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Comment by sonnyblarney | Hacker News Reader

'Being in a club with secret knowledge' doesn't fit the description of 'religion' very well, though there some aspects of cults for which the description may allude.

But that said - this is a hard one, much different than 'aliens' or 'arcane knowledge' because the simple truth is actually evident for everyone to see.

It's the craziest of all conspiracy theories because it's so utterly deniable.

I mean ... I don't think aliens have made contact with the White House ... but heck, it's in the realm of statistical plausibility! (Maybe I want it to be true ...). (Edit: we do spend many millions of 'legit' research dollars trying to find aliens, so it makes more sense that there's conspiracy there)

But 'flat earth' has to be the dumbest of all.

For this reason it's a very interest phenomenon.

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> 'Being in a club with secret knowledge' doesn't fit the description of 'religion' very well,

Why not? (I debated whether or not to include "religion" in my comment because the word is so laden with baggage, but ultimately decided that it was apt, so I am prepared to defend it if you really want to go down that rabbit hole.)

> But 'flat earth' has to be the dumbest of all.

Not even close. (Go read some Scientology literature, or the Book of Mormon.) But the fact that FE is so vehemently rebutted by the scientific establishment is a feature to the flat-earthers, proof that they really are fighting the good fight even though the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against them. That's the whole point.

+ ~90% of the world's population are religious (depending on how you look at it) and they mostly grow up in communities wherein everyone is basically the same religion, ergo, they are not generally 'missionary' , 'proselytizing', nor do they feel they have access to 'special information'.

In fact, it's the total opposite: for most of the world's religious, 'religion' is just part of every day, normative culture in most places. It's kind of mundane, actually.

Jehova's Witnesses, referenced in the article, are a totally different ballgame. They are 'default proselytizers' and have a substantially different world view than most folks directly around them.

+ As for why 'Flat Earth' is considerably dumber than Scientology:

'Dianetics' - the Scientology predicate is very close to psychotherapy. Scientology itself is bizarre, but also very interesting 'armchair philosophy'. For example, I think Hubbard's concept of 'tone scale' is brilliant, though it belongs in a blog of ideas, obviously not an institution.

But Scientology is very complex, there's a lot going on, many levels. I can see how it is 'rational' for people to get caught up in it, eve if it's crazy. Scientology leaders are not stupid. There are tons of otherwise very smart people caught up in Scientology ... it's not just full of idiots and crazy people.

But 'Flat Earth' is utterly stupid. It's like saying 'the sky is not blue'. It's the denial of a simple, almost arbitrary fact and it makes no sense at all. I don't think regular people get trapped in 'Flat Earth' conspiracies. Something has to be almost 'wrong' I think to fall for this one.

I think the term 'deprogramming' would be apt for a regular person caught up in a cult.

For 'Flat Earth' - I don't know what one would do with one of those people.

> nor do they feel they have access to 'special information'.

I'm pretty sure that if you actually went and asked them you'd find that most of them consider the Word of God to be pretty special. (More specifically, the fact that they and their group recognize the True Word of God is what makes them feel special.)

> I think Hubbard's concept of 'tone scale' is brilliant

I think you just made my point for me.

> Not even close. (Go read some Scientology literature, or the Book of Mormon.)

Color me intrigued. Which statements in the book of Mormon do you believe are significantly more readily deniable than "the earth is flat" in some sense different that doesn't also apply to the statements in, say, the bible.

Same question for Scientology.

Well, I could also point to the Bible, but I feel like I'm already pushing the boundaries of what is appropriate on HN.

In the case of the BoM it's not so much what's in the Book as the process by which it came to be written. Joseph Smith literally pulled it out of his hat! Also the ancillary beliefs that have grown up around it: Kolob, sacred underwear, institutionalized racism, polygamy...

In the case of Scientology, oh my goodness, where to even begin. The whole thing is just chock-full of weird. Thetans, Xenu, Clams... Just browse xenu.net.

Sounds like you are just talking about things you find really weird rather than things that are easily falsifiable.

I'm not convinced that any of the things you are discussing can be disproved more easily than flat earth.

I think you're underestimating how hard it is to disprove a flat earth (to a flat-earher).

I think you are confusing how hard it is to convince flat-earthers that the earth is not flat with how ridiculously easy it is to prove the the earth is not flat.

I (and the original comment you responded to) are discussing the second of these two.

Those two things are not distinct. It is manifestly untrue that it is easy to prove that the earth is round because there are people who have seen this alleged proof and remain unconvinced. The fact that you (and I) think those people are idiots is not probative.

You are both using implicit (so far) and incompatible definitions of "proof" & "proving".

(Just thought that I point it out in case you guys missed it (sorry if you didn't, just trying to be helpful here) but wanted to continue the discussion)

See my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18957158

I mean, sure, if you want to go down the route that nothing is falsifiable because the government is putting hallucinogens in the water so you can't trust anything you perceive, or whatever.

But if that is the case, it is impossible to prove or disprove anything, so it doesn't make much sense that you claimed flat earth is "not even close" to two religions in terms of difficulty of disproving (there can be no rank of everything is impossible). I'm not sure what you were going for there. Probably still you think Scientology and the Book of Mormon are "dumber" than flat earth theory simply because they sound weirder to you, which is fine, but not really a response to 'sonnyblarney's original comment.

> if you want to go down the route that nothing is falsifiable

It's not me going down that route, it's the flat-earthers.

> Probably still you think Scientology and the Book of Mormon are "dumber" than flat earth theory simply because they sound weirder to you

No. You are raising a straw man here. It has nothing to do with dumbness (though I do admit I find some aspects of Mormonism and many aspects of Scientlology to be pretty dumb.) Nearly all religions are "easily" proven false simply by the overwhelming evidence that there is no afterlife, that mind is a function of brain, and when the brain dies, the mind dies with it. That's for a "generic" religion with no specific claims about the nature of the afterlife, whether or not there are deities, etc. etc. Scientology and Mormonism (to cite but two of many noteworthy examples) go on to make many more specific false claims, each one of which makes the theory easier to debunk.

But of course this is not going to convince anyone who adheres to a religion, which is my whole point. There really is no difference. Religion and flat-eartherism both have equal scientific tenability (i.e. zero). People adhere to these beliefs for other reasons. And in both cases, those reasons are not entirely illegitimate.

> overwhelming evidence that there is no afterlife

How can you have evidence that something doesn't exist when that thing leaves no evidence?

> mind is a function of brain, and when the brain dies, the mind dies with it

This is not provable. Suppose there is an infinitely powerful computer system outside of our universe that doesn't influence our universe but knows everything about it. Then it could copy the contents of the brain upon death and run the brain in a simulation.

You can certainly not believe in there being an infinitely powerful computer system like this, but it's a claim entirely unrelated to your claim about the brain.

> How can you have evidence that something doesn't exist when that thing leaves no evidence?

In the exact same way that I have evidence that the round earth is not a government conspiracy: I have a theory that provides a good explanation for all the available evidence, namely, that the earth is in fact round, and that mind is in fact a function of brain. It really is the exact same situation with respect to provability in both cases.

> Suppose there is an infinitely powerful computer system outside of our universe

Now you're back in "the government is putting hallucinogens in the water" territory.

And, BTW, brain-cloning technology would in no way refute my position. To the contrary, the development of this technology would just be further evidence that mind is a function of some kind of computational substrate that can be understood in purely materialistic terms.

I agree that you have evidence for a theory that there is no soul; I disagree on whether that is evidence against a generic afterlife.

Two things could be simultaneously true: First, that the "mind is a function of some kind of computational substrate that can be understood in purely materialistic terms." Second, that there is this kind of an afterlife.

An afterlife doesn't require the existence of a soul. It could "just" be another computational substrate that runs the function of the mind.

> Now you're back in "the government is putting hallucinogens in the water" territory.

This infinitely powerful computer system is just a metaphor for a deity that is omniscient. I could have equivalently said "Suppose there is a deity that knows everything about the universe. Then it could copy the contents of the brain upon death and run the brain in a simulation." If you're going to say that the existence of an omniscient deity is equivalent to hallucinogens in the water supply, then we're not going to convince each other of anything, since I came into this discussion assuming that we were taking a generic omniscient deity as a reasonable given.

I never said anything about a soul. And I never said that mind is a function of "some kind of computational substrate." I said mind is a function of brain, which is a very particular kind of computational substrate with very specific properties, one of which is that it is impossible (given current technological constraints) to make a copy of it.

> Suppose there is a deity that knows everything about the universe

What difference does it make if you call it a "deity" or an "intelligent alien" or a "government conspiracy" or a leprechaun? Yes, brain-cloning technology is possible in principle (as far as we know) but there is no evidence that it actually exists anywhere. Likewise, a vast conspiracy to produce fake evidence for a round earth is also possible in principle, but there is no evidence for it. These two things have the exact same ontological status.

> I came into this discussion assuming that we were taking a generic omniscient deity as a reasonable given.

Huh??? Why would you assume that?

So is your proof that the afterlife can’t exist summed up by “brain-cloning technology is not within current human reach, and there’s no non-human thing out there that could do the brain-cloning”? Because sure, I agree with that statement. In your original comment you were referring to a generic afterlife. Common afterlives discussed involve non-human being(s) to run the whole thing, so I assumed that we could assume the existance of one. Yes, I do realize that that is a very western perspective, but also we’re on a website that is primarily western.

> your proof that the afterlife can’t exist

I didn't say that it can't exist, I said that it doesn't exist. Very important distinction. Fusion reactors can exist, but don't.

> Common afterlives discussed involve non-human being(s) to run the whole thing, so I assumed that we could assume the existance of one.

Again: why on earth would you assume that? People talk about warp drive too, but that doesn't license you to assume that it exists.

> Yes, I do realize that that is a very western perspective

I'd say it's more of a deist[1] perspective, which certainly is firmly rooted in Western culture and philosophical tradition. While it's not that surprising to have it invoked even on HN, assuming it as a given is a bit much. Especially in the context of hard-core empiricism[2] and materialism[3] - which are the other, but also significant philosophical traditions in the West - applied by lisper.

Personally, I agree with lisper - it is possible that the afterlife exists, but we have no theory which would explain how it could exist while also matching the observed reality, which leads to the conclusion that, to the best of our current knowledge, it's extremely unlikely that it exists. The same can be said for any other belief not grounded in scientific facts, including flat-earth theory, chemtrails, moon-landing hoax, anti-vaccine guys and so on, which is the point lisper is making. Once you leave the realm of sound theories with valid evidence, you're in a dream-land where you can meet James Bond, God, Donald Duck, Thetans and Xanu, chakra and Aang and Naruto, aliens running the White House and round-earth conspiracy - while different in many respects, they all lie outside of strictly defined empiric reality.

But, at this point - as noted in the first paragraph - we're rehashing the centuries-old discussion, and we're bound to this in a much less convincing and refined way than the famous philosophers, so maybe let's give it a rest?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism

For clarity on my thought process: I had interpreted lisper’s original comment as “Religions aren’t true because no afterlife exists.” After what lisper’s said in responses, I see that their actual argument is “Religions aren’t true because no afterlife exists because no deity exists.” The claim about no deity existing had been assumed implicitly in their original post. I hadn’t thought that it would be taken as a given, since we were discussing the truth value of religion. I’m now satisfied with the chain of logic now being strong; it just requires assuming the given that no deity exists.

> After what lisper’s said in responses, I see that their actual argument is “Religions aren’t true because no afterlife exists because no deity exists.”

No, that is not my argument. My argument is that it is just as easy to disprove religion as it is to disprove a flat earth, which is to say, very easy if your target audience is already on board and nearly impossible otherwise.

I agree with that argument 100%.

One final comment from me, then I'll shut up.

> overwhelming evidence that there is no afterlife

I agree that there is no evidence that there is an afterlife. I do not agree that there is evidence that there is no afterlife. So in response to "is there an afterlife," I would say it looks improbable, but can't say for sure that there isn't.

In my mind, this stands in contrast to flat earth: for that, there is no evidence that the earth is flat, but there is also evidence that the earth is not flat. So I can say the earth is definitely not flat, because I can see it is round.

I think our point of disagreement is whether there is evidence that the earth is not flat, because one can come up with all kinds of scenarios to explain the observations while allowing the earth to be flat (hallucinogenic water, etc).

I don't expect to convince you of anything, just wanted to summarize how I think about this, for completeness. As 'klibertp mentioned elsewhere, at this point we are rehashing ancient philosophical discussions (and I'm doing it quite poorly), so let's call it quits (feel free to respond if you want, I'll read it, but won't respond).

It's been fun.

You should read this:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mnS2WYLCGJP2kQkRn/absence-of...

"It is manifestly untrue that it is easy to prove that the earth is round because there are people who have seen this alleged proof and remain unconvinced. "

No, it's not 'alleged proof' it's 'proof' and the people who do not believe it obviously have some kind of problem.

See my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18957158

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