Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter outed himself as a flat earther late last year, to the shock of some of his fanbase. Carpenter recently appeared on The Jasta Show, Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta's podcast, and elaborated some more on his controversial beliefs.
I give all the credit in the world to ThePRP for patiently transcribing Carpenter's answers. These two parts in particular stick out to me. When asked to elaborate on his thought process, Carpenter went full speed ahead:
"We're all blind believers in the fact that we live on a globe. But when you go to prove that you live on a globe, or even otherwise try to prove that the flat Earth conversation is not true, you end up going to the other side. Because there's far more evidence when the conversation is about flat Earth than there is about the globe. You know, all of our knowledge in regards to the globe is based on our beliefs and our education.
"But when you actually look… Your instincts and your feelings don't ever tell you that you live on, on a spinning flying, spaceball. That's not what you feel. You know, if you were walking on a treadmill right now at a half mile per hour, and I unplugged it, you would feel that. But somehow you can spin around at 1000 miles per hour… 600,000 miles per hour and more, and you can't feel any of that? I mean, at some point… What I had discovered when I went through this whole trying to prove what was and what wasn't; I'm only discovering information that I was unaware of before on that path.
"And it, it just keeps being one more thing that makes sense after another. And I had realized and I'd always ask people, since you know I kind of opened up to it, and I was just like, 'Well, what's your threshold for BS?' You know? 'What's your real threshold for bullshit?' Now I want to say something. It's a rhetorical question I know what your threshold for bullshit is, and all of you, I know what your threshold is. It's generally pretty low.
"You know if I'm telling you some straight up bullshit, and you know I'm telling you some bullshit, because you already know the truth. Your desire to hear me continue with the bullshit will only be based on our relationship.
"If I mean anything to you, you'll hear me out. Because maybe you just want to see how far will I take this damn story. But if I'm not important to you, you really don't have any time or interest in hearing bullshit. You know I mean unless you're really bored. But you know I mean generally, people don't got time for it.
"We got other pressing issues in our lives that we want to do and think about. And so, when you actually take the legitimate time to look into the subject, you know really discover the things that people are actually talking about you will change your perspective. All the people that are in flat Earth were all people who believe they lived on a globe, until they actually looked at it and they're like ‘Oh damn. We're not on a globe.'”
When Jasta asked how this flat earth viewpoint contradicted his previous beliefs in alien life from other planets, Carpenter retorted:
"That's actually been a great comfort to me since I've had this awareness. I can not dismiss what we all define as an alien being. But what I can dismiss is that that alien being did not come from some far off galaxy or distant planet—that ain't fucking happening.
"There could very well be places in this realm that we all exist in, that we're unaware of, because we already were told we all live on a spinning, flying spaceball. So that part's not real. So how much land exists that you have no idea about? How many species exist are out there that you have no idea about?
"Because you're not piloting the plane, you're not out exploring in your ships or any vessels of your own. Your reality is entirely based upon what information people have provided to you. I'm just recognizing that, I don't know how many lies… again, what your threshold is before you cut it off.
"But for me, you've already fooled me once, fooled me twice. I've been the fool so many fucking times that at 50-years-old I'm done being the fool. That doesn't mean I know everything, it just means I'm done listening to the bullshit."
We'd link to the podcast, but it's been removed.
