Geocentrism

When we travel overseas, it is only a matter of perception that tells us we have actually crossed the globe.

Yes we perceive that because we are surrounded by geology and geography that differs from our norm, because we are surrounded by people not speaking our native tongue and because we have a hard time sleeping, we have travelled some thousands of kilometres to other countries.

You could argue that such belief follows the scientific method.

Using the two-bit research methods only someone as lazy as I could try to get away with, I see that step 1 of the scientific method is achieved - that we experience something that is 'foreign' to us, ergo it holds that the experience could be literally foreign.

Our hypothesis, is that we have travelled a commensurate distance that allows for the difference in temperature, time, tongue, scenery, and that we now occupy a different country.

We predict, from the maps that we have studied as kids, that if we travel East, we hit a certain city, country, sea or ocean and we can test that theory by jumping onto a bus, a bike, a horse or whatever.

We can repeatedly test these predictions to validate the theory and to ensure that everything tallies with what we have been told is the truth;

planet=round,

planet=a certain size,

planet revolves daily,

moon moves around us monthly,

we both dance round the sun annually,

though we can never jump upon the next inter-planetary traveller in order to actually observe this behaviour from afar.

Consider then that there is a significant degree of faith in accepting that everything is as 'they' say it is.

Yes we perceive having jumped on a plane, having disembarked many hours later, having stepped into a foreign land that is the correct distance and duration away from our origin. We can also easily perceive that when we travel in a new direction and we travel to find the features and occupants that we expect, everything is in order.

We have just walked, cycled or driven in a particular direction, being conscious and alert all the while, and are now experiencing a new place, so surely we are in fact in this new place and we can thereby more-or-less confirm step 4 of the scientific method each time we do so.

Well, I'd like to suggest that in fact none of it is true.

If for example we were able to have an experience such as sitting outside the orbital apparatus and watching its movements over a long span of time, we could convince ourselves that we have conducted a stronger step 4 in the scientific method than we would have otherwise, but there are still two problems with this:

    a) with only 0.000007% of the current population reportedly having purportedly stepped outside the atmosphere, none of us will have done so AND

    b) overseas as a religion can also explain this kind of experiential/observational confirmation

I'll step back again before getting into my explanation.

I wish to reinforce that we take boffins' explanation that physicists have documented mathematical models and formulae to explain gravity, seasons, tidal changes, changes to the visible moon and so on, but that a significant proportion of us just believe. We don't test this belief by learning the laws and applying them to our own earth-based or astronomical observations. There is faith that the boffins' aren't pulling the wool over.

Consider this;

Could we each be living our lives and have lets say in my case, the greater Brisbane area which is 'real'?

I jump in a car and drive to work daily. My work tells me that a million or two customers - people that I will never meet - from far flung reaches of our state or country, need assistance with their cars, their licences and so on. I don't speak with any of them, I don't travel to any of them, for all I know a reasonable explanation could be that there is a computer dialling my workplace a few thousand times per day with people that I can reach out and touch (colleagues) having conversations with no-one real.

I jump in the car and drive home again.

My folks are in Tamworth and Newcastle, some hundreds of kilometres distant. Yep, I can jump on a plane, in a car or whatever, and a commensurate duration later arrive at my destination.

While genuine travel is the accepted experience, the theory being that these places are xx distance and yy duration away, and I predict that when I arrive, walking down the road yields the beach (and I can test this), who is to say that I haven't at one point, blinked, and been integrated into a Virtual Reality which gives me these experiences - Matrix and Lost City-style.

I have been able to reach out and touch my family members, but I don't KNOW that they are 600Km away right now, they could be in cold storage.

Maybe I have been placed into a simulator sphere, or into a computer program that can change my perceived surroundings, climate and companions. Maybe when I hear a foreign tongue it is simply gibberish that I am told is German. The computer program creates fellow foreigners that understand their comrade's gibberish and generates auditory responses in kind.

The system generates the photographic evidence that tallies with my expectations of family and friend's travel experiences, and the system ensures uploads of this evidence to social networking websites, when all the while those who have stepped out of physical reach are really just doped up and plugged in down the road in a computer simulator that looks like a mountain.

Are we actually able to reach out and touch the planets? Nope, only a handful have supposedly walked on another celestial body - and that happened in a Hollywood studio of course.

Are we actually able to prove that our distant friends and family are actually distant? No!

Sure the scientific method allows for us to hold something as being true if our experience and observations don't disprove it, and if it reasonably aligns with our expectations, but wow, religion also allows for us to take 'facts' on face value if they agree with our experience and observations.

I believe that The Himalayas exist, I believe that I have seen them, have walked among them, have touched, smelt, and spoken with their inhabitants. Can I prove that I was there? Well, no. Even if I had smuggled home a vial of dirt like that French bird in Michael Moore's 'sIcko', that isn't proof. It is proof that I have dirt, but doesn't prove that the Himalayas are real. I just have faith that my perceived experiences aren't just computer programs and implanted memory.

It is a rather geocentric view, but hey, prove me wrong. I dares ya!