I often find myself wondering how people can live in the 21st century, using computers and smart phones, benefiting from modern medicine and transportation, seeing the very fruits of scientific discovery in their daily lives EVERY.  SINGLE.  DAY.  while continuing to deny science and reason.

I once had an infuriating conversation with somebody who believed in the flat earth.  When I asked him if he ever used the GPS on his phone he said that or course he did.  When I explained that the very existence of GPS demonstrated that the world was not flat he proceeded to give his imaginary explanation for how the GPS system “really” worked using cell towers, not satellites.  When I explained to him that a) I am an engineer and I know first hand it doesn’t work that way, b) GPS works even when you are nowhere near a cell tower, and c) the GPS system predates the cell towers in the first place he was completely unmoved.   He had seen a video on YouTube and that was all the evidence he required.  Speaking to a person he knew who had first hand knowledge of the topic was not as convincing as his “research”.

I asked him why, if the earth was flat, was I able to see the curve of the earth from the airplane I had been in the week before.  Apparently all airplane windows are designed in such a way that they distort your view to give you the illusion of a curved horizon, no matter what altitude or angle you are looking at.  This apparently includes the flat, front-facing windows that the pilots see out of as well.  It’s all a part of the conspiracy to keep the truth hidden.  NASA is responsible.

OK, but NASA is only in the USA.  What about all the other countries with space programs and airlines?  Why has no rogue nation ever told the truth about the fake GPS system and the flat horizon line?  Well, that just proves NASA is part of a global conspiracy, not a local one.

It went on like this.

For hours.

I demonstrated that I had satellite internet, showed him the line of sight to the satellite I was using, demonstrated the data latency times to show that the information had to travel a great distance from my home to the satellite, unlike the cell tower, explained how that signal travel time could be used to measure distance between a radio and a satellite and how triangulation worked, how if you could know your distance from three satellite signals, you could determine your position in three-dimensional space.

This got me nowhere.

I showed him photos I had personally taken of Jupiter and it’s moons that proved that they existed, they were round, and they were visible to the naked eye.  I demonstrated that the only way they would ALWAYS be round is if they were a sphere, because if they were discs, any change in their angle to our planet would change their visible shape.  I pointed out that nobody has ever observed any planetary body showing as anything other than a sphere so there was no reason to believe our planet should be any different.

None of this mattered.  Not even a little.

I showed him, using a lightbulb and a plate, how the flat earth model he believed in would mean that the sun would either ALWAYS be visible in the sky OR would set in the south and rise in the north.  He didn’t deny that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, nor did he deny that the sun is only visible to half the planet at any given time, but he still clung to his belief even though it was clearly impossible for those facts to work in his model.

Many times in this conversation I said “I really don’t care what you believe and it’s not my job to change your mind, can we please talk about something else?” but he insisted that I needed to see the truth of his belief or else I would be falling for the Great Lie of the round earth and wouldn’t be able to accept the Bible and be saved and then he would proceed to trot out some other easily debunked “evidence”.

There was no escaping the topic, no possible way to change his mind, and no way for him to see that he was essentially eating an apple while denying the existence of apple trees every time he punched an address into Google Maps.

If he wasn’t an uncle I hadn’t seen in years I would have just given up on civil conversation and mocked him relentlessly until he at least agreed to talk about something, anything, else.  Or I would have shaken my head and walked away.  I did neither.  It was excruciating.

I’ve replayed this incident many times, trying very hard to imagine how his brain allowed him to hold onto such a patently, provably, demonstrably, false idea even as he was having it demonstrated to him.  It was really something and has really taxed my imagination and empathy, while simultaneously giving me a valuable insight into reality-denialism in all it’s forms.  What is it like to be drowning while denying the existence of water?  How do people wind up like this?  Are they born this way?  Conditioned by religion?  What is it?

I still can’t explain it to my satisfaction.  When I was a religious believer, I believed because I was presented with cherry-picked and distorted evidence that gave me the illusion that my belief system was grounded in observable reality.  Eventually, I gained enough knowledge about reality to accept that my beliefs were fantasies and I stopped holding those beliefs.  I was amenable to reason as a believer and also as an unbeliever, once I had enough facts.  But there are people who are not just unreasonable, but who work like mad to simultaneously convince themselves that they are, in fact, reasonable rather than just accepting that reason has nothing to do with it.  They simply like the idea that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, and that’s that.

I can respect the “blind faith” people about 3% more than the “here are my carefully selected ‘reasons'” people.  None of this would matter all that terribly much except that anti-reality political and religious organizations have massive amounts of power in the society I live in.  The anti-reality people are destroying the environment, killing tens of thousands of people during a pandemic by resisting science and reason, and have removed me from having any meaningful relationship with my parents and most of my surviving siblings.  I can’t easily let go of the hope/notion that there is some way to get through to them.  I know that is a foolish hope to cling to but it’s like an itch that I can’t stop scratching.

Whatever evolves on this planet to replace our species after these people drive us to extinction, whenever sentience next rears it’s ugly head on this planet after we are dust, I sincerely hope they find a cure.