Not Everything Can Be Explained Simply, And That’s Okay

May 9, 2022

Have you ever spoken to someone who believes the earth is flat?

My god. If you thought Christians evangelizing you on the street were bad, Flat-Earthers are at least a hundred times more intense when it comes to trying to get you to believe as they do.

And if you don’t immediately agree with what a Flat-Earther is preaching, they get pretty angry. At least a Christian will still try to lure you in with kindness. Not a Flat-Earther—if you don’t buy in, then more often than not, they’ll freak out on you.

In a weird way, I can kind of understand why Flat-Earthers get frustrated with people—they’re accustomed to having their defenses up all the time. Why? Because as soon as they start trying to convince people that the earth is actually flat instead of round, they are usually dismissed straight away without being listened to for a single second, then mocked and ridiculed. At least with a Christian evangelizing on the street, someone passing by will give them a polite “no thank you” before continuing on their way.

But here’s the problem that Flat-Earthers run into, and why people dismiss them so fast, and why they get so angry: it’s because the entire “Flat Earth Model” cannot be explained simply.

It just can’t. It’s impossible. Why? Because they first have to spend a huge amount of time explaining why the “Globe Model” (which says the earth is round) is wrong before they can go on to explain why the earth is actually flat. To deconstruct (yes, deconstruct) the Globe Model that everyone learned growing up is a monumental task that cannot be done in a short amount of time, or explained simply.

I understand this. And since I’m a curious bastard that already likes pondering alternative views of reality, I’m happy to listen to a Flat-Earther try to explain why he believes as he does. The problem, as usual, is he gets very excited that someone is finally willing to listen to him and he starts hurling at me a barrage of information that spans physics, history, astronomy, political corruption, and tons of other things.

I finally asked a Flat-Earther if he could recommend a comprehensive resource that would give me the best presentation of his viewpoint. He directed me to a documentary that was ten mother fucking hours long!

But I was already expecting this. Why? Because not everything can be explained simply, and when it comes to a potentially paradigm-shifting thing such as the earth actually being flat—contrary to everything I’ve been told and taught—I figured it would take a significant amount of time to present the information.

Many people I know would immediately dismiss the Flat Earth Theory simply because it takes ten hours to explain it. There are many valid reasons to dismiss the Flat Earth Theory, but the fact that it takes ten hours to explain is not one of them. That’s ridiculous. It takes far more than ten hours to comprehensively flesh out physics, or chemistry, or biology. Whatever you currently do for a job and a paycheck took far more than ten hours to learn. Hell, it takes only ten hours to learn why everything I ever knew and believed about the earth was a lie? That’s a bargain!

So did I watch it? Hell yeah I did.

It took me about two weeks to get through the entire documentary. I watched a little bit at a time. And don’t give me any shit—you, me, and everyone else has binge-watched a TV show consisting of ten one-hour episodes over the course of a couple of days. This was no different.

In the end, I wasn’t convinced that the earth is flat, but I accomplished my goal in that I now have a better understanding of why Flat-Earthers think the way they do. I can now actually have a semi-intelligent conversation about their viewpoint and not just dismiss them simply because I never took the time to look into their perspective.

If you’ve deconstructed your faith and left religion, then you likely may have experienced something similar to what a Flat-Earther feels: wanting to communicate a huge amount of information, but just can’t in a reasonable amount of time. Why? Because chances are your deconstruction journey cannot be explained simply.

There was a ton of information to process. There were a ton of emotions that you experienced. There were a lot of challenging times that you went through. You would have to explain what your life and experience was like when you still believed in God, then explain the series of events that started your questioning, and then explain how you navigated the murky waters of deconstruction to get to where you are now. That’s a lot! And it can’t always be explained simply.

This gets frustrating when religious friends and religious family members want to meet up with you and ask where it all “went wrong” between you and God and Christianity. You try to explain, but it isn’t long before you see their eyes glaze over. Why? Because all they really wanted was a simple explanation. When they realized they weren’t going to get one, they checked out. And that’s not cool because your deconstruction story cannot always be explained simply.

When you went through your deconstruction, you probably read books about science, philosophy, history, and Biblical scholarship. All of those resources likely went pretty deep and were not simple at all. Then if you look at all the sources cited in the text, you realized that the topic continues on into thousands of hours of further reading.

 Even Christianity can’t be explained simply. Since a lot of us were indoctrinated at a young age, we sometimes forget that it takes years upon years to truly learn what the Christian religion is all about. You may remember this frustration if you ever tried to “share your faith” with a non-believing friend. You tried to give them the bullet points, and when that failed to hook them you might’ve tried to go a little deeper, only to have your thoughts jumble together because you didn’t have them all organized. It was too much and you found you couldn’t explain it simply.

We live in a vast, complex, and complicated world. It’s ridiculous to think that everything can be explained simply. That just isn’t the case, and that’s okay.