‘As Friends, we have a Light to follow. A deep goodness to believe in.’ Photo: by AJ Colores on Unsplash.
‘The underlying problem is one of trust rather than physics.’
Flat out: Barbara Mark on evidence and conspiracy
We live in this world and must face up to things going on in it. Quakers are not known for shying away. So what do we think about those who believe the earth is flat?
Let me go into this a bit more, using an article from Physics World in July. I am interested in the subject as one aspect – extreme maybe – of our society’s growing lack of trust in science, knowledge and maybe even wisdom.
The International Flat Earth Research Society has an annual conference with more than 600 attendees. Several psychologists assure us these people are genuine in their beliefs. Their numbers have grown since the early 2000s, when the internet became a vehicle to share ideas. YouTube videos present numerous arguments that give what Asheley Landrum, a psychologist from Texas Tech University, calls ‘an illusion of fluency’. Some religious fundamentalists are also spreading these beliefs.
Conspiracy theories have reduced people’s ability to judge what is true and what is not true. Individuals seem little bothered about the evidence – it does not move them. The underlying problem is one of trust rather than physics. The only way through this unmovable reality is to get to know people and discuss alternatives.
I am asking us to consider this as a religious group. So often religion has been called into question because it has no basis in science. In this case, why are we any different from those who believe the earth is flat? The one thing we all do have, I suspect, is a greater understanding of what it is like to base our beliefs on things beyond this world and its facts. So maybe we have more empathy with flat earthers than a physicist? But anyone who has travelled round the world will know it is round. There is actually, in this case, no getting away from it.
Other ‘facts’ may be more difficult to prove wrong, or right. It is a sad reality that there are no truths any more. Our whole world has been turned upside down by fake news, twisted science and manipulated data.
We have, though, as a society of Friends, a Light to follow. A deep goodness to believe in. A connectedness with eternality. We now have scientific proof that we can experience this. In this magazine in September, Carole Sutton told us about clinical psychologists who are uncovering two different subsystems in the brain – a cognitive one and a relational one. The complexity of the interconnections means, as yet, they cannot be mapped, but it ‘offers a way of understanding spirituality which makes it integral to the experience of being human’. As Patrick Casement also said in the Friend last month, ‘we need to acknowledge that there really could be more in life that we can know, or understand’.
