ideas between people with different experiences. I learn and grow from these exchanges.

However, it is far too easy in the twitterverse to take sides and polarize. We have Antifa and Cons, which somehow have turned in to derogatory terms. Who wouldn’t oppose fascism? And conservatism does not equal raging radicalism of the far right.

I’m a social progressive fiscal conservative. From all appearances moderates like me are a dying breed. At least there’s not enough of us to form a government. The best I can hope for is to hold elected government to account and answer a few hard questions.

Anyways I’ve managed to annoy a couple twitterers this week. I offered a different perspective, which wasn’t opposing them, but my opinions were original.

Somehow I got pinned as the “opposition”, but then I wasn’t talking like a radical right either. I was called a “fool”, a bot, a troll, and a JFC. I had to ask what a JFC was. Don’t ask. Google it yourself.

I responded to clarify and protested that I’m no bot. I’m real.

I think I made a valid point but I’m not behaving as a good bot should so for the second time this week a poster threw his last volley and ended with, “I’m done with you” with a few more insults thrown in and a threat to block me.

I mentioned earlier the addiction of near instant exchange, and in the heat of the moment, it is highly tempting to throw in a final shot. But my lesson from over a decade on discussion boards, is if someone is done, they are done. There is no point to inflame further. So I allow my good name to be besmirched and I sit on my hands. Let the discussion die.

Gosh I hate the term “Con”. It brings to mind an ex-con or maybe a con artist. Bring back small ‘c” conservatism.