1
Flat Earth Community / Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« on: May 13, 2018, 07:06:49 AM »Does dismissing all evidence for a round earth count as irrationality?It's a slippery word. I take it to mean simultaneously accepting things that cannot together be true ('contraries').
I am asking because I am not sure I understand your meaning of irrational. As a word, it is something that gets thrown around so often that it's meaning is more "felt" than "defined". But I "feel" that the continued dismissal of evidence with no reasonn for that dismissal is as irrational as it can get.
I think I suggested that continued dismissal of evidence was irrational in that the refusal to accept it suggests fear that one's belief is false, and so in some sense implies a belief that one's belief is false. This would of course be irrational.
An example someone gave me in a seminar many years ago was of someone who totally believes that spiders cannot sting, yet scuttles out of the way of a spider.
Maybe he’s afraid that they can bite!