https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2024/02/29/texas-tech-tyler-owens-doesnt-believe-in-space/72792066007/
NFL hopeful Tyler Owens, a defensive back from Texas Tech, said he is influenced by flat earth theories and doesn't believe in outer space.
"I'm like real religious..." Why does religion always end up being a synonym for ignorance and stupidity.
Everyone always calls me edgy when I bring this up but it's because believing in an obvious fairy tale shows a massive issue with critical thinking and cognitive capability.
These people essentially still believe in Santa Claus and will die for that belief.
More commonly, will murder for that belief. Which is why this isn’t some edgelord topic, it’s something we need to deal with seriously as a society.
I'm not religious but I dunno. Could you say that about, say the archbishop of Canterbury? The guy's got ten times the brains and university degrees than you and I put together tbh
If the smartest man alive told you he would kill for Santa Claus would that not terrify you?
You could be an alien with such a complex knowledge and understanding of physics that you can manipulate matter on a molecular scale but the minute you bring up the almighty Kloothorp as your lord and savior I'm out.
You say that belief in an "obvious fairy tale shows a massive issue with critical thinking and cognitive ability" , but you can't back that up because people who are smart and religious exist.
I agree that believing in something phantasmagorical is a cognitive blind spot. But that's so common criticizing others for it lacks self awareness. It's normal to take some obviously symbolic, illusory, or non-existent things seriously: the law, borders, sovereignty, human rights, authority, hierarchy, language, logic, or math. Are you terrified of those willing to die for human rights?
We're talking a lot of different types of smart, though.
For example said archbishop is obviously smart. And religious. And the two are the same, he'd be an idiot not to uphold the structure that gives him power, at least to the outside. That's what religion is, a power structure, and you'd be a fool to think those in power believe in the fairy tale instead of the structure.
people who are smart and religious exist.
Precisely. And if they can't accept that, and just downvote anyone that disagrees with them, they just proved the existence of ignorant, non-religious people
The delicious irony 😂
Depends on how you define smart. Knows many facts? Sure. Able to look at a puzzle and figure it out? Sure. But believing in an invisible Sky Daddy who may or may not talk directly or indirectly to people and getting your morals from books riddled with contradictions and things that are considered immoral and illegal isn't smart.
Because of absolutely moronic literal scripture interpretations. These imbeciles take the Bible as some kind of all-purpose knowledge encyclopedia, instead of a moral guide.
Depends on the subject really, if you remove the bronze age barbarism it actually does have some decent life advice for living in a harmonious way with others, you obviously shouldn't take anything it says as the final word though, it's still a book from 3000 years ago with outdated values.
Yes if you ignore all the horrible stuff you get the only good stuff that was already well known at the time of its writing.
The Bible is not a moral guide. It has some moral rules in it but the vast majority of it is just stories, things like the descriptions of the temple, and hundreds of ways of saying that God is great.
The people who wrote it took the earlier parts of it to be literal truth.
Because religion is used to control and keep people stupid.
“I don’t have to think since god is taking care of things. Just make sure to donate more than I can afford to church so that god knows I’m an extra special little worshipper.”
God is everywhere and he needs your money!
If you start explaining some fact with god or religion, all I hear is "I'm done thinking!"
If you believe in the literal words of the Bible the sky above us is solid hence no space.
This is what happens when you push someone through the higher education complex on a sports scholarship...
It's really not. He read about flat earthers crackpot theories and thought there was merit
What an idiot, especially when he blames his ignorance on his religious and political stances.
Also dumb, saying this to a newspaper formerly conceived of, headquartered, and printed in the same county that launches the most stuff to space, Brevard county Florida, aka the Space Coast, where you can see stuff being launched to space almost daily, ans almost from any part of the county, including from my backyard pool.
We need way more pushback against people spouting this level of ignorance.
We need to just not give them a platform to spout it on.
Why the fuck is a college football player's beliefs about space newsworthy?
Well partially because once he gets to the pro level his platform grows larger, so it's best to nip it in the bud now, but also the article mentions Kyrie Irving, whom has similar beliefs, so the author is probably just trying to highlight how pervasive this ignorance has become, also let's not forget Aaron Rodgers as well and the influence his ignorance has.
Why are we considering the view points of 19-20 year olds who happen to play a sport?
When I was 19-20 and smart enough not to play a sport that scrambles your brain, I did not get a news article in the national press reporting that I did believe in space.
America worships the wrong people.
Worships? Dude... This article is basically making fun of him for being a dumbass. That's the entire story. Dumb fuck said dumb thing.
The mere fact that he is being talked about in this regard is annoying. Who the fuck cares about this person. What he believes is not a matter of national interest.
It's a stupid little fluff piece about somebody saying something so stupid it's funny. It's not like it's a massive story. The news has always been like this. Giant earthbreaking news and then stupid little fun fluff pieces.
Stop trying to make it some deep societal issue dude.
As I said below the news has always had both big breaking news and stupid little fluff pieces. This is how it is always been.
If I had to register a guess, OP was probably (or hopefully) basing their comment on how sports like Football and Baseball have traditionally been viewed in the U.S., and possibly Futbol (Soccer) pretty much everywhere else. Whatever he based it off of, I can say there is just a bit too much funding and weight that goes into sports in Highschool and many Colleges. While dumb comment be dumb, it is certainly true that many people do place obscene amounts of importance on sports in general. For schools it's often to the fundamental detriment of educational curriculums.
I'm not really trying to defend OP. Just pointing out that from what little I have grasped, one is almost seen as a cultural outcast in some professions if they don't "talk sports", for example, and the stories I've heard of people found wearing the wrong team colors, wild. It's all a bit silly, tbh.
I get where you're coming from but at the same time it's still just... Absolutely hilarious that he's trying to call this worship. It's like seeing atheists making fun of a particularly stupid passage in the Bible and then telling them that they're worshiping god.
I don't think they were talking about this specific instance. They were talking about actually famous and successful singers and athletes. Also the only reason there is a news piece mocking this kid is the fact that ordinarily Americans care a lot about what famous athletes and pop stars say. It's not like that they would make a similar piece mocking a baker or handyman or something. This news article exists because it's relevant to how important professional athletes' words are.
He's done the math. When the altitude reaches what we perceived as space energy usage reaches infinite, the theory of relativity thought the speed of light was the limiting factor, have you ever seen a picture of space being light? It doesn't happen. Space doesn't exist, it can't be reached. It is but an image created by our minds in an attempt to understand what we cannot visualize. Stars are just the creation of our minds to understand unfathomable non-existance. Why else do you think when you buddy looks at the stars and says "do you see that constellation that looks like Centaurus?" you can't see it, you see a few dots and play along that they see a mythical creature.
/Sarcasm... Just incase
I've yet to meet a single person who has been to space. I'm sorry, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist!!!!
I mean, they do get a cultish gold ring that they fish out of a pitcher of beer with which they get to play wonder twins for the rest of their lives, so there's that.
Can someone buy him a telescope or something? Damn, you can actually see space and planets with your own eyes if you don't believe it....
You can see something, but that doesn't mean it's "space" and "planets".
Look, he's wrong, and the flat earth conspiracies are stupid. But, it's not like the flat earth conspiracies can be debunked that easily. They have explanations of what you can see in a telescope.
The real problem is that life requires that life requires a chain of trust. You trust your parents growing up, then your teachers, the media, political leaders, religious leaders, friends, co-workers, whatever. Their knowledge is mostly based on their trusting various people in their lives, and so-on. Sure, I've seen images of the earth from space, but I have to trust that that's what they really are, not elaborate fakes. I've never been to South America, but I have to trust that it exists. I have been to Europe, but I wasn't personally flying the plane, so I have to trust that it wasn't some elaborate plan to convince me that that continent exists.
A lot of trust in institutions has broken down lately. Sometimes that's a good thing. If you look at WWI propaganda posters, they seem ridiculous. It's good that governments can't so easily convince their people to jump into a war. On the other hand, this is the result. People stop trusting experts, and start trusting random dudes on the Internet who make a good video.
I mean if you can't believe that looking through a mirror and lens, and seeing the rings of Saturn can't convince you it's there... well we have words for that: delusional and psychotic. And people used to get hospitalized for it.
It can convince you that something's there, but that doesn't mean it's a planet. You believe it's a planet because of what you were taught in school, and maybe that all the things you were taught were consistent and reinforced each-other so it made sense. To the ancient Romans, it was a god, and we still celebrate that god at christmas (a.k.a. saturnalia). What you can see using a telescope is a circle-shaped thing with ring-shaped things around it. But, to decide that's a planet means trusting that that object is in fact multiple times the size of the entire planet earth and more than a billion km away. What have you personally done to verify that the mass of Saturn is actually accurate? Are you just trusting what you were taught, or have you actually verified those claims?
Homosexuality used to be considered a psychiatric disorder, so I wouldn't go by what people used to get hospitalized for. That's just another example of how common knowledge, or "things everyone believes to be true" can change over time.
As I said, we can't verify everything ourselves. We have to trust other people, and while it's good to question what we think we know, we can't question everything all the time.
Gotta love the marriage between tramatic brain injuries and an under funded education system.
Gotta love the demands of an athletic program overriding academic integrity.
It's almost like student athletes shouldn't be monetized or training camps for professional teams or something.
Like they should have their own secondary league players can participate in and be paid to do so without simultaneously being a financial burden on 95% of schools.
Well good thing they gave him a college scholarship then. I’m sure he will put it to good use.
the fact that this is a story is a better criticism of our media than anything anyone could make up
Doesn't this just tell us something about his university? They are obviously not doing that much in the way of teaching their football players.
I think it says something about the elementary school he went to. University education is advanced past the point of teaching basic concepts. Most kindergarteners are aware of the concept of space. We have all heard little kids say that they want to be an astronaut when they grow up.
Then you’ve raised the question of why there university would admit him just cuz sports. He’s tarnishing the reputation of every person who graduated from there, which is principally why plagiarism is handled so strictly.
I think it says that our higher education system holds sports above education but that's been the case since I was in high school and college. 20+ years ago.
Yes, agreed. I work for an R1 university and feel some shame about the resources devoted to sports.
I typically feel like people like this aren't dumb, they're just so incredibly distrustful of authority figures like teachers or scientists or the government that on some level they reject reality and when videos "kinda make sense" or "have some points" about shit we all know is fake, it gives them the ability to choose what they think is correct and because they're already rejecting what they're being told is real by people they don't trust it's really easy to let conspiracies fill in the gap of how it works
Instead of making fun of him, NASA should fund a trip for him to go to the ISS and he should livestream the whole thing to instagram.
If you’re also someone with the same kind of influence and reach potential as this guy, then it’s also worth changing your mind about this
You're not going to change the mind of someone who's looking for attention. If anything - he'll double down.
Also if you need a football player to believe in space for you to believe in it too...
It'll be like the flat earthers who used a $20k laser gyroscope to prove the earth is flat, but instead proved the earth is round. Of course, being consummate morons, they then just ignored it.
Exactly, someone who didn't find their position with logic, won't change it due to logic.