Fundyisms: Earth is flat and how old?

[guitar_villain]

4 hours ago, THERetroGamerNY said:

Gravity. As if. What a noob idea.

Actually, it is, rather new.  I do a role playing game on the trial of Galileo in my class, and it's always fun to tell the pro-heliocentrism folks they aren't allowed to use the word "gravity".   Gravity was Newton's idea ~70 years later.  The only answer the Linceans can give for why the Earth and Sun don't fly apart is "We don't know".  The geocentric folks should, if they are any good, ridicule this endlessly- things like a sling and stone fly apart when you spin them, that's obvious from experiment.

The other fun bit is trying to get them to realize just how hard it is to prove the Earth goes around the Sun.  My guess is that virtually nobody here can do it without resorting to photos from satellites.  Galileo himself confidently predicted he'd see the specific proof, and then completely failed to do so for 20 years.  (And in fact, it wasn't seen for more than 200)  It's entirely possible for the geocentrists to win the game based on scientific arguments alone- they have some powerful evidence the Earth isn't moving.

[PennySycamore]

IIRC, the governor of Kansas, Sam Brownback, is a geocentrist.  I don't know if that totally explains his running the state into the ground though.

[Cleopatra7]

16 minutes ago, guitar_villain said:

Actually, it is, rather new.  I do a role playing game on the trial of Galileo in my class, and it's always fun to tell the pro-heliocentrism folks they aren't allowed to use the word "gravity".   Gravity was Newton's idea ~70 years later.  The only answer the Linceans can give for why the Earth and Sun don't fly apart is "We don't know".  The geocentric folks should, if they are any good, ridicule this endlessly- things like a sling and stone fly apart when you spin them, that's obvious from experiment.

The other fun bit is trying to get them to realize just how hard it is to prove the Earth goes around the Sun.  My guess is that virtually nobody here can do it without resorting to photos from satellites.  Galileo himself confidently predicted he'd see the specific proof, and then completely failed to do so for 20 years.  (And in fact, it wasn't seen for more than 200)  It's entirely possible for the geocentrists to win the game based on scientific arguments alone- they have some powerful evidence the Earth isn't moving.

The existence of the Galilean moons implicitly suggest heliocentrism, because they indicate that everything does not revolve around the Earth. While it is true that the model put forth by Galileo, which still contained all of the needless equants, epicycles, and deferents of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system could not account for certain phenomena like parallax, the true trump card for Galileo was his discovery of the four largest moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto). According to the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system, the Earth was not only at the center of the universe, but the sun, the moon, and the planets moved around it in perfectly circular "celestial spheres" that rotated around Earth in a substance known as ether. Hence, the universe was a series of interlocking moving spheres with heavenly bodies embedded in them. Beyond the final celestial sphere, Saturn, was the firmament of fixed stars, and beyond that, the Empyrean where god lived. What happened is that Galileo built a crude telescope (by our standards, anyway) and was able to see the four largest moons of Jupiter, which had never been seen before. Over time, Galileo realized that these previously unknown celestial bodies followed Jupiter around as it moved across the sky. This led him to realize that Jupiter had moons that moved around it, which indicated that every heavenly body did not revolve around the Earth. Whatever the advantages of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system were, it could not account for the moons of Jupiter.

[feministxtian]

Another fun topic

http://www.christianforums.com/threads/dinosaurs-noahs-flood-other-awesome-questions.7962701/

[guitar_villain]

21 minutes ago, Cleopatra7 said:

The existence of the Galilean moons implicitly suggest heliocentrism, because they indicate that everything does not revolve around the Earth. While it is true that the model put forth by Galileo, which still contained all of the needless equants, epicycles, and deferents of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system could not account for certain phenomena like parallax, the true trump card for Galileo was his discovery of the four largest moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto). According to the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system, the Earth was not only at the center of the universe, but the sun, the moon, and the planets moved around it in perfectly circular "celestial spheres" that rotated around Earth in a substance known as ether. Hence, the universe was a series of interlocking moving spheres with heavenly bodies embedded in them. Beyond the final celestial sphere, Saturn, was the firmament of fixed stars, and beyond that, the Empyrean where god lived. What happened is that Galileo built a crude telescope (by our standards, anyway) and was able to see the four largest moons of Jupiter, which had never been seen before. Over time, Galileo realized that these previously unknown celestial bodies followed Jupiter around as it moved across the sky. This led him to realize that Jupiter had moons that moved around it, which indicated that every heavenly body did not revolve around the Earth. Whatever the advantages of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system were, it could not account for the moons of Jupiter.

Ohh, a serious answer.  I like those.   You have some of it- the moons show the Ptolemaic model is incorrect, but they doesn't show that the Earth is moving.  Tycho's model of the solar system perfectly handles both the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus while retaining geocentrism.  (And it should work, as it's the same as the Copernican, only with the central object switched)

Hint- you need to move outside solar system objects

[THERetroGamerNY]

Another fun topic

http://www.christianforums.com/threads/dinosaurs-noahs-flood-other-awesome-questions.7962701/

Satan hid the dinosaur bones in the Earth to trick us.

Good 'ol Satan, always pulling pranks.

Hm. This Christian Forums place is new to me.

I'm an ebil, highly Satanic Progressive Christian. I could join and have some fun... This is tempting.

I was banned from the Faith & Religion forum on Disqus after I dared mention that Job is merely a fictional epic poem, and talks about a dragon in it. Reason for ban: Blasphemy. lol

[Cleopatra7]

2 minutes ago, guitar_villain said:

Ohh, a serious answer.  I like those.   You have some of it- the moons show the Ptolemaic model is incorrect, but they doesn't show that the Earth is moving.  Tycho's model of the solar system perfectly handles both the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus while retaining geocentrism.  (And it should work, as it's the same as the Copernican, only with the central object switched)

Hint- you need to move outside solar system objects

James Bradley discovered stellar aberration in 1725, which proved the Earth moved. This Wikipedia article explains aberration, complete with fancy math for the classical and relativistic models:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberration_of_light

A moving Earth also explained stellar parallax, because it showed that the stars appeared to change positions because of the Earth's changing position as it moved around the sun. The Doppler Effect, which was proposed in 1842 by Christian Doppler, also proves the motion of the Earth, but since very sophisticated instruments are needed to use it on an astronomical scale, it may be beyond the time period you had in mind.

[guitar_villain]

10 minutes ago, Cleopatra7 said:

James Bradley discovered stellar aberration in 1725, which proved the Earth moved. This Wikipedia article explains aberration, complete with fancy math for the classical and relativistic models:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberration_of_light

A moving Earth also explained stellar parallax, because it showed that the stars appeared to change positions because of the Earth's changing position as it moved around the sun. The Doppler Effect, which was proposed in 1842 by Christian Doppler, also proves the motion of the Earth, but since very sophisticated instruments are needed to use it on an astronomical scale, it may be beyond the time period you had in mind.

Yup, that's it.  It's pretty much the only available proof that the Earth is actually moving , and Galileo proudly predicted that it would be detected shortly after his publication.  (Aristotle actually uses the lack of stellar parallax as proof the Earth is stationary)

And absent *much* better equipment, he never saw it.  His excuse was that the stars were too far away and it was too small to see (correct), but again the geocentrists can ridicule him for that.  Aren't scientists supposed to give up on theories when they can't find evidence for them?

[lawfulevil]

Well, no, scientists/mathematicians are supposed to give up when they find compelling evidence that DISPROVES the thesis. Like, say, your experiment being totally unrepeatable. Not that it stops everyone, they just publish in PLOS ONE.

Uh, anyway. Most ideas start as things that seem reasonable with the evidence we have but aren't currently provable or disprovable. (I'm ignoring a lot of mathematical arguments that are "valid", "true", and yet unsound, because sometimes logic doesn't make sense, for the sake of brevity, but you can look them up.)

It's the same kind of basic misunderstanding that drives otherwise reasonable (read: not fundie as fuck) people to argue about evolution vs. creationism. "Well," one might say, "if evolution is valid, everything is always getting better, then why do humans still have appendixes?" It's based on a couple bad ideas- the idea that evolution is inherently GOING anywhere, and the idea that non-useful traits automatically go away. Evolution isn't "going" anywhere- it's only about continually adapting to the current environment. And traits evolve only if they are beneficial enough to change your chances of mating and offspring survival, or harmful enough.

The same idea applies to theories. If it's important enough we work on proving or disproving it. Otherwise your theory or trait kind of hangs out not doing much of anything most of the time. Like an appendix. Sometimes we disprove them later. Sometimes not! Why did people in the middle ages like spices so fucking much? Oh, they thought they were medicinal? Turns out that in a lot of cases they were right!

But you don't have to burn the pepper tree to harvest the peppercorns, that's not true.

[Childless]

17 hours ago, Cleopatra7 said:

I completely believe that people are that stupid. Why is believing in a flat earth any crazier than not believing in evolution? Evolution and a round earth both have copious amounts of empirical evidence to prove that they are facts, but they contradict the Bible, so they are "false" according to these fundies. The Bible is clear that the earth is flat and stationary. If you're going to reject evolution and an old earth, rejecting a spherical moving earth is the logical next step. Robert Sturgenis, an extreme Catholic traditionalist, advocates geocentricism as the only "Catholic" astronomical model and geocentricism is pretty common in ultra orthodox Judaism because the ancient rabbis and scholars advocated it. Skeptical Inquirer had a really good article on geocentricism in ultra orthodox Judaism, but I think it's behind a pay wall now.

Here's the thing though.  You can look up in the sky and clearly see the moon isn't flat.  You can look through a telescope and clearly see various planets that are not flat.  So, why would anyone think the earth was flat?  Wouldn't logic suggest it follow the same make up as other large objects in the solar system?  It's hard for me to believe people can see things with their own eyes and then turn around and say it's a lie.  Makes no sense.

[CyborgKin]

One of the weirder comments I saw amounted to "The earth isn't flat but some people still doubt because NASA has been too vague on the subject."  Seriously, wat?  Some people have a really weird view of NASA.

[Foudeb]

1 hour ago, Childless said:

Here's the thing though.  You can look up in the sky and clearly see the moon isn't flat.  You can look through a telescope and clearly see various planets that are not flat.  So, why would anyone think the earth was flat?  Wouldn't logic suggest it follow the same make up as other large objects in the solar system?  It's hard for me to believe people can see things with their own eyes and then turn around and say it's a lie.  Makes no sense.

Can you really? All I can see is a disk. The other side of the moon we can't see, and as most of us don't routinely fly past the moon we don't get to appreciate it's in 3D.

It's easier to intuitively see that the Earth isn't flat - otherwise you'd be able to see any given thing of a certain height forever rather than just until the horizon "rises" up above it as you walk away.

Ancient Greeks and Medieval Europeans therefore didn't think the earth was flat - they pictured it like an egg yolk after you break the shell, like a flattened ball. we're on top, there are oceans all around us, and really, who cares what's happening in those oceans. Bear in mind navigational systems on ships were non-existent until the compass (not widespread in Europe until the 15th century), so most sailing was done within sight of the shore. It must have been genuinely obvious that western europe is on one side of the map and the far east on the other, you can either walk across or sail all around Africa to get from one to the other, all continents are sitting flat on a huge flattish ocean. You're happy to use a sheet of valuable parchment to draw a map of the continents, but why waste good money and buy more parchment to draw the other side of the egg yolk as it's nothing but a huge ocean with nothing of interest on there?

Bottomline, a 20th century flat earthiest who can actually see how round the earth is from a plane is dumber than dumb.

[Cleopatra7]

2 hours ago, Childless said:

Here's the thing though.  You can look up in the sky and clearly see the moon isn't flat.  You can look through a telescope and clearly see various planets that are not flat.  So, why would anyone think the earth was flat?  Wouldn't logic suggest it follow the same make up as other large objects in the solar system?  It's hard for me to believe people can see things with their own eyes and then turn around and say it's a lie.  Makes no sense.

Given that YEC think that the appearance of an old earth was created to deceive humans, such people are already discounting rational and empirical evidence. They think that being a "Bible-believing Christian" means believing everything the Bible says, even those aspects that have been disproven by science or are contrary to reason. At this rate, I expect there to be pi deniers since the Bible posits a different definition of the number.

[guitar_villain]

5 hours ago, lawfulevil said:

Well, no, scientists/mathematicians are supposed to give up when they find compelling evidence that DISPROVES the thesis. Like, say, your experiment being totally unrepeatable. Not that it stops everyone, they just publish in PLOS ONE.

Uh, anyway. Most ideas start as things that seem reasonable with the evidence we have but aren't currently provable or disprovable. (I'm ignoring a lot of mathematical arguments that are "valid", "true", and yet unsound, because sometimes logic doesn't make sense, for the sake of brevity, but you can look them up.)

It's the same kind of basic misunderstanding that drives otherwise reasonable (read: not fundie as fuck) people to argue about evolution vs. creationism. "Well," one might say, "if evolution is valid, everything is always getting better, then why do humans still have appendixes?" It's based on a couple bad ideas- the idea that evolution is inherently GOING anywhere, and the idea that non-useful traits automatically go away. Evolution isn't "going" anywhere- it's only about continually adapting to the current environment. And traits evolve only if they are beneficial enough to change your chances of mating and offspring survival, or harmful enough.

The same idea applies to theories. If it's important enough we work on proving or disproving it. Otherwise your theory or trait kind of hangs out not doing much of anything most of the time. Like an appendix. Sometimes we disprove them later. Sometimes not! Why did people in the middle ages like spices so fucking much? Oh, they thought they were medicinal? Turns out that in a lot of cases they were right!

But you don't have to burn the pepper tree to harvest the peppercorns, that's not true.

True you should look for disproof, but heliocentrism was a new hypothesis and when you propose something radical to replace a working theory you should have serious evidence to back you up.  Instead

1) There was no observed evidence for heliocentrism that wasn't explained just as well by Tycho's geocentric model

2) It contradicted common sense physics- why don't we fly off the Earth?  Why doesn't the Earth fly away from the Sun?

3) It was no more accurate than the Ptolomaic model it replaced.  It wasn't until Kepler added elliptical orbits that the theory actually predicted things well

4) Galileo used the model to make incorrect predictions, such as there being one tide per day.

5) The final proof of stellar parallax wasn't seen at all.

Galileo et. al. got lucky in that they were right in the end.  But give their rickety hypothesis (not worthy of being called a theory) , that was far from obvious.  If you allow this academic to drone on, compare this to the introduction of the "old" quantum theory.  That was a radical idea, but a tremendously successful theory in that it cleared up a number of thorny problems in physics like blackbody radiation and the spectrum of hydrogen.  But if you asked Bohr why electrons could only have certain orbits around a nucleus, he had to answer "We don't know". Despite its success, "old" quantum theory turns out to be almost completely wrong at the core- until you ditch the idea of particles altogether and go to wave/particle duality you don't have a consistent theory, so Bohr was wrong even though he explained far more than Copernicus and Galileo.

People tend to forget just how *hard* science actually is.  Nothing is obvious- if it was obvious it would have been explained long ago.  That's why scientists make mistakes constantly- they promote wrong hypotheses, they make predictive mistakes and have to go back and change their assumptions, etc.  Fundies aren't comfortable with this- their entire mindset is built around the idea they they know The Truth, and because they know The Truth they know exactly what to believe and how to act all the time.   Science is at completely odds with this idea- we don't know much, we change what we know constantly and we can chuck centuries of carefully held theories based on a single disproof. 

[CharlieInCharge]

Enjoying the discussion. I haven't really thought about these ideas in a while and it's nice to use my brain to think about something other than Fundie courtship and babies  

I am also loving the links listed below the OP's article. This one - https://biblescienceforum.com/2014/06/06/age-as-a-quality-factor-of-human-life-after-the-flood/ is my favorite because the author uses real mathy language to make his case. Count me in as being bummed we only have decades to kick around instead of freakin' centuries! 

Also, the ardent desire for the return of Christ and the end of the world freaks me out. I don't know if it's just wanting to be proven right or if Fundies lives just suck really bad, but please chill and stop rushing the end times!

[lawfulevil]

Thinking you know everything already sounds so deeply uninteresting to me. I don't know how these people muster the energy to go about their lives. What's the point?

Well, maybe that's why they want the world to end.

[Cleopatra7]

51 minutes ago, guitar_villain said:

True you should look for disproof, but heliocentrism was a new hypothesis and when you propose something radical to replace a working theory you should have serious evidence to back you up.  Instead

1) There was no observed evidence for heliocentrism that wasn't explained just as well by Tycho's geocentric model

2) It contradicted common sense physics- why don't we fly off the Earth?  Why doesn't the Earth fly away from the Sun?

3) It was no more accurate than the Ptolomaic model it replaced.  It wasn't until Kepler added elliptical orbits that the theory actually predicted things well

4) Galileo used the model to make incorrect predictions, such as there being one tide per day.

5) The final proof of stellar parallax wasn't seen at all.

Galileo et. al. got lucky in that they were right in the end.  But give their rickety hypothesis (not worthy of being called a theory) , that was far from obvious.  If you allow this academic to drone on, compare this to the introduction of the "old" quantum theory.  That was a radical idea, but a tremendously successful theory in that it cleared up a number of thorny problems in physics like blackbody radiation and the spectrum of hydrogen.  But if you asked Bohr why electrons could only have certain orbits around a nucleus, he had to answer "We don't know". Despite its success, "old" quantum theory turns out to be almost completely wrong at the core- until you ditch the idea of particles altogether and go to wave/particle duality you don't have a consistent theory, so Bohr was wrong even though he explained far more than Copernicus and Galileo.

People tend to forget just how *hard* science actually is.  Nothing is obvious- if it was obvious it would have been explained long ago.  That's why scientists make mistakes constantly- they promote wrong hypotheses, they make predictive mistakes and have to go back and change their assumptions, etc.  Fundies aren't comfortable with this- their entire mindset is built around the idea they they know The Truth, and because they know The Truth they know exactly what to believe and how to act all the time.   Science is at completely odds with this idea- we don't know much, we change what we know constantly and we can chuck centuries of carefully held theories based on a single disproof. 

For me, the significant of the Galileo affair is less about the question of geocentrism vs heliocentrism as such and more about what happens when a religious organization or belief system puts all of its epistemological eggs in one basket. At the time of the Galileo affair, the Catholic Church was already dealing with the effects of the Reformation and the Wars of Religion, and had launched the Counter-Reformation in response. Hence, there was a heightened interest among the hierarchy in clamping down on anything that smacked of heresy. The Catholic Church had invested a lot of theological significance in the Ptolemaic/Aristotelian model, and theologians like Albertus Magus and especially Thomas Aquinas had managed to synthesize it into a sort of grand Christian string theory. The Catholic-Ptolemaic-Aristotelian synthesis was great because it meant that the natural sciences and Catholic theology were in complete agreement. When Galileo suggested that there were phenomena that this model could account for, he was threatening an epistemological system that was already under attack from Protestantism, and the hierarchy wasn't going to tolerate dissent from within. I don't think the Catholic hierarchy was opposing Galileo simply because his model had holes in it. Although the Catholic Church has generally reconciled itself to a large, old universe, many conservative Protestants haven't, and we see the same problems with today with YECs and the like obstinately putting all their trust in an inherently flawed epistemology.

As @guitar_villain notes, the system proposed by Galileo was still "wrong" by modern standards and still contained many of the problematic aspects of the previous Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system. This shouldn't come as a surprise, since it would have been impossible for Galileo to know what modern astro-physicists know about the universe, since he didn't have the mathematical or technical tools to do so. Even Einstein wasn't one hundred percent right with his work. The progress of science is a lot like line dancing, where sometimes you go forward, sometimes back, and sometimes to the side. To me, the aspect of Galileo's work that was really revolutionary was that he was the first to build a telescope at point it at the sky. Despite the crudity of his device, Galileo was able to see with his own eyes phenomena that cast serious doubt on Aristotelian physics, including the afore-mentioned Galilean moons of Jupiter, the phases of  Venus (a geocentric model has no way of explaining how this can occur), and Saturn's rings. The rings of Saturn were problematic, especially since they appeared to be moons or "arms" that would disappear and reappear, which suggested the non-perfection of the celestial spheres. There was nothing in the Ptolemaic/Aristotelian model or even Galileo's model that could explain Saturn's "arms," and it wasn't until Christiaan Huygens looked at Saturn through his own, more powerful telescope that he was able to discover the ring, as well as one of Saturn's moons, Titan. Given this, the position of the sun and the earth are probably the least of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic model's problems, even if that's what people fixate on today.

[paganbaby]

For years, my benchmark for total batshit was this site, which pushes geocentrism:

http://www.fixedearth.com/

It used to be a lot more fun, having been created back in the day when fanatics thought multiple fonts and different colored text proved their points. It looked like the pages were written in Word and then saved as html. To view it in its full glory, visit the Wayback Machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080203213720/http://www.fixedearth.com/

When the original owner died, it was given a facelift, but it looks like the anti-Newtonian paranoia is still intact, although the prose has been toned down.

Back when I was mocking the fixed-but-spherical earth model, I never imagined that the flat-earth theory would make a comeback!

[THERetroGamerNY]

"Kaballa-based Big Bangism" ?! LOL

Thanks for this rare gem,@Paganbaby.

I think the battiest of the internet is the Time Cube guy. Not fundie, just... Ahem... Unique.

Even though it has been taken down, someone archived it here: http://timecube.2enp.com

[paganbaby]

38 minutes ago, THERetroGamerNY said:

"Kaballa-based Big Bangism" ?! LOL

Thanks for this rare gem,@Paganbaby.

I think the battiest of the internet is the Time Cube guy. Not fundie, just... Ahem... Unique.

Even though it has been taken down, someone archived it here: http://timecube.2enp.com

Wow. That Time Cube stuff is so out there my brain refuses to accept whatever the hell it is he's trying to say.

Makes thinking that Tycho Brahe was poisoned as part of a Copernican/Darwinist plot (and that Darwin stuff must have been plotted FAR in advance) almost...okay, never mind, nothing can make that sane.

[CyborgKin]

11 hours ago, Cleopatra7 said:

Given that YEC think that the appearance of an old earth was created to deceive humans, such people are already discounting rational and empirical evidence. They think that being a "Bible-believing Christian" means believing everything the Bible says, even those aspects that have been disproven by science or are contrary to reason. At this rate, I expect there to be pi deniers since the Bible posits a different definition of the number.

Maybe some, but the YEC I know think the earth doesn't appear old.

[Childless]

20 hours ago, Foudeb said:

Can you really? All I can see is a disk. The other side of the moon we can't see, and as most of us don't routinely fly past the moon we don't get to appreciate it's in 3D.

It's easier to intuitively see that the Earth isn't flat - otherwise you'd be able to see any given thing of a certain height forever rather than just until the horizon "rises" up above it as you walk away.

Ancient Greeks and Medieval Europeans therefore didn't think the earth was flat - they pictured it like an egg yolk after you break the shell, like a flattened ball. we're on top, there are oceans all around us, and really, who cares what's happening in those oceans. Bear in mind navigational systems on ships were non-existent until the compass (not widespread in Europe until the 15th century), so most sailing was done within sight of the shore. It must have been genuinely obvious that western europe is on one side of the map and the far east on the other, you can either walk across or sail all around Africa to get from one to the other, all continents are sitting flat on a huge flattish ocean. You're happy to use a sheet of valuable parchment to draw a map of the continents, but why waste good money and buy more parchment to draw the other side of the egg yolk as it's nothing but a huge ocean with nothing of interest on there?

Bottomline, a 20th century flat earthiest who can actually see how round the earth is from a plane is dumber than dumb.

You can clearly see the three dimensional shape of the moon.  Especially during the day.  I was just looking at it last week while I took my toddler on a walk and it was distinctly ball shaped.  I tried to point it out to him, but being two, he was more interested in the cars driving by.  At that moment I really missed my astronomy obsessed kindergartner.  Talking astronomy is way more interesting than discussing cars.

[CelticGoddess]

On August 24, 2016 at 3:53 PM, feministxtian said:

here ya go...let me know if you need rescue ferrets.

http://www.christianforums.com/search/7145971/?q=flat+earth&o=relevance

What did I just read?  I am not feeling well, and hope the hypoxia is causing me to read this junk.  It can't be real.  Please tell me it's the hypoxia?  Lack of oxygen can make you read things that aren't there, right?

Send the ferrets!!

 

[JemimaPuddle-Duck]

On August 25, 2016 at 4:40 AM, Cleopatra7 said:

Given that YEC think that the appearance of an old earth was created to deceive humans, such people are already discounting rational and empirical evidence. They think that being a "Bible-believing Christian" means believing everything the Bible says, even those aspects that have been disproven by science or are contrary to reason. At this rate, I expect there to be pi deniers since the Bible posits a different definition of the number.

I think that is a belief of only a very small percentage of creationists. 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

Eratosthenes in 205 BC was light years ahead of flarfers.

Is this too much for SOTDRT?

www.eratosthenes.eu/spip/?lang=en