Mr Denial

I have been watching Leah Remini’s documentary about the aftermath of her split with Scientology and have been fully absorbed by it. One episode in particular struck me because it discussed the true beliefs of this so-called religion and covered how a Scientologist would advance to a state of “Clear” and effectively become something more than just your average human.

Scientology claims that you can heal yourself, just like its mad founder L. Ron Hubbard claims to have done, and that every human is possessed by an alien called a Thetan, that is used to push people along something called “the Bridge”, via OT Levels (“Operating Thetan”) to powers that are beyond belief thus making Scientologists super humans.

When L. Ron Hubbard died of a stroke, unable to cure himself of death itself, the new Scientology “pope”, David Miscavige, said this:

So L. Ron Hubbard didn’t die! He merely discarded his body so that he could leave Earth for God knows where and explore the upper OT echelons.

What an absolute pile of crap!

Yet, practising Scientologists believe this. – and every single word that Hubbard wrote and that David Miscavige continues to preach about – no matter how utterly absurd they sound.

Similarly, members of the Flat Earth Society are absolutely convinced that the Earth is a massive frisbee, that gravity doesn’t exist and NASA and all governments of the planet have been lying to us for centuries.

These are yet another truly amazing group of people who have dug their heels in and simply refuse to believe what the rest of us know.

But can we be wrong? These people are so convinced they are right that sometimes, for a brief microsecond, I have actually begun to doubt myself – but only until my inner brain kicks in and says:

“DON’T BE SO STUPID! OF COURSE THEY ARE WRONG!”

And then common sense prevails and I realise that they are – I’m trying to find the right word here but I can’t. Are they idiots or gullible or brainwashed or stubborn or crazy?

I honestly don’t think they are crazy or stupid but I believe there is an element of brainwashing going on – certainly in the case of Scientology. In a sense, you could argue that a lot of religions are the same, I guess.

As a Catholic, for example, I was brought up to believe in a God I have ever seen and told that if I didn’t dedicate my life to him then I would be sent to meet the devil, another being I had never met, and spend the rest of eternity having hot pokers shoved up my arse by Piers Morgan while listening to modern jazz on an eternal loop and being force fed rhubarb while Satan chuckles on his diabolical throne.

Obviously again common sense prevailed and I questioned it.

Yet if you talk to somebody who believes the crap that Flat Earthers or L. Ron Hubbard tell us they are absolutely astounded that you don’t think the same way that they do.

Another favourite of mine is David Icke who also has an army of fans and listen to him witter on about his major conspiracy theories for hours at a time.  He has written loads of books and people actually buy them. Whether they encourage him for a laugh or not, I don’t know but he certainly appears to captivate audiences with speeches about his mad thoughts about aliens, reptiles and the Illuminati.

Here he is trying to convince anyone who is listening that aliens are treating us a batteries, just like the machines did to us in the movie The Matrix:

In 2016, for example, people in Sydney queued to listen to him give a 12 hour seminar – 12 HOURS!!!

Were these people just there out of a morbid curiosity or do they truly believe the rubbish that he is blithering on about?

I ask all of these people three questions:

(1) Why do you believe what you do?
(2) Where is your evidence?
(3) Why do you not trust the reams of evidence that contradicts your arguments?

I honestly believe that the more you try to convince them they are wrong, the more they dig their heels in – almost as if their pride forces them to prolong the myth and they don’t want to appear to be seen as wrong.

Of course, some people see the light (so to speak) – people like Leah Remini. In her case, she was a Scientologist from childhood so had the bizarre teachings of Hubbard forced on her from an early age, when she was susceptible to this nonsense – she had no other points of reference until later life.

But what about David Icke? Does he see himself as a sort of L. Ron Hubbard character? Does he truly believe that inter-dimensional beings are using our emotions as energy to feed them and that there are reptilian shape-shifters running the world’s governments and waiting to enslave us?

I don’t know but to me it sounds utterly ridiculous.

And when questioned, Icke basically calls disbelievers naïve sheep who don’t see the bigger picture.

I’ll leave you with a video of an Australian news presenter questioning David Icke about his beliefs as he was promoting his 12 hour seminars Down Under. When pushed – he gets very defensive and slightly aggressive. It’s worth a watch.

Don't you just love Australians?

To be honest, I also like David Icke – aka Mr Denial – because I am fascinated with how he has managed to get where he is based on absolutely groundless rubbish.

I wonder what he thinks of Flat Earth theorists and Scientology? That would be a cracking three way debate to watch.

I’m even tempted to read one of David Icke's books – I love a good comedy.

The Earth Is Flat

I love weird stuff and I also love people who believe in it.

Whilst stumbling around cyberspace the other week, I stumbled across a particular favourite of mine, a bunch of conspiracy theorists who share an absurd belief.

I am talking about the Flat Earth Society, a group of seemingly eloquent people who truly believe that we all live on a planet that is similar to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

To them, our beloved planet is not a sphere; it is a disk.

To them the Earth is flat.

Given all of the evidence to the contrary, they still maintain in this modern day and age, with all of the advances in space travel, physics and astronomy that the governments of the world are uniting against the population of the world to hide the truth that we live on a giant frisbee.

Here’s what they believe:

The Earth is a disk with the North Pole at its centre.

Antarctica is in fact a wall of ice that surrounds the edge of the disk, keeping the oceans in.

Space travel is fake. The USSR and USA were so obsessed with winning the space race during the cold that they faked their accomplishments to deceive the other into believing that they were ahead.

Photographic evidence of a globular Earth is also fake. NASA is an institute whose sole purpose is to prolong the myth of a Round Earth.

Circumnavigation of the Earth is performed by going around the North Pole in big circles.

The sun moves in circles around the North Pole. When the sun is over your head, it is daytime. When it is not over your head, it is night time.

You cannot see the curvature of the Earth from an aircraft. Your perception of a curved Earth is due to your perception through heavily curved aircraft windows.

Gravity as we know it does not exist.

The sun and the moon are simply rotating spheres, each 32 miles across that can be found 3000 miles above the surface of the flat Earth.

The concept of a Full Moon is impossible in the Round Earth theory.

Earth is not a planet and the other planets are small.

The stars also rotate above the Earth.

The moon landing was a hoax.  Astronauts shown moving on the moon in slow motion were on wire supports.

Here is a picture of what they believe the Earth looks like:

This is amazing and if you take a look at any of the Flat Earth Society websites, they have supposedly scientific evidence to back all of their claims. However, what I find even more amazing is that people actually believe this utter nonsense.

I simply cannot comprehend how, or even why, people choose to ignore reality and shift their belief system to an incredible wild idea that took hold of humanity before the great scientists in our history proved it wrong.

I can understand people in the past believing that the Earth was flat, because they didn’t know any better. However, nowadays, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support their outrageous claims. On the contrary, there is plenty of evidence to support the Round Earth theory.

Why are these people so delusional?

Why choose to champion a ridiculous lie?

Their theories are totally ridiculous, even laughable. It seems to be that when anybody tries to debunk their weird theory, they simply invent something that explains why you are wrong. An example of this is that if the Earth were indeed flat then at the edges of the disk, gravity would be totally different and approaching the edge would make gravity more pronounced. In fact, the Earth is so big that gravity would pull the Earth into a ball shape. Their answer to this is amazing, as we have seen; gravity simply does not exist or more accurately, it doesn't exist in the way that we have been led to believe.

Really?

So all of those science experiments I performed in A-Level Physics to determine the acceleration due to gravity are totally false and pointless?

It's worse, when you consider that Flat Earth conspiracy theorists claim that we are all being kept in the dark about this. What they are saying is that every government in the world is lying to us all in an attempt to cover up this preposterous notion. I know that politicians are all liars but this concept is absurd. As well as that, anybody who is involved in the airline industry must be in on it.

Imagine for a second training to become a pilot. You are taken into a room and forced to sign the equivalent of the official secrets act before a man stands in front of you and says:

“Before you start training, we must inform you that the Earth is not a globe. It is a giant spinning pancake. You mustn’t tell anybody as we are trying to keep it secret. If you do, we will fly you past the Antarctic wall and kick you out into oblivion.”

Imagine your first day in the Oval Office after being sworn in as President of the USA:

PRESIDENT:  Right – now I’m President, I want to know all about Roswell. Do aliens actually exist?

PRESIDENT'S AIDE: Sir, aliens do not exist. In fact, the Earth is not even a planet; it is a giant frisbee surrounded by a huge wall of ice. The sun and moon are disks rotating 3000 miles above us.

PRESIDENT: No – really. Do aliens exist?

PRESIDENT'S AIDE: : No sir! And the Earth really IS flat. We’ve been conning the public for years. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin won honorary and secret Oscars for their parts in the greatest work of fiction known to man; The Moon Landing.

-- PHONE RINGS --

PRESIDENT'S AIDE: Hello? Sir, it’s President Putin wishing to congratulate you.

PRESIDENT: Hello Vladimir.

PRESIDENT PUTIN: Zdravstvujtye, Mr President and congratulations. By the way, have you been told that the Earth is really flat yet? We need to keep this quiet.

PRESIDENT: WHAT????????

It makes no sense to me whatsoever, that supposedly intelligent people continue to defy all the scientific evidence and embarrass themselves by relating this bunkum to anybody who is willing to listen.

Why would you anybody do that?

Even if it’s a question of pride and being scared to admit that they are wrong, surely that’s better than being a laughing stock.

Anyway, here is a fun video about it:

I’m sure when Terry Pratchett came up with the concept of Discworld, he did so after reading, and presumably laughing at, a book about the Flat Earth Society.

Of course, writing a post mocking the concept of a Flat Earth might prove to be a stupid thing to do if Flat Earth conspiracy theorists are right. I may end up with a lot of egg on my face and might have to write another post of apology.

These are the risks that a blogger has to wrestle with.

I don’t care; I’ll take my chances.

That said, as I wrote at the start of this post, I love this kind of weirdness, so if on the off chance you believe that the Earth is flat, please let me know.