How Do Flat Earth Believers and Doomsday Preppers Compare To Religions?
Flat earthers, doomsday preppers, and religion all have similarities in the fact that they attract huge followings and have influence over how people perceive the world. This text will work to distinguish between religion and the aforementioned two as despite being smaller than religion, the two acts as control entities that aid us in understanding the building blocks behind the seemingly blind following into religion, hence giving us a comparison and contrast that can be used in better understanding the power behind religion.
Flat Earthers
Flat earthers are simply people who believe that the earth is not spherical, rather that it is flat. They believe in what they see that the earth feels and looks flat, and they view that any proof that the world is spherical including photos taken by satellites hovering over the earth are all lies fabricated by NASA and other government agencies to make everyone believe in the conspiracy of the earth being round (Moshakis). This belief has gained so much popularity over the years that it has been deemed to be the ultimate conspiracy theory.
According to its believers, the earth is a disc where the Arctic Circle is in the center and that Antarctica is actually a wall of ice that is over 100 feet tall serving is at the rim of the earth. They believe that NASA employees protect this wall to avoid propelled from jumping over the wall and falling off the disc. Secondly, they claim that the sun and moon are not as far as people have been taught to believe; instead, they are the ones that revolve around the earth, being only just over thirty miles away from the planet.
They believe that the celestial spheres mostly bring light to different portions of the earth and believe that there is another celestial body called the antimoon which obscures the moon in the times of an eclipse (Wolchover). Also, they believe that gravity is fabricated; they claim that the earth is rather the one that is being pulled up by force known as dark energy and not objects that do not accelerate downwards. It is unclear whether the theory of relativity would apply in this belief as this would deem that the world would accelerate upwards indefinitely, meaning that there will the earth would surpass the speed of light given the speed of thirty-two feet per second.
Believers in this conspiracy also believe that the earth does not have a core, rather is mainly composed of rock (Wolchover). They, therefore, believe that all the pictures taken by satellites are fabricated and that GPS devices are rigged to make pilots of an airplane believe that they are moving in straight lines around the earth in contrast to moving in circles above a disc.
The reason for the government to hide such information is not apparent, with many believing that it is financially related given that the funding that is usually sent to NASA for space programs would be a considerable profit both for the agencies and for NASA.
According to research done, two percent of Americans believe that the earth is flat, with a poll of the other eight thousand Americans asked what they believe the shape of the planet is (Nace). It showed that over eighty percent thought the earth is round. Amongst that group that thinks the earth is flat, more than fifty percent were very religious.
Religions around the world do not believe that the earth is flat. They believe that the earth is round. Should one look at Christianity, for instance, in the time of the flood, it would then mean that the water would have run off the edge of the world until all the water was over (Melugin). However, the book of Genesis mentions that the water prevailed above the mountains for a whole year. This shows that gravitational forces genuinely bound the world.
This shows that there is a need in understanding what the texts in the religions are trying to teach, and this requires insight onto the language, context, culture and literary genre to understand the requirements in the texts, not just as they are translated. Looking into the superficial meanings of the translations without understanding the contextual clues is how many of those who do not even follow religion make arguments against the texts and create believers that use religion to sway people into believing into their agendas, hence an error that is not only in the flat earth idea but also in the doomsday prepping idea among others.
Doomsday preppers.
` With doomsday preppers, this is a movement states that the world is soon going to end. They believe that there will be a catastrophe, and people can only be saved by joining the group. It has gained so much popularity over the years due to its sense of urgency, and most of its believers work to keep it a secret lest it reinforces these claims hence making it into a self-fulfilling prophecy (Worrall). The actions within this belief are those only affiliated with the need to be prepared for the end of the world rather than focusing on how the world will end with many of its believers all over the world going as far as stating their predictions of the date when the world.
In addition, the past decade has seen increasingly violent doomsday sects that have done mass violence on its members and even on the non-believers as their activities and theories are mostly reactive with the infliction of mass violence and obtaining of large amounts of supply.
The main belief in this system is that the world as we know it is about to end and this means that there will be the total collapse of civilization. Delivery of food and water will be a thing of the past, there will be no power, and the world will be taken back to its roots in the Stone Age. Lack of power would mean that there would be a worldwide grid-down situation, which would make it close to impossible to repair. Many theories have been postulated as to how this would start, many believing that it would begin with the collapse of the financial infrastructure in the world with banks shutting down operations and hence no access to accounts, hence the need to store any emergency cash fund manually.
In this theory, civilizations were not meant to last, with the current civilization close to failing soon. Most focus on the more substantial aspects of the preparation, like nuclear war. It is etched in the mind of its believers to the extent that they perform prepping religiously. With the collapse of the government, the world would then be put into a state of chaos, which would see the world’s governments take complete control over the decisions and supplies to the population.
It is also characterized by people selling most of their belongings either in preparation for a one-day catastrophe or the gradual decline of civilization after a life-changing event.
Since the beginning of time, everyone has always questioned the end of the world. Some religions call it Armageddon, others see it as a final battle between good and evil, but what all religions have in common is that the forces of good and evil in each religion will fight in the last day. Its effects will lead to the end of the world, hence the name doomsday.
Doomsday preppers have been trying to predict the end of the world just as religions have worked on predicting it. The ancient Mayans, for instance, believed the world would end in 2012 as per their old Mayan calendar (“Religions On The End Of The World”). Christianity and Islam say that only God knows the day of Armageddon. It is believed the end of the world would be characterized by several catastrophes ranging from wars to natural calamities like earthquakes, to nuclear reactor meltdowns.
Relation with religion.
The two belief systems have been long present in western culture and have been characterized by the presence of anxiety either caused by rapid political, religious, or even social transformation. Currently, there have been great moments of significant change, for instance, the French or Russian revolution, which for one created so many theories of their own, and now the belief that NASA has been lying to the public for quite some time about the earth being flat. Something both contrast in is that with doomsday believers, their actions are more responsive as it is a reaction to the end of the world rather than a focus on how it will all start, and with a flat earth, it is one that has been researched by many.
One thing, however, they have in common is that they are attributed to secondary entities with NASA and government agencies against those who believe in the flat earth. At the same time, with the doomsday preppers, their primary focus can be stemmed from the end of civilization rather than just the end of the world, and the governments seeking to gain more control. In modern times these are among the beliefs that have become both substantial and part of the mainstream culture. Despite this presence in the contemporary societies of today, the two have been observed from both cultural and political viewpoints and more recently, with the alternative spirituality and religion. This text works to look into filling the gap and focus mostly on the two belief’s relation with religion and view what makes them either irrational or rational.
Firstly, there is need to look into the inherent logic behind each of the two where one insists on the government’s manipulation of the masses and the other showing the need for preparation for the worst given the political and cultural tension existing all over the world. Also, there is the need to look into the ontological security of the communities today as they have led to people creating their own beliefs and paranoia. There are political dimensions that are present in these beliefs, given the presence of unshakable systems in the life world of the modern-day people, making people wonder about what is real and what is not, not to mention the subjective awareness of the people. These beliefs give an anti-hegemonic discourse against the governments of today while looking for the truth.
These beliefs work to express hegemony and the need for the governments to show the real intentions behind given actions. This is much like the seeking of religion not to find purpose, instead to seek the truth. The relations between religion and these two beliefs can be traced to the history of western esotericism, where the latter can be compared and comprehended as rejected knowledge—the two concern marginal religious movements and major religious organizations, like Christianity and Islam. With the flat earth belief, for instance, Christianity has deemed that there are four corners of the earth, strengthening the claim of a world that is not spherical, while also contradicting it given that the flat earthier view the world to be disc-shaped.
Also, religions believe at the end of the world and hence find in a timeframe of existence (“Common Characteristics Of Religions”). This is evident with doomsday preppers, with many believing in life after death hence urging its followers to sell all their belongings or donate to the church to gain favor as the world passes by.
There are two schools of thought that can answer the question of how religion relates to the two beliefs. The first allows us to see meaningful pattern in senseless noise. The second is where we see mysterious agents who act like puppet masters that control the strings and create the inexplicable. The two are both evolutionary features that have been engraved in a0ur brain and made into instinct. They are primitive and have existed in the human mind for a long time especially where decisions were being made with haste and instinctively. Man is most prone to making false positive errors where they expect the worst rather than assume everything is okay as the cost of following the error is lesser than dying from being too comfortable. Therefore, it is expected for man to believe in the idea of preparation for the end of the world, or for judgment or that the government is playing tricks on us as it keeps us on our toes and this is a survival instinct. We are the descendants of those who followed the survival instinct.
There are times people can cause harm by making mistakes in the side of caution, and this form of behavior is enshrined in the law of unintended consequences. For instance, there are stories of the Bible where there are several doomsday preppers who saw it wise to share all their belongings with the church in light of the impending end of the world. One such church in Africa had every member of the church believing that the world would end at a certain date and when it did not, there was a church sermon not too long after that where the church was burned down, killing over five hundred believers with the leaders of the church completely missing after that.
These two show the primary characteristic of human development; however the ugly side of the two can be seen in the two beliefs. This is where different people can be given a certain fact and they can connect their dots differently, understanding the data completely differently. For instance, one can see in the Bible that the world is meant to end, and will take it like a reason to live his life to the fullest as he is confident that he or she is ready for the end, knowing that good will always win over evil. With someone who is doomsday preppers, the gist they obtain from the same text is that they need to prepare to survive the end times.
In addition, the bible mentions of the four corners of the earth and consider that the Bible has seen the world is truly flat, but another will understand that it was a relative term meaning the ends of the earth.
Both the religions and beliefs do claim to have a firm grasp on the truth; however here are some differences between the two. For instance, both have varying scopes. A religion focuses on the truth about large issues that have an impact on everyone in history, for instance the origin of man, nature of morality, to mention but a few. However, these two beliefs above tend to assert truths about single issues, being that the world as we know it is ending soon and that the world is flat. This simply means that religions are extensive by nature when compared to the two beliefs above.
Secondly, two beliefs are mostly focused on lies, and refuse to listen to consensus. With the two above, there is essence of either being lied to, like the government hiding the information about the shape of the world, and the world being lying to itself that it will be able to survive it all. In addition, they also are mostly strongly rejecting consensus. Majority of the world’s population believe that the earth is a sphere, and are confident that the world will not end soon. In addition, religion teaches us to believe that man can never know the day when the world will end, only God does, hence from one to predict would be futile, making this the consensual truth.
In addition, the two beliefs use science and research to justify their truths. For instance, there is the story of the man who travelled in a plane with a tool where the bubble remained in the middle, or that the ongoing tension in the world and current trends in global warming prove civilization does not have a long time to exist. The Bible itself is one that teaches faith rather than dependence on facts and figures.
Also, religion is one that does not focus on facts being wrong, rather on a different type of fact. With religions, there is the belief that one can access the truth in a different way rather than the conventional confrontation. Basically, religions require one to believe in them and ask that one is able to accept the principle that insight into it is satisfactory and qualitatively different, making one into a believer. With the two, there are only the themes that one can believe in, without extensive inquiry into the making of the belief.
Religion and science.
It has been argued that believers believe in the scientific method, however their doubts are present on the scientific institutions. Here, the boundaries of the skepticism and beliefs and between science and religion are most challenged and transgressed. Both the beliefs and religions are mostly immune to reason and are mainly impervious to evidentiary standards. Despite the amounts of evidence showing that the world is spherical, flat earth believers still believe in the world being flat, even despite satellite photos, claiming that the pictures are all fabricated. In addition, doomsday preppers believe that the world will end soon despite the many claims of the world ending from so-called false prophets from the doomsday preppers dating as early as the 2000s. The same applies to religion when there is evidence of world history despite people believing otherwise.
Furthermore, both these beliefs and religions ascribe high power to invisible forces. With the case of the flat earth beliefs, they believe that NASA is working with other governments and also unnamed government agencies to fool the people into believing that the world is spherical to obtaining funding that comes with the space programs. With the doomsday preppers, they do not mention what will destroy the earth; instead, they believe in the inevitability of the world ending soon, mentioning that it will stem from the death of civilizations or catastrophic events. With religion, there is a belief in supernatural entities that govern our everyday activities.
These supernatural entities then appear to be all-powerful and gods in their respective institutions. For instance, with the flat earth belief, there is the belief in the omnipotent nature of the opaque systems that exist in governments where they have all the information but withhold the world from it for their gain. At the same time, with doomsday preppers, the end is inevitable. This is the level of influence they have as they stem from the idea of magical thinking and that those who do not oblige with the belief system are either the misinformed sheep or deemed to be slaves to the order that either exists or will exist in the world.
Conclusion
In sum, many similarities tie these two beliefs to religion, either to the preexisting religion or that they share characteristics similar to those in religion. Flat earthers and doomsday preppers provide a control example of what religion is like and the need for seeking the truth rather than just following what seems to make sense. Also, they show the qualities of religion that make the entire notion seem toxic in that they are not meant to provide satisfaction to the believer, rather the thirst to know more and respond to the world effectively. Religion teaches the need for urgency in action and criticizes any who bears false witness hence the need to believe in concrete truth as it is essential to know where to be grounded and stand for something. These two beliefs have served to express what the building blocks of a religion are.
Works cited.
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Nace, Trevor. “Only Two-Thirds Of American Millennials Believe The Earth Is Round”. Forbes, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/04/04/only-two-thirds-of-american-millennials-believe-the-earth-is-round/#cc9d0b7ec66c. Accessed 13 Apr 2020.
“Religions On The End Of The World”. HISTORY, 2018, https://www.history.com/topics/religion/religions-on-the-end-of-the-world. Accessed 13 Apr 2020.
Wolchover, Natalie. “Are Flat-Earthers Being Serious?”. Livescience.Com, 2017, https://www.livescience.com/24310-flat-earth-belief.html. Accessed 13 Apr 2020.
WORRALL, SIMON. “In Age Of Science, Is Religion ‘Harmful Superstition’?”. National Geographic, 2015, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/05/150531-religion-science-faith-healing-atheism-people-ngbooktalk/. Accessed 14 Apr 2020.