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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
 Posted - 12/08/2008 : 21:50:03
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Amusing... but also interesting how these guys sound like your typical creationist/IDiot.
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 12/08/2008 : 23:15:22 [Permalink]
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I wonder. I'm not completely convinced that the whole thing isn't a joke.
The Flat Earth Society's presidency descended upon Charles Johnson in accord
with the last wishes of its founder, Samuel Shenton, an Englishman who died in 1971.
The society, which will round out a quarter-century next year, is a spiritual inheritor
of the Universal Zetetic Society, which flourished in England in the last century. |
Zetetic Society, eh? A great name for a skeptics group too. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 12/08/2008 : 23:32:05 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
Zetetic Society, eh? A great name for a skeptics group too.
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Maybe. I had never heard of the term before. When I plugged it into Wikipedia I got an article on Marcello Truzzi.
| After leaving CSICOP, Truzzi started another journal, the Zetetic Scholar.[2] He promoted the term zeteticism as an alternative to skepticism, because the term skepticism, he thought, was being usurped by what he termed "pseudoskeptics". A zetetic is a "skeptical seeker." The term's origins lie in the word for the followers of the skeptic Pyrrho in ancient Greece and was used by flat-earthers in the 19th century. (emphasis mine) |
So it seems the use of the term "zetetic" by flat-earthers goes back at least 200 years. The first to want to "teach the controversy?"
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 12/08/2008 23:33:18 |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 12/08/2008 : 23:40:19 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by H. Humbert
Originally posted by Kil
Zetetic Society, eh? A great name for a skeptics group too.
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Maybe. I had never heard of the term before. When I plugged it into Wikipedia I got an article on Marcello Truzzi.
| After leaving CSICOP, Truzzi started another journal, the Zetetic Scholar.[2] He promoted the term zeteticism as an alternative to skepticism, because the term skepticism, he thought, was being usurped by what he termed "pseudoskeptics". A zetetic is a "skeptical seeker." The term's origins lie in the word for the followers of the skeptic Pyrrho in ancient Greece and was used by flat-earthers in the 19th century. (emphasis mine) |
So it seems the use of the term "zetetic" by flat-earthers goes back at least 200 years.
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Yeah. I have copies of The Zetetic. It became The Skeptical Inquirer, maybe because of Truzzi's new publication. That was the first big internal falling out with CSICOP. The next one was when Randi left them. They are now friends again.
As for the flat earth guy, there is this:
Charles Johnson, 76, Proponent of Flat Earth
Fun stuff. Perhaps he really is whacked... |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 12/09/2008 : 04:02:42 [Permalink]
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I think a lot of these Flat Earth guys are serious. They are just not funny enough for it to be a spoof. But I've met enough bizarrely crazy kooks that I no longer wonder if any idea is too foolish for it to have real adherents.
Decades ago, I'd heard that the Flat Earth Society was a spoof, but I've since been unable to see evidence of this. I suspect that this allegation itself was a clever hoax by mainline skeptics.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 12/09/2008 04:05:40 |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 12/09/2008 : 05:45:16 [Permalink]
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| It's easy to fool yourself that there's a god, an afterlife, a great flood, a young Earth, or even that the Earth is the center of the universe. But it's much more difficult to actually believe the Earth is flat. There's so much evidence that it's round.... it's akin to denying the sky is blue. Really, the Great Scientific Conspiracy would have to be all encompassing to hide the fact the Earth is flat and why would this conspiracy exist anyway? These guys arn't religious nutters, are they? So Satan's not behind it. No, I think this is a joke. It has to be. |
-Chaloobi
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 12/09/2008 : 09:22:55 [Permalink]
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Yeah, when I first saw the article, I did some investigation and got a bit confused.
Essentially, when Charles Johnson died too, the 'Flat Earth' movement splintered in a bunch of groups. To complicate things further, another group, satirical this one but dancing a slow valse with Poe's law, got founded with the same name.
(Un)fortunately this satire seems to have received more attention than the real groups, muddling the subject further... |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Amusing
