Flat-Earth Theory: Science, Faith, and Conspiracy

Have you ever wondered what fuels the beliefs of Flat-Earth proponents? Join us in this episode as we sit down with Drs. Clint Peters, Todd Timberlake, and Mike Bailey to explore the intriguing world of Flat-Earth theories and their connections to religion and the Bible.

We first dive into the history of the spherical Earth and the astronomical evidence that has shaped our understanding of our planet's shape for centuries. We then delve into the fascinating story of Patrick Burke, a hardcore Flat-Earther from Denton, Texas, known for his passionate albeit peculiar defenses of a host of conspiracy theories.

Lastly, we discuss the power of acceptance and understanding in fostering meaningful dialogue between individuals with differing beliefs. We touch on the prevalence of conspiracy theories in our society and the importance of skepticism in the face of authority.

Don't miss this thought-provoking episode as we navigate the complex and intricate world of Flat-Earth theories, beliefs, and their impact on the individuals who hold them.

Clint Peter's essay that prompted this episode can be found here.

The views expressed on Church Potluck are solely those of the participants and do not represent any organization.

Transcript

Speaker 1: I feel like we've already had a podcast. We should have been recording this this whole time. We've got tics and alligators and acid vacations Is there?

Speaker 2: anything more. All the good stuff in life. Yeah, we've got everything.

Speaker 1: Well, welcome everyone to Church Potluck and welcome to the show where we are serving up a smorgasbord of Christian curiosity. I'm your host, Dale McConkie, sociology professor and United Methodist pastor, And you know there are two things to a good Church Potluck You need plenty of variety and engaging conversation, And this is exactly what we are trying to do here on Church Potluck sitting down with friends and sharing our ideas, instead of food, on a variety of topics, from a variety of academic disciplines and a variety of Christian traditions. Well, it is good to be talking with you out there in podcast land and I am eager to introduce you to our guest this episode. Let's go ahead and just get right into that. First off, you know them, you love them or at least you tolerate them.

Speaker 3: Michael Bailey, Hello greetings, glad to be here. I'm very excited about this topic, especially since I'm probably the only flat earth here at the table. So that'll be exciting. I'll see if I can hold my ground, not getting pushed off the edge.

Speaker 1: All right, i think you are fresh off a vacation, so you've got a little extra step, a little extra giddiness to you. I'm sassy right now, sassy, that's that. That is the word. I'll try to contain it. Anyway, it is good to have you here, dr Bailey, and we have a returning guest, and I know that you enjoyed him his first time around, so we're going to try to get him as often as possible. We have Dr Todd Timberlake. Dr Timberlake, reacquaint yourself with our audience.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm a professor of physics.

Speaker 1: You know what are you? The reed professor.

Speaker 2: I am the reed professor of physics, One of those fancy guys Right, yeah, oh, so much fancier than I was a year ago And I teach some courses on the history of astronomy, which is where my interest in flat earth theories comes in.

Speaker 1: I suppose It's not from your observations in the Pew Observatory.

Speaker 2: No, it's actually hard to tell from one spot that the earth isn't flat, and we can talk about that a little bit more. but yeah, So more more from my travels, and I'm just coming off of two vacations. so I don't know, You're doubly giddy, I'm doubly giddy, but I don't know that I can reach Mike's level of sassiness.

Speaker 1: All right, it was great to have you on the podcast. And last and certainly not least, we have our first timer. We have Clint Peters.

Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1: This is fun, clint tell us a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 4: Hey, so I am a no name assistant professor of. English creative writing. Let's see here what I want to say. I have a couple of books out. I think there's a legiously tied or tangentially religious Pandora's Garden. And then what's the other one called? I love that. I forgot the name of my own book. It's great. It's because I didn't come up with the title. It's, i think it's called something found and lost. Oh, mountain madness. Found and lost in peaks of Japan and America. It's a fine title. I didn't come up with it.

Speaker 4: We'll have those cited for everyone in the thanks, oh, and the first one Pandora's Garden has a colon cockroach, cut soup cockroaches and other misfits of ecology, which is how I feel, right like I'm. I think we're all misfits, right. That's why we're in academia, true, that Great to be here. If I may say I think this was my idea. Right to do the flatter thing. It was your idea, yeah, and thank you. Good idea. Thank you, yeah, thanks for entertaining that.

Speaker 4: Yeah we're bringing these awesome guys on And why I'm interested in Flutter, how it ties to religion. I spent some time, basically an entire day, with this. I would call it like an ultra flat earth, or. his name is Patrick Burke I tell you what?

Speaker 1: let's leave that as a tease.

Speaker 4: You really leave that as a tease.

Speaker 1: We'll get there, Okay cool, but I also have one request for you on this podcast. I'm going to need you to come out of your introverted shell. Oh God, all right, oh my.

Speaker 4: God, I can't.

Speaker 1: We'll work on him. If any of you do not know who Clint Peters is is the biggest sarcastic statement when could make it? to say you're an extrovert is still putting it too mildly. I was voted most expressive in my high school.

Speaker 3: No surprise there, That's great to be on Exactly.

Speaker 1: Before we got actually into the material. I've got a couple of announcements, and the first announcement is this we haven't recorded for a couple of weeks And that is likely to be the pattern over the summer. I wanted everyone to know. I don't know if we're going to do it. I don't think we're going to do it every week. Let's put it that way. We might do a couple of series if something interesting comes up, but it's also possible that we'll go entirely dark for a summer. People have scattered and it's hard to have a potluck when there's not people around to be chatting with. So this is all to say that if we do go dark, please know that it doesn't mean that we have gone away, that we have really enjoyed doing church potluck these past several months And we are totally committed to doing that when we return in the fall. But so don't worry if you don't hear from us, but I did want you to know that we will be back. Also, i can't believe how many other quick announcements we have to do, because we have another country to announce What Columbia.

Speaker 1: We have a listener in Columbia now. Welcome Columbia, it is good to hear you. And we also have Mongolia. We have a listener in Mongolia And finally we have our first listener from Anybody Mexico, our neighbors to the south. Mexico Welcome Mexico. So three new countries, bringing our grand total up to 13 listeners in a variety of locations, all scattered across the world.

Speaker 3: It's incredible how all these sound like British marches. They sound nothing like the music I would associate, at least in my ignorant imagination, with these guys.

Speaker 1: And I think we turn them into military band where I'm getting the. This is where I can get free downloads without having to worry about any.

Speaker 3: These aren't all pieces that you're up and off right.

Speaker 4: I thought it was pretty cool. Oh, it's cool, i think you're talking about so cool Chat.

Speaker 1: GPT, could you play something that sounds like a Columbia National?

Speaker 2: That's something that sounds like Still no new listeners from other planets, though.

Speaker 1: No interterrestrial listeners that we know of. We have to wait for the listeners We don't have their anthems anyway.

Speaker 2: No, we did not know. they're anthems, but eventually.

Speaker 1: All right, let us get to the today's topic, flat Earth. Let me go ahead and just say that Flat Earth is not a religious dogma for the vast majority of Christians, and in fact I had difficulty finding someone to promote a truly religious perspective on Flat Earth in trying to prep for the show. Even the creationist were saying no, we believe in a spherical Earth. So I don't want people to think that when we were talking about Flat Earth, we're linking this with creationists or certainly even with traditional Christian dogma. But there are folks out there that seem sincere I thought this was maybe a fluke or a bit but seem sincere about their convictions that the Earth is indeed flat. So let's start off with the big picture, and so, todd, i guess, as an astrophysicist, that's about as big a picture you can get when we're talking about such subjects.

Speaker 2: Yeah, i mean, i think mostly what I would want to talk about is the history of, at least in the Western tradition of the idea that the Earth is spherical, and that is a history that it dates back at least to like second century BC and Aristotle, who put forth a variety of arguments based on a lot based on astronomical evidence, for why the Earth had to be spherical, and I can go into some of those in detail later on. But Aristotle also had physical arguments, based on his understanding of how physics works, that the Earth had to be spherical Like. Even if the evidence didn't show us like in the way his physics and cosmology worked, it was obvious that Earth needed to be spherical.

Speaker 1: What was it about the second century BC that these kinds of arguments or these kinds of positions were being made?

Speaker 2: Yeah, so that time is a flourishing of geometric thinking in ancient Greece and the application of geometric thinking to understanding the world And, in particular, understanding astronomy. And there was a lot of emphasis on the spherical shape as a way of understanding both the shape of the Earth and the shape of the heavens, And even constructing orbits for the kind of intricate motions of the planets relative to the stars. They use like collections of spheres that were attached to each other. So there was. It was very sphero-philic, I don't know, is that a word? They love? spheres Sounds kind of naughty. Yeah right, I'm freezing you for the balls, exactly.

Speaker 2: Where's the bleep button here? And pretty much from that time forward it was accepted that the Earth was spherical, right? So the Greek knowledge was passed on to the Romans, also on to Middle Eastern civilizations. Through the Middle Eastern civilizations it was passed into medieval Europe and basically educated people, which of course was a small fraction of the populace, but educated people knew that the Earth was spherical.

Speaker 2: The late Middle Ages, one of the most popular astronomical texts of the time was a book literally called The Sphere, The Sphere of Johannes, of Sacrobosco, And it was all about the spherical geometry of the surface of the Earth and the spherical geometry of the heavens, because they imagined the stars as being on this giant celestial sphere that surrounded the Earth And it was understood that the Earth was a sphere. They had very good estimates for the size of the spherical Earth. So Eritastanese in Alexandria, which is in Egypt, but he was ancient Greek in terms of his culture It actually determined a very accurate value for the circumference of the Earth. There was some dispute over that. Claudius Ptolemy, probably one of the greatest astronomers of antiquity, gave a somewhat lower value And actually Christopher Columbus apparently latched on to that lower value to convince that he could actually sail around the world and get to India, going the wrong way.

Speaker 1: That's one of the things that I learned in doing some background research is, I didn't realize that Columbus Day people basically knew it was a sphere that they weren't worried that he was going to Right each of the vast majority of the population was not worried that he was going to fall off the air.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a myth. It's pervaded for a long time that the general consensus was the Earth was flat and that Columbus, rather, was revolutionary in saying that oh no, it's actually spherical. Everyone again, everyone who was educated and had access to this ancient Greek learning and that whole tradition, knew that the Earth was spherical And really the controversy was over how big it was and how far was he going to have to sail off to the West before he would be able to come around to India. And of course he thought it was smaller and it turned out to be quite a bit larger and he was pretty lucky that there was happened to be another continent in the way, or they would have died at sea. But yeah, in the sort of academic tradition in the West, again since about second century BC, people have known for very strong reasons that the Earth was spherical.

Speaker 3: I think at some point later, perhaps deferring here to our host whether, todd, you'd be willing to explain, very briefly at least, how our friend in Alexandria figured that out, because I remember seeing that I was like 13 years old watching Cosmos.

Speaker 2: It's actually fairly simple. You put two sticks in the ground along the same longitude lines, so directly north and south of each other, and you compare the length of their shadows And just from that, if you know the distance between the two sticks, and then by looking at, basically, the angle at which the sunlight hits the stick Assuming that the sun is far away Assuming that the sun is far away, that's true, but you can demonstrate that the sun has to be fairly far away Then just from that data, you can actually determine the circumference of the earth.

Speaker 1: So here's one thing I was wondering about that particular experiment. Yeah, how do they know that they're measuring at the same time, since they're so far away from the moon These days?

Speaker 2: you could just say it would be easy. Today These are synchronized clocks. So what Eratosthenes did was that he performed a.

Speaker 2: He had heard a story that in the town of Syene, which is now Aswan in Egypt, that on the summer solstice at noon the sunlight would reach the bottom of a deep well, which basically tells you the sun's directly overhead at that time, which means if you stuck a stick in the ground it's not going to make your shadow at all. And then he performed the measurement in Alexandria at the same time, right at noon on the summer solstice. And there the stick does cast a shadow and he could measure that right. And so that's how he did the comparisons, basically by he knew already what the value was going to be at a certain time at another location. And then he did the second measurement directly on his own and then he could do the comparison. And it turns out there were actually some slight errors, but they turned out to there were small errors and they turned out to basically cancel each other out, so that he ended up with a really what we think is a very accurate value.

Speaker 4: Wow, and that's pretty cool without a watch, right, that's awesome Yeah.

Speaker 1: All right, so we've done a good job for the last several minutes showing why the earth isn't flat, but this is about flat earthers, and so that's Michael.

Speaker 4: Bailey is unconvinced.

Speaker 3: No, not at all, when I look out, i don't see the around earth, i just see a flat horizon. Yeah, that seems. That's all I need to know.

Speaker 4: Oh Todd. I wanted to ask you one question, One thing I read somewhere I can't remember where was that the Greeks I think it was Aristotle mentioned like seeing the ship masts, like on the horizon first, right for the rest of the craft, Or as the ship sails away, the hole disappears first and you can still see the sails.

Speaker 2: So, yeah, that was another. That's maybe the most direct piece of evidence for the curvature of the earth. If it was a flat earth, then the ship should just get smaller and smaller and smaller on the horizon. But that's not in fact what we see. I think Mike makes a good point that you stay in one place, with the exception of the ships, right, and of course, there you need, like you need to be near water. Right, it's like you're in a landlocked location and you stay in one place. It's really hard to tell if the earth isn't flat, because it sure looks flat. Similarly, if you look around, you can see out to a certain distance. Right, you have a horizon, circle out to a certain distance, and if you never move from that location, it's not unreasonable to think that's the edge of the earth, right, that's where everything ends, but then you don't have to actually go very far to discover that oh, that's actually not where the earth is.

Speaker 2: Oh, and I've walked in that direction as far as I could see before and I still haven't come to the end and it still looks like it keeps going, as far as I can see, and in a similar way, by making you know it takes more care. but by making some astronomical measurements and moving around on the earth, you can tell that the earth must be spherical.

Speaker 1: The only thing I heard you say in that whole time was Mike makes a good point, That was a revolutionary point.

Speaker 2: Someone had to say it at some point.

Speaker 1: So, Clint, yeah, we just proved that the earth is flat. but you have spent some time with at least one guy who thinks otherwise and is pretty famous for thinking otherwise, or at least locally Locally famous, for sure.

Speaker 4: He's definitely part of the local color. I did want to mention one supposed flat earth or Mike Hughes, mad Mike Hughes. You know about this guy.

Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the rocket guy.

Speaker 4: Yes, this is the rocket guy I have heard. so he was an apparent flat earther who wanted to build his own rockets because he didn't trust NASA or any of the airlines. Yeah, the one thing about flat earth or ism is that you have to buy into this like giant global conspiracy, like bigger than most global conspiracies, and everyone's in on it. So he wanted to, in theory wanted to build his own rockets to go up see the earth. They did it once. He wasn't satisfied apparently.

Speaker 1: I think the first time he went up it was almost a test He went up about 1600 feet or something like that.

Speaker 4: You think that would be enough. But he built another one and famously blew himself up. Now I have heard I've read some like revisionist texts that say that actually he wasn't really a flat earther. He just wanted to crowdfund to build rockets, to basically ride a rocket. So whatever, but don't build your own rockets, would be the moral of that story Disclaimer and the broadcast.

Speaker 4: I do not try this at home, if you are really ill bent on trying to prove flat earth or ism. just don't build your own rockets. Yeah, just don't do that. But yeah, patrick Burke and I'm going to show you guys some photos. I know you on the podcast airwaves won't be able to see this, but if you just want to scroll down through there you can see some of his pictures. He is a very interesting man in Denton, texas. He is hardcore flat earth or ism, if you Google. Patrick Burke is B U R K E, denton, and I feel like, okay, giving his info, this information out, because he wants to be known like doesn't wear clothes either.

Speaker 3: That's interesting.

Speaker 4: No, I'm sorry, Yeah, scroll, if you want to scroll back. He drives this car around and you really kind of have to see it to believe it. It's a Toyota Scion that's been totaled out three times. Right, So that means he got into a wreck, it got totaled. He got the check fixed. His car got totaled again three times. He has to run his heater in the middle of summer so his car doesn't explode. I describe it as looking like a wrinkled up bag of potato chips, Like it is so dented and it is covered in bumper stickers like head to toe. Just things like scientifically comma, the earth is flat and the whatnot. Did you see the car?

Speaker 1: Yes, I did. Yeah, that's quite well in your article as well.

Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you. They're homemade bumper stickers, yes, and Google flat earthers and of course, he's got American flags and he has the earth with the art sign with art, which I like that one with earth with art is in red letters. His house is similarly decorated. He's got signs all over the place. He actually got in trouble with the law for zoning rights because he was putting things up that he was not zoned for and he tried to defend himself in court and that did not go well, and so he got fined and he had to redecorate and he had multiple troubles with the law. I like this guy, but so I talked to him before COVID and then, once COVID happened, he of course jumped on the conspiracy theory bandwagon and he was painting things like COVID hoax around pharmacies.

Speaker 1: Which is pretty common, I would say, in the flat earther community.

Speaker 4: They're very much connected to other 100%. It's almost like Burke didn't meet a conspiracy theory. It was everything. It was like dinosaurs weren't real. He thought you could eat uranium. That would be fine, you can eat it.

Speaker 2: Yes, you can. Yeah, but you wouldn't be fine. Yeah, like I asked him, I'm like, so you could just eat it like Cheerios and it would be fine.

Speaker 4: Yeah, you could eat it like Cheerios. I'm like uh-huh. okay, he thinks three families control the world's finances NASA's, of course. and on the conspiracy theory, hiroshima was not bombed but dynamited. I don't know why that matters, but it does for him. The Hubble telescope, of course, isn't real and the levees in New Orleans were busted by the government, right. So he believes everything almost. And of course, covid wasn't real. Of course the election was stolen, all of this stuff, yeah.

Speaker 1: And the question that comes up. I heard you mentioned a documentary that I listened to as well, called Beyond the Curve. Yeah, They keep asking why are these conspiracies? What is the purpose, especially about behind the flatter? What's the payoff? And I never heard. Did he ever give you any sense of why this is important for the government to cover?

Speaker 4: Oh, the reasoning. It's all part of it.

Speaker 3: How did you meet this?

Speaker 4: guy. So he was just on local newspapers fairly consistently and I just thought he was fascinating. By the way, let me say I'm not a flat earth, or just in case that's not clear, but I just I think, and I didn't know why at the time, and as a writer I've learned to just trust my obsessions, and so I kept being interested in this guy for years, while so I was doing my PhD at Denton, and I've learned to just trust my obsessions, and what I later figured out was is I recognized myself when I was much younger, and so this is where my history comes in. There was a while there where I was studying to become a missionary in the Church of Jesus Christ, right. So I was going to go convert the Africans, right, that's what I thought in very like a racist way, right. Africa was just like this monolithic continent, like it is for a lot of white people, and it was for me too, and I was just very zealous and I would like just confront people at coffee shops. I would just way lay them. I would pick up hitchhikers as a way to convert them, because I had a trapped audience, right, which is better than you know. I'm sure they still got. It was safer than a lot of hitchhiking situations.

Speaker 4: If you want to read an essay about my hitchhiking picking up experiences called rides with strangers I'll give a little tease. It's in my second book, the one I can't remember, mountain madness. I picked up a guy who was holding the knife and I'll just leave it at that. But I realized that, oh my god, i had actually had maybe not this like level of zealousness, but almost a kind of similar conviction that I ended up figuring out I think was actually underpinned by doubt, and so I believe I've come to believe that actually Burke has a lot of doubt, but he has committed himself so hard to this that he can't let himself like examine that or look at it or face it head on. So I think he just piles up these conspiracy theories and gets obsessed with as a way to escape, i think, his fundamental doubt. And that was what it was for me And I actually had a lot of sympathy for the guy.

Speaker 4: He's a very lonely man. That's another like piece of the puzzle. It's hard to make friends when you're that zealous about something that honestly, is ridiculous for most people. And imagine being a girlfriend to this guy, right, and that's all he wants to do is talk about flattery, throw some and show YouTube videos. Also, it's hard for him to get a job. He's a construction contractor And he told me it's like sometimes he would get fired from jobs because he'd roll up in his car at someone's house to repair the roof And they're like no, we don't want our neighbors seeing your car in front of our house, bro. So he just seemed like a very lonely guy.

Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point.

Speaker 1: Let me give a kind of a contra to that And that again in the documentary Beyond the Curve. Especially because of the availability of the internet, now Flat Earthers were able to find one another and actually cross the world and create a community And a lot of people, it seems, were feeling connection in ways that they weren't, because of being alone and isolated with some of these conspiracy theories. But now through the internet we're able to create community and actually had physical conferences where people came together and I know.

Speaker 4: So I listed a couple in this article. There was actually one in Dallas, like right after I wrote this if it had happened before I would have gone to it But there was one in Auckland. There was one in Denver. There were some high profile famous people the rapper BoB, kylie Irving, who I think has recant Kyrie, has Kyrie, yeah, and if you guys remember, for a while there it was a joke, but Shaquille O'Neal tweeted something where he was like maybe the earth is flat, but it was a joke.

Speaker 3: But oh my God, the media went nuts, you think he's tall enough to know? I know, and he was just so he was so befuddled.

Speaker 4: He was like how can you think I'm serious? And so he didn't know how to respond to that, because the whole world, the whole world, was crazy. So the thing about Burke, though, is he actually doesn't like the Flat Earth community for the most part, and one thing that's I found very interesting getting into this is that there are, like any sort of group, there's always like differences of opinions, right?

Speaker 4: So, I find Burke's particular brand of flat earth there is a actually rather beautiful right. So in his particular blunt brand of flat earth there is a ridiculous that is. It is. I find it poetic. So he believes that the earth is flat. Obviously around us, the known world, there is a like giant wall of ice, like Game of Thrones style, right In casey-ness, right. But if we were able to get beyond the wall of ice and kept going, there would actually be a spot where the earth met the sky And that you could go there and see that spot, which I just find really gorgeous.

Speaker 2: Oh my God. And so the sky is like a solid object. Yes, it's a solid, dome-like object, almost like the ancient Greek celestial sphere.

Speaker 4: Yeah, and you could see that. And he said that's where God lived. He was at that spot of the nexus of earth and sky, okay, which I just think is gorgeous. I just I'm like, wow, that's so cool. I don't know, michael, you're gonna be funny.

Speaker 3: No, i was just thinking about. I don't want to misinterpret it, but it seems to me that there is in the book of Genesis, chapter one, there's a description of the vault, and so there's. you can sense that the earth is flat. There's this vault in that the heavens are up above And heaven is in this very concrete place there as well. That's what it reminds me of.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I do open up my essay with the Bible quote, which I know is corny, but I couldn't help myself. The quote is it is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, Isaiah 40-22. I just thought that was funny.

Speaker 1: Yes, and there's a mention in Revelation is about the four corners of the earth. That's true. Yeah, i find that kind of curious that a lot of Flat Earthers not a lot will use that verse. But it talks about corners and Flat Earthers usually say we're on a disk, so there are they usually say it's on a disk, you're right. Yeah, and not corners, although there's a cube theory as well, as I gather, but that's not Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah, i mean there are a number of kind of passages in the Bible that can be interpreted to imply a Flat Earth, but they do take some interpretation right. And the four corners or the. There's places where the Bible speaks of the ends of the earth. Yes, satan shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth laid out before him when he's tempting him. But in all of those passages I think you can get the sense that it's really just it's evoking an image of seeing this tremendous expanse. It's talking about stuff really far away, but it's not really implying a specific geometry, it's evocative language.

Speaker 1: Even people who are creationists believe the earth is 6,000 years old and God created it in six days and then rested on the seventh. Even the vast majority of people who hold that position, that kind of language in the Bible is idiomatic. It's meant to be.

Speaker 2: Yeah Yeah. I found a website from Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis that detailed all of these, all the reasons why Flat Earth is incorrect, and went through a bunch of different Bible passages and suggesting no, it's not really saying that the earth is flat. And in similar ways, in the history of astronomy, there were a variety of passages that were used to suggest that the heavens were not spherical as the ancient Greeks thought. There's a passage that talks about the heavens being laid out like a tent above the earth, But again, it's really just evocative language, And there's plenty of passages that very clearly imply that the earth is stationary, which is actually. There's a lot stronger reasons to believe that the earth is stationary. It's not.

Speaker 1: It orbits around the side and it rotates. But Michael makes a good point.

Speaker 2: You really have to work hard. I mean, it really took 2,000 years of hard work for people to figure out that the earth actually moves, because that's a really hard one. Like the earth being a sphere is a much easier nut to crack. But again, these arguments historically I know, at least since St Augustine, there's been this idea that, okay, the Bible is written, it is speaking to an audience and it is speaking in a way that that audience can understand and it's evoking imagery. It's not attempting to be a science textbook.

Speaker 2: Augustine explicitly talks about some of these passages that imply a flat earth or that the heavens are not spherical. He of course believes that the earth is stationary and at the center of the universe at that time, but he understands that he accepts the ancient Greek idea that the earth is spherical. And he's basically saying look, you really have to interpret these passages as just being evoking these images and, frankly, in Augustine's point of view, he's don't connect this idea of flat earth to Christianity, because all the pagans are gonna make fun of us if you do that, and it's gonna. They're gonna ridicule Christianity and we're not gonna be able to get converts, we're not gonna be able to grow the church.

Speaker 3: It suggests that how you argue for something and whether you believe it or not, or whether you think this should be interpreted in this way or that, depends upon the world you live entirely. So how do you situate any of those pieces in a broader world? and it makes me wonder whether Burke represents perhaps the idea that our world is dissolving a little. We don't have shared meaning in the same way and, as a result, you can't you can't really trust authority. So we're talking about he believes a lot of things and he doubts You can't have either without the other. In a sense, for you to reject authority is what opens up, i think, the idea for him to accept all these conspiracy theories. It does seem like there have been folks who suggested that conspiracy theories have in general, changed over the most recent decades and once upon a time you'd have something where you have a specific event that you want to explain, whether it's the World Trade Center or JFK or the moon, and you tried to bring as much information to bear on that, to explain in a different way, to discredit a particular authoritative narrative. It sounds like it's part of that is the case, but the Newcombe conspiracy theory is a lot more like the bumper stickers on his car. It's a pure, sheer repetition.

Speaker 3: The problem with debunking them in a sense is the fact that very few of us are like Todd. We really. We all know that the world is round. We all know that it moves through the heavens, until anyone asks us how we know. And they probably are familiar with the most basic kinds of explanations that we can advance.

Speaker 3: So if you take evolution for granted but I remember my daughters who did also when they were younger, they still do, but they'd have friends and other people they would know who did not believe in evolution and I said, you are imperil in a sense, in an argument of standpoint. If you try to engage them, this is a really important part of their identity. They've thought about it. They have so many questions you will not be able to address You. In contrast, take this because you believe in the authority of science and it's just as much a kind of article of faith. I'm not saying it's an equal standing from a standpoint of epistemology, but I think you need a world to make sense of any of it and I think I really do getting dramatic, i think our world is dissolving right before us A couple of responses.

Speaker 4: Yeah, that's great, michael. So in the essay, talk about how, apart from wanting to be a missionary, i was also a creationist, which is like very embarrassing to say as an academic, but I actually will tell, as I currently teach Shrederkin writing and I tell my students this right that I used to be a creationist, and then like how that changed. And it wasn't an overnight thing, it certainly wasn't one conversation. I was lucky that I was, i don't know, narcissistic or just overconfident, which I think it Burke is too right. There's definitely a level of narcissism in that. Google is wrong, nasa is wrong, all of these institutions, every college across the world is. But I'm right, that takes a certain level of narcissism, i think, and insecurity, which is always, i think, the flip side of the coin of narcissism.

Speaker 4: So, as a creationist, the way I would challenge people about evolution and I took an evolution class on purpose to convert the professor, who was a guy I liked because I'd taken him with another class. He was a great bit in your essay. Yeah, he was so out. His name was Ronald Ranger. If you're out there, dr Ranger, thank you, you're a cool guy and he's just so affable. He was like very professorial and he had the beard, the glasses he would chuckle in class, very laid-back, like sort of Santa-ish, and he was just a very and he just put up with me, probably because this wasn't his first radio. I'm sure we were at Texas Tech, lubbock, texas, pretty conservative spot. I'm sure he had many creationist in his classrooms and he just learned to just deal with it and it what I never challenged him Like he never felt challenged by me and he accepted me and there was something about that acceptance that just really converted me. Acceptance. But also he never gave in like he would say, put this and this.

Speaker 4: So it was his acceptance, his obvious command of the material which, i think you're right, is hard, unless that's like what you do, since it is what he did and also I was a good student so I did the reading and eventually I was like, oh my god, i and I literally yeah oh my god, there was one part, when I just realized that I wasn't listening, that I had this block that I didn't want to consider, and it was like foundationally, like jarring, because, like you said, michael, it was a huge part of my personality and how much was it his personality, as opposed to the arguments, that helped it make it safe for you to Michael?

Speaker 4: or sorry, patrick Burke. So I agree with what you're saying is it's really hard to engage with people like this and, honestly, i just didn't engage him because I knew that what was gonna happen When he was talking to me it felt like watching a kid at a taekwondo belt test just go through his moves, like it was just like this thing that he had probably performed in his brain a million, like a hundred times and just perfected it in his just all his flat earth arguments yeah like it was.

Speaker 4: He wasn't talking to me, he was just talking the way a kid if you've ever seen like a belt test just kind of does his movements, and at the right forms. Yeah, it's a performance, and that just was like oh my god, it's just like. This is just a thing that he does and doesn't matter that it's me For your former professor, though Oh sorry, for Ronald Ranger, a little bit of a plan in a dissipancy, that it could be that perhaps creationism is the whole story.

Speaker 3: To what extent was it his personality? Oh, engaging yeah and I wonder to what extent.

Speaker 4: Yeah. So he's ethos and that's why I bring it up in my rhetoric class is his ethos was probably the biggest thing. He never combated me. He never again. He never felt threatened and the way you feel sometimes when I get defensive, i think other people perceive that as like aggression, but he just was very oh yeah, go for it, clint. I did this presentation. That was basically a creationist argument. He's like go for it. And then he would like picket things. He's like Clint, i don't know about that. I don't know about that and I would get defensive standing up there in front of the whole class and just get flustered. But the way he said it, he gave a shit. He wasn't just like this stupid creationist kid. No, i know this kid because he's probably seen hundreds of me and I think I maybe can help him. And the way we've talked we talked about this off air, i think right.

Speaker 1: I was about to go there as well.

Speaker 4: You want to say something about that.

Speaker 1: Yeah, i was going to say that off air. We were talking about how sometimes the science proselytites are very atheistic, can be very dogmatic in their approach to arguing against religion, and here you have someone who was very non-dogmatic in his approach. That actually won you over, and I think that's a lesson, by the way, for Christians in the other direction too.

Speaker 3: It plays into discussion of party polarization and how people are not persuaded by facts, by information. I'm not saying scientists aren't, but within, when you're talking about values, and I essentially think that probably a lot of the flatterers are not really trying to solve real problems. I think what they're trying to do is much more communitarian and maybe not Burke, but a lot of them are involved with a kind of identity, and the reason most people have their religion or their political ideology is because of a certain group of people, and so the evidence suggests that the most effective kind of persuasion is not a tsunami of data and information that refutes everything, even if it's true, accurate, overwhelming, that it does it. There's people backpedal and they double down right, but it's really people who are gentle, thoughtful, who you can almost build another kind of identity with her friendship, with relationship, but that is what finally allows people the grace to adopt a different.

Speaker 1: A quick side note on that. There's overwhelming evidence that people are part of a church not for the dogma but for the relationships that they form with within that community.

Speaker 2: So I guess one thing I'd like to follow on the Mike's comment is do you think that it is purely the personality and the relationship that converts someone from one view to another, or is it that the personality and the relationship opens someone up to actually then considering the arguments and that the I guess I would like to believe that the arguments at least play some role, for sure.

Speaker 4: I absolutely agree.

Speaker 2: I agree that the dogmatic tsunami of fact is not the way to go. It's the dialogue right? that's what is that's essential in having these kinds of discussions is that you not only do you need to talk, but you need to listen, and it sounds like that's exactly what your professor was doing.

Speaker 3: But there is a difference really between the sciences, the hard sciences, where there is falsifiability, and I think really in the realm. There's some things in the world politics that you can prove and disprove, but a lot of it, you know, values and ethics are not falsifiable in the same way and a lot of it really is who your team is, who your tribe is. And I thought was interesting about Burke is he doesn't seem to be so associated with that tribe but he does seem in his own way to be lost from the overall world and I don't mean that as a criticism, there's reasons to be lost from the world.

Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, solving, i think.

Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, and I don't want to represent him in that wrong way. it's possible that he had a tribe online, but he just the way he talked about the Flat Earth community just made me think that he was at odds with most of it.

Speaker 1: And, as you, mentioned already and as the documentary we've mentioned a few times before showed, that there are definitely factions in division, or if there were people who boycotted the very original Flat Earth convention because of disagreements. Yeah, for sure By the way we've mentioned enough times, but it's called Beyond the Curve and it's fairly recently came out. The two key founders of this convention were accused by yet a third leader of the movement as being government operatives.

Speaker 2: They were brought into the conspiracy. So I'm interested in this idea that Flat that the round earth is a government conspiracy. I know Because which government. this really goes back to second century. So which government are?

Speaker 4: we talking about here. So no, it's a giant conspiracy. It's all of the governments.

Speaker 2: It's kind of different than all of the places.

Speaker 1: The one world.

Speaker 4: Oh it's the Illuminati, it's. Burke thinks that. Yeah, i mean it's. I didn't put this in the essay, but I'll just wait in here. At one point he's the Jews And I'm like, oh boy. So I just I didn't want the and the reason I left that out of the essay is I didn't want the reader to just hate him.

Speaker 4: I had sympathy for him, even though that's a very reprehensible belief that, like these Jews control the world, and why they want to keep us from God. I wasn't very clear on, i guess because if we found God beyond the ice wall, like they would lose their power, i think was the idea. But yeah, basically all the world, all of the world, governments, like, even Mongolia, like Japan, all of China, russia, even though we're at war right now, somehow they're all controlled by George Santos and like some other folks. Yeah, so that's why this, the conspiracy is just gigantic. And obviously SpaceX, google, at&t, like all of these mega corporations, they're also controlled by the same people. So so it's a giant giant. It's like one of the biggest conspiracies I can think of. Yeah.

Speaker 1: But that was helpful to me what you just said there, because there was a religious underpinning even because so often my sense of Flat Earthers is it's not terribly religiously driven, that they're very experimental, they're very scientific and it is just this distrust of the information that we are receiving from the government Yeah, and from Newferberg, it was faith for sure, and he considered himself a Christian and for him it was about getting closer to God and that these people were keeping us. This was a whole way to mask us from God.

Speaker 4: Yeah, That's my understanding.

Speaker 2: If he wants to In this case, getting closer to God involves a boat and some like of those nice pictures And, i guess, ice climbing Yeah.

Speaker 4: Yeah, ice climbing, yeah. By the way, patrick, if you're listening, if I'm misrepresenting you, i apologize, but Very sweet thing to say.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, i'm gonna Go ahead.

Speaker 2: I was just gonna say, like, the distrust of authority. I can respect that, yeah, i. There are plenty of authorities that I distrust as well, and it seems like the response to that is, okay, what the quote is always do your own research. But it, my sense is, the research that is done, if there is any, is like finding the other flat earth communities online and seeing what they say Yeah, yeah, i'm interested. Like you mentioned that there was this conference in Auckland I'm assuming that's New Zealand, right, and Denver, yeah, The stars that you can see from Auckland, yeah, are totally different from the stars that you can see in Denver. Yep, how do you explain that? I mean, like, was that? that seems like a there's no authority, unless they believe that we're living in a simulation that is also controlled by the same three families, But actually explain that.

Speaker 3: I don't know how I would explain it, but probably if we thought about it for two minutes, we could come up with an explanation which would suggest how easy it is to rationalize our beliefs. We believe in all sorts of nonsense and we can. We're so incredibly nimble, ridiculously nimble at coming up with explanations that may not satisfy you, but satisfy ourselves, Once we've heard that challenge.

Speaker 1: This is one of the things I love talking about in my sociology classes, especially my symbolic, interactionist micro sociology how we all have what's referred to as incorrigible positions, These foundational beliefs that, no matter what evidence we experience, will not be falsified. So I believe in a God who answers prayer. I pray, I don't get the answer I want. I have an explanation for why God did not answer that prayer. I will have an explanation. if my foundational belief is a personal response of God exists when God doesn't respond to something, I will still have some type of explanation for what we all are at times is dumbfounded and just don't budge a bit.

Speaker 3: And that's not the worst thing as a, I think, as a temporary measure. I think if it carries on despite ongoing investigation, your own thought, your own critique and all evidence suggests elsewhere, then at some point it just seems to be a just pure willfulness rather than actually a real belief.

Speaker 1: That's why I'm going to invite this guy back on pointing to Clint here to talk about your childhood experiences. If you're willing to, yeah, sure, and just the willingness to shift your belief from being a missionary to now being a writer, and just the religious angles to that.

Speaker 3: Can we have just one little glimmer of that right now? I just was curious how, if you're willing to talk about it, how you present to the students your own pen, how they respond to it, whether some feel affirmed, and I assume that you're trying to establish a sense of empathy, is that?

Speaker 4: Yeah, so pedagogically, i have a couple of strategies with that particular one. The first one is I actually asked them as a class to write as a classroom, like writing exercises. Sometimes they assign it as homework, like one time that someone convinced you to change your mind about something that was significant to you So not like someone convinced you to try the new gordita salad at Taco Bell, but something that was influential, like maybe we're going to go to college or something about a family member and I don't make them share. But I start off with I used to be a creationist. And then I tell them as much detail as I remember in the moment about this professor and how much his ethos was a part of it. That, for me, was the biggest piece of the puzzle and for people not to forget that. And then I also mentioned the things we've been talking about how there's enormous data that shows, if you do the tsunami at people, that they actually are more likely to entrench themselves in their previous beliefs. Double down, they're more likely to, much more likely to double down. And also, command of material which is hard, like that just takes work and time. So that's why you have to pick your arguments, and I think students are generally surprised.

Speaker 4: I'm conscious that I probably have at least one creationist student at any given time, maybe more, and for them to hear that, i think, is a challenge, but maybe that's a good challenge. I'm also presenting it not as an attack, but just as. Here's how I changed. And then I talk about conversion narratives, which are very common in rhetoric. Right, i used to believe this, but now I believe this. It's a very sort of common way, because as you're walking the reader or the listener through that narrative, you're saying I and that's like a nice little cognitive trick, because the listener, the reader, is reading, hearing, so they're going along the journey with you and ending up at your destination, right.

Speaker 4: Now maybe they don't follow you the whole way, or maybe they leave that destination, but it is. It's basically storytelling. right, i think storytelling is a powerful tool.

Speaker 4: Yeah, so I talk about as a writer, i think you might believe that right, yeah, so I talk about all of that because I think all of that is important And I think students are generally surprised but also just like I feel, i think, gratified, because we can all be wrong And I think all of us are One of the we keep talking about behind the curve, right, but one of the psychologists when you're getting into the psychology of flattery, there is him He's. If I talk to any person and I asked them probably 12 questions I could probably find that they believe something pretty wacky, right, like anybody, and I think that's true, right.

Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting that a lot of what you said resonates with the reasons that I like to use history to teach science. So I don't get the eye effect there, because I'm talking about things that other people did, but by providing that narrative and that storytelling element. And then also, like I, start a lot of my classes with a view of the sort of ancient view or medieval view of the earth that will resonate with someone who is a young earth creationist or has these other. They'll see themselves.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And I we talk about why those beliefs were held right That it wasn't just an arbitrary thing.

Speaker 2: They had reasons for believing those things. Michael makes a good point, unless certain of that, with the flatter stuff, other than, again, like Mike says it does, it looks flat, he does make a good point. And then we kind of work through the historical arguments and so they can be like, okay, yeah, this was a legitimate view. When I've had conversations about evolution, students are like, oh, evolution is this controversial idea? I'm like, yes, in the 1860s it was a very controversial idea. Or Wednesday, it is not anymore among the scientific community, but it really was for a time. And by presenting that and then showing how those controversies were worked through and ultimately resolved to the satisfaction of many people, i think that draws the students in a way that's just totally different from again the tsunami of facts.

Speaker 1: And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why he has a read in front of his professor. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 4: No, and actually I'm glad you mentioned so my guy, Ron Ranger. Same deal, He loved the history And you're right, It worked because another thing that was I was identifying with it. And as I was identifying with it, I then came to that point where I had to change or stop identifying And it was. I'm going to be honest, it was scary because, oh my God, I've been with this the whole way The history, the narrative And then I was going and I'm like, oh my God, And it was like foundations were crumbling And but I agree, It's a really good way to teach.

Speaker 1: Todd, when I first got here 30 years ago, i would say that there was a relatively. There was a notable number of students, let's put it that way that were creationists. We're very doubtful of many of the scientific. Just what percentage like roughly? I want to say five-ish, maybe Five percent And maybe three to five that were vocal And they're probably more. But it was there, yeah, and it was present in ways that I don't hear it or see it Anymore. I'm just curious in your classes do you have vocal students anymore?

Speaker 2: So yeah, i would say my experience is similar to yours. My first several years of teaching I definitely had students particularly question the timeline. The earth is six to 10,000 years old, as opposed to four and a half billion and a few. who are vocal about it? I would say in the last 10 years I can't think of any student who is really vocal about it. Interesting.

Speaker 1: Do you think that's a national thing or a berry thing?

Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know. It may be a national thing. It may also be a factor of the way that I teach, because the classes where I had the students who were most vocal about it were classes that where I did not take this historical approach was more just here's what we understand about how the universe is, and so maybe I short circuit some of that vocalness, hopefully not in a bad way.

Speaker 2: I don't want to short circuit something that the students are going to grow and learn from. You don't want to have Clint Peters moments with your students.

Speaker 1: Yeah, he was converted, if that's the word, to a proper understanding.

Speaker 2: I want students to gain a deeper understanding of why they believe what they believe And then, if they then, as a result of that, change their beliefs to something closer to what I believe, okay great. But basically my goal is I want them to understand why they believe what they believe. I want them to understand why the scientific community believes what it claims, and maybe that this historical approach eases students into that in a way that they don't feel a need to be vocal and took challenge some of these ideas, because I'm acknowledging that at least at one time this view you hold was the standard, but I don't know, i definitely have seen less of that in recent years.

Speaker 3: Interesting, i suspect, as part of a broader set of arguments that students are just hesitant to bring forward nowadays. So I think, because of what we call it, maybe the culture of cancellation, whether real or not, is perceived as real and students are just not nearly as eager or willing, i think, to come forward with anything they perceive might be ridiculed or refuted by others. Students are much more quiet than they used to be.

Speaker 1: This is so interesting that we are in a much more divisive place.

Speaker 3: So we, at least in the media, in the news we are seeing, You would never know for my classes that you had that kind of division until you get some sort of prompt and I'll find out in the writing. So I had a student this year of a graduate who talked about she did not believe in evolution. She rejected it. It was the last prompt of the year and I had no fault. I did ask what do you mean by this? And I didn't mean by that question. I wasn't saying how could you not believe it, I just literally didn't know what she meant by saying she didn't believe in evolution. But it surprised me because students aren't willing to say that in class but they're not willing to make really any controversial claims in class in the same way Interesting.

Speaker 1: Interesting.

Speaker 2: Yeah, i do see a little more in writing, i think, than I do than I see in class discussions. Although I can't think of like young earth, creationist claims Definitely anti-evolutionary claims, but not claims about timeline. They seem, as far as I can tell, pretty content with a 14 billion year old universe. Did you ever run into a flat earther? I have never experienced that.

Speaker 3: Is it 14? I thought it was 12.78. Is it?

Speaker 1: 13.7? Rounding errors.

Speaker 2: Man rounding errors 13.8. 13.8. I thought it was 12.7., so it could just be off by a billion years.

Speaker 3: You know how.

Speaker 2: I do What's a billion?

Speaker 3: years here there.

Speaker 1: Was there anything we haven't mentioned that needs mentioning? Clint, you look like you're… A couple of things. Clint's over here typing while we're doing the podcast. I think he's got his next book ready. No, I'm just tweeting.

Speaker 4: I'm not tweeting, I just quickly gallop. This is 2019. 40% of Americans are creationists, but that I don't know. 40%.

Speaker 2: But I guess, but what does that mean? I? think a lot of my students would identify as creationists, but they're comfortable with a 4.5 billion year old earth.

Speaker 4: I think there's some squishiness, I mean at some level.

Speaker 1: I would call myself a creationist in the sense that I believe that God is the creator I say it every Sunday creator of heaven and earth, but I believe 100% in evolution.

Speaker 4: And I think, yeah, i think a lot of people, i'm assuming, conflate creationists with just a belief. So, yeah, that's probably not as dire as that sounds. Another thing I kind of want to mention, just to go back to the resistance of authority. I, like Todd, i'm very sympathetic. Right, if you're skeptical of authority, I think we should be.

Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that back. I wanted to circle back to it because I didn't think that was a great point, todd, and it's natural to develop a distrust for authority.

Speaker 4: I'm not saying you should stay there, but I think a healthy skepticism is actually healthy People who have been abused historically by authority figures are 100%.

Speaker 3: They have been easy subjects for that exploitation and abuse, and I think about the syphilis experiments, where people were given placebos and allowed to see, to track out how that disease proceeded, all throughout the South. It really has happened, and so it's understandable why people would be so very angry at the police or any other group that systematically terrorized them. Really, yeah 100%.

Speaker 1: So the lesson is yes, be skeptical, but maybe not build your entire worldview around your skepticism. without your own evidence, I'm not sure what the lesson is.

Speaker 4: I'm just expressing sympathy. I think for me, the natural thing to do is to just dismiss people who have conspiracy theorists to bother them using the language of English and scholarly work Like I bother them, but actually I get it. I get it, And it's one of those things that I always think about. If I were in Perk's position, would I have the tools needed to change my mind? And the answer is I don't know. I know that in my life I did change my mind And it was helped, and so maybe just Burke didn't have that opportunity. He didn't have a Ron Rager or Todd Timberlake or Michael Bailey or Dale McConnacky.

Speaker 1: At the heart of my version of sociology is what Max Weber referred to as their stain, which was an empathetic understanding of the group that you're studying and understanding the world from their perspective, and so your sympathy for Mr Burke is fits in with that. I want to have an episode soon about snake handling churches. Oh yeah, and I don't believe their understanding of that. You should be picking up serpents and drinking poison. But I try very hard to understand from their perspective, and when you look at it from their perspective, it starts to make sense. I very much enjoy looking at cultures that are different from mine and trying to make sense of them from their vantage point.

Speaker 4: Did you read that book, salvation in the Sand Mountain by Dennis Covington? Yeah, it's awesome, isn't?

Speaker 3: that a great book.

Speaker 4: He was one of my writing teachers at Texas Tech. That man is baddie. Another conversation for us later.

Speaker 1: All right, so do we have anything else that needs? to be said before we wrap up here Nope, nope, healthy skepticism, don't tsunami fact people.

Speaker 2: Yeah And maybe like. ultimately, this belief in Flat Earth is not necessarily about science. It's something that's more personal.

Speaker 1: I think that's a good point. So thank you, michael Bailey, todd Timberlake, clint Peters. Thank you so much for coming on, man. It was a very fun conversation and super fun. I think it has maybe prompted some ideas for some more as well. So, hey, i want to thank all of you out there enlisting the land for being part of the podcast, sitting around the table with us and listening. I hope we gave you some food for thought, gave you something to chew on. I'm not sure when the next one will be, but until the next time, thank you very much. This has been Church Pop Look.