So I recieved this Ask in my Tumblr inbox.

Anonamousanomoly asked: "Greetings! I'm looking for somebody willing to answer a couple of questions about religion for a college class I'm taking. You seem to be involved or at least familiar with LaVeyan Satanism perhaps...? I'll actually be doing a presentation on it as well. I am trying to leave bias (on my part) out of the equation, and present it as intellectually as possible. My ideal is a sort of open-dialogue environment, and this is really by definition an interview. Whatever your answer, thanks for your time!"

Me: Well the best place to start is http://www.religioustolerance.org/satanism.htm and http://www.religioustolerance.org/satanis1.htm . Also http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/index.html . But yes, I’d be willing to answer some questions as a former LaVeyan Satanist. (Still a Satanist, just no longer a LaVeyan.) Read the links I’ve provided and that should give you a good start to find good questions to ask. But if you have more general questions, that’s cool too. We can either continue it here on Tumblr’s Asks, or you can email me at alexander.antonin (at) gmail (dot) com .

I'd better not get a bunch of spam because of this.

I get very annoyed by this stupid fad.

There’s this stupid fad, has been for years, of some idiot males going around with their pants hanging down so far on their body that you can see all or most of their underwear. I keep wanting to shout, “Pull up your pants! Nobody wants to see your underwear!” or “It’s called underwear for a REASON!”

I also keep having this fantasy of being able to magically alter the appearance of their underwear. It would be funny to see how fast they pull their pants up when they’re suddenly wearing boxers with hearts and flowers, or teddy bears, or “Team Edward” printed on them. Or suddenly give these idiots some frilly, lacy women’s panties. It would be hilarious!

An Ask I recieved about flat earthers.

Anonymous asked: “Can you help me create an argument against the Flat Earth Society? Thanks!”

Me:

That’s a tough one. Robert Anton Wilson found that, if you’re looking for evidence that the earth is round, you’ll find it. But if you’re looking for evidence that it’s flat, you’ll find that as well. Hell, it goes further: if you’re looking for evidence that the surface of the earth is actually the inside surface of a concave hollow sphere in some giant cave, you’ll find it. So you can’t trust the human nervous system.

To be entirely honest, there’s no real proof - beyond a doubt - that the Earth is round. But here is some good evidence:

• The shadow the earth casts on the moon is round.


• If the earth were flat, we would be able to see, from a high enough mountain, the entire world. There would be no horizon.


• Edited to add: There are pictures from space of the round earth.


• Astronauts have reported that the earth appears round from orbit.


• The “round earth” model works best for getting satellites and other stuff into orbit. With some models, like quantum physics, all the actual proof we have is the fact that the model works, and seems to contain no massive flaws. If there were any real flaws in quantum theory, there are many technologies that wouldn’t work at all or would have exploded horribly by now. The same goes for the round earth model: if there were a flaw in the round earth model, we would have found it by now, because gravity, orbital dynamics, and so on would work so differently if it were wrong, that we wouldn’t have Internet, or satellite TV, the ability to phone people across the planet, etc. A scientist could explain better the details of how things would be different if the earth really were flat, but that’s a good gist. And the theory that the earth is a concave hollow sphere is so absurd it makes flat earthers look reasonable. The gravity in a hollow sphere cancels itself out; if the earth were a hollow sphere, there would be no gravity: we would float away. (This, by the way, debunks the “hollow earth” theory as well. Even more so, because a hollow earth would have fallen apart billions of years ago.)


• Keep in mind that the earth is not *perfectly* round.


• Nature always takes the path of least resistance when it comes to anything. The mathematical models for how gravity, orbital dynamics, etc works tells us that the path of least resistance in planetary formation results in solid or semi-solid rock spheres, or in gaseous spheres. Only some great technological civilization, or a God, could make a flat earth happen in the real world. (And for most flat earthers, that’s all the evidence they need to support their theory.)


• Ask them “if the earth is flat, how come nobody has fallen off the edge of the world yet? Or uploaded proof of the edge of the world on YouTube?” With the prevalence of cell phone cameras and so on, and the expanding coverage for data transfer on cell phones, if the world were flat then there would be video proof of it by now. The fact that there isn’t, is very telling.


• If you want to see what life on a flat planet would be like, read the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett.

I hope this answers your question. There may be other arguments, but those are all I can think of for now.