steve v wrote:
Using the Flat Earth example again, the FES's notions are generally unclear in terms of whether they are actually sincere (still), or that they might be speaking metaphorically, or IMHO from the POV of human experience. Thus it can rather ridiculous to talk in terms of science, without explaining what their actual point is, which might be something like: 'Thinking about the Earth as round is only a conceptual construct which also requires thinking along notions of complex relativity-- in real life, we intrinsically think of the world as Euclidian, and therefore, "flat." The FES might just be claiming that the religious view that all souls be on the same plane, or else that in personal terms, thinking in global terms is just a waste of precious time.
IOW: While its easy to call such people stupid, its hard to say exactly objectively what such group actually represents. Skpeptical "science" (ie. science POV) doesnt offer insight into this basic aspect. The articles talk about FES "models" of the Earth, assuming that models are the actual *point* of the group--the physical descriptions may be quite irrelevant.
The difficulty here with the FES POV is that we're not hearing it from FES supporters. We have no evidence of what they still believe. It's very easy to overcome such a group's arguments when the only ones they have are the ones we have imputed to them.
Ec