Here Be Dragons:An Introduction of Critical Thinking

[Breakable]

Very interesting video:
http://herebedragonsmovie.com/

Attached files

[maihem]

Breakable wrote: Very interesting video:
http://herebedragonsmovie.com/

Interestingly he accepts that people in the dark ages generally believed in a flat earth without seeing any evidence. Mainly because there is only evidence that a handful of people (regarded at the time as nutters even by the religious establishment) believed it.

[Breakable]

It seems you are right:
“The modern belief that especially medieval Christianity believed in a flat earth has been referred to as The Myth of the Flat Earth.[1] In 1945, it was listed by the Historical Association (of Britain) as the second of 20 in a pamphlet on common errors in history.[2] Several scholars[3] have argued that “with extraordinary [sic] few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat” and that the prevailing view was of a spherical earth.[1]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth

Its good to be skeptical, even of the skeptic 😉

[Tasmodevil44]

Breakable said :

” It’s good to be skeptical……even of the skeptic. “

Excellent quote ! ! ! I’ll have to remember that one. Especially since I believe critical thinking in science and the scientific method should entail a combination of both open – mindedness to new ideas and ways of thinking…… as well as the skeptical analysis to test such things out as to their validity.

[Breakable]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society
The Flat Earth Society (also known as the International Flat Earth Society or International Flat Earth Research Society) is an organization that furthers the belief that the Earth is flat rather than a sphere.

[Tasmodevil44]

I’ve heard about these guys before(I think the society is located somewhere in Illinois, if I’m correct). I first heard about them over 20 years ago, and I couldn’t believe that in the modern era of education some people still cling to such beliefs. Which sort of goes back to your quote about being skeptical of even some skeptics. I was at first skeptical that some people could be skeptical of a round Earth.

Closed – minded arrogance and ignorance against truly valid, real ideas and such is one thing……but some things are just truly idiotic to the point where even the most open – minded should not be open – minded about them. There’s a big difference between the two.

[Tasmodevil44]

But then again, there’s a certain degree of uncertainty to reality itself. Which can sometimes make truly valid things and truly nonsense things difficult to distinguish the difference between the two. Only if you know all knowlege and information that exists……both known and unknown yet to be known……which is impossible……can you have any absolute certainty about any claims you make.

That’s why some of today’s crackpots may become tomorrow’s visionaries. Like the discovery of cold fusion, for example. In the future, it may be as accepted as an everyday fact of life as television, cellphones, and airplanes are today. It’s always easy to accept something as a part of everyday life when it’s already post – invention rather than pre – invention.

And then you have things that in all likelihood and probability are truly cracked in the truest sense. Such as a real Santa Claus, fairies, werewoles, vampires, and etc.

[Rezwan]

How does anyone know what prehistoric people universally believed? Have they interviewed them? From the wikipedia flat-earth link above we read:

The belief that the Earth was flat was almost universal until about the 4th century BC, when the Ancient Greek scientists and philosophers proposed the idea…

Maybe they did, but there’s no way to know without universal interviews! Universal! What epistemic arrogance. The people that built the pyramids, and those astronomers of ancient meso-america seem to have had an excellent grasp of the heavens. They didn’t seem to be using clumsy flat-earth geometry. Why would one assume they thought the earth was flat? Because years later, Herodotus wrote down that they did? Because some drawings in holy sites in India show a flat earth atop a stack of turtles? As if, in the past, everyone has always believed what they teach in sunday school, and no one thought of it as a metaphor, or a social thing, and only now are we sophisticated enough to tell the difference.

FYI, the earth is, indeed, resting on a turtle. You can’t see it, because it’s in its stealth/invisi-sheild shell. When it shifts, that’s what causes the northern lights.

[Tasmodevil44]

Indeed, an enormous body of scientific knowlege has been lost over the centuries. Things have been repeatedly discovered and forgotten again many times. Wars, conquest, revolutions and all the destruction it entails didn’t help matters, either. Such as the destruction of the anchient library of Alexandria, Egypt.

Many of these civilizations of antiquity were far more advanced than modern people give them credit for. So that archaeologists are constantly astounded by new discoveries about the anchient world that prove otherwise. Such as the art of Egyptian beer making that is equivalent to any modern commercial brand of beer. Or evidence of electric batteries and possibly an Egyptian lightbulb (long before Edison’s time ! ! !), or how about a Greek navigational computer full of gears almost as sophisticated as a Swiss watch ?

Not all the anchients were ignorant or dumb. Not any more than some individuals today. It would indeed be arrogant to think otherwise.

[Author]

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