Is your reasoning "that's aburd" and "Stephen Hawking is right. We have no scientific evidence for this, but we have to believe it because of modesty"?
Apologies in advance for going off topic from OP for this, feel free to split this discussion if deemed needed.
So, my reasoning has nothing to do with what famous people say but I'll take you through my thought process. First, I don't have a religion so I don't believe we as humans or that the earth itself is some kind of special case from the rest of the universe, in that regard maybe it's modesty but I think in a very chaotic universe we popped up in quite a random place, I have no reason to believe that place is the very center of the universe any more than that place is random within the universe and the
probability of earth forming and life forming on earth in the very center is extremely low. You could say some sky daddy no one has seen evidence for has made us and we're super special and the center of everything... In that sense I guess I do say "that's absurd" simply because I'm not religious. Since this observation is nothing to do with religion I mostly discount that as a probable reason for being at the center (I could be wrong, maybe god is a thing, if he is I've seen nothing to suggest it's truth).
I mean, let me ask you something, if you were born and raised in a town that had never heard of religion, no religious members in the towns community, no bible to read, would you come to the conclusion that god is your saviour and that there's heaven after life? Without people to tell you this stuff, you'd probably grow up not being religious correct? This thought is the reason I don't have any religion, people telling me god is a thing and that I have to
have faith or I'll be damned and doomed for eternity... Just sounds like cult conditioning to me and thankfully that never happened in my upbringing. I grew up in an accepting family that would be fine if I had a religion but didn't tell me how to think. If I ever happened upon a super religious experience that could not be explained any other way than a god intervention/miracle then that may convince me but until that time, I'll be looking at things from the perspective that religion has no place in what we observe in the universe.
So again, if all of the celestial bodies are ever expanding away from us, and away from each other, then that observation would look the same from any position in the known universe and again the probability that we happen to be at the center would be extremely low. The only reason to believe we're in the center is religion, it's cool if people have religion as it has nothing to do with me, but it has no place in such a point. Of course I could be wrong and maybe (observable universe aside) we are in the middle and everything revolves around us... But whats the
probability of that being the case? Well, if the earth were flat, I could go out into the street and proclaim that I am in the center of the world, whats the chances of that being true?
The religious side of this is the biggest "what if". if god is actually a thing the the probability of us being in the middle shoots way up, but we still wouldn't know for sure without 'faith' that some book people wrote ages ago claiming it to be the word of god, then rewrote a few times still proclaiming it to be that same word of god even though it's different now and up to modern standards is actually, truly the word of god. If god is real I don't think I'd believe in the bible still. Or Jesus, call me damned but he sounds like a con man.
As for the example of Stockholm syndrome, dude, they could give me my favourite meal every day and never beat me but if they still took me and held me against my will and then emotionally exploit my family for profit, they're bad people... Come on Tom, next you'll be saying slavery is all good so long as you treat your slaves well.
Also NGL I really am trying to think of examples with good things to convey my point but I could only think of bad things like Stockholm syndrome, I'm really not trying to say flat earth is bad and believing it is bad or anything (though it's not exactly beneficial to think the world is flat when it's not). Sorry if it comes across as me comparing flat earth to being super bad.