Police determine flat-earther’s tinfoil-wrapped boat isn’t a bomb – just an explosion of nonsense

Confused flat-earthers set up a baffling display promoting their conspiracy theory in a shopping center parking lot.

Police in Hamilton, Ontario, aren't sure who left a boat wrapped in tinfoil and covered in graffiti promoting "jeranism" -- a belief system that rejects conventional science and promotes the idea that the Earth is flat, reported The Hamilton Spectator.

Officers went Friday and Saturday to investigate complaints about the abandoned boat but determined that it posed no danger to the public and did not promote hate speech.

The boat is painted with red handprints and references to the jeranism slogan: "Open your mind -- there's truth inside."

"We were all taught that we could find the truth in textbooks," reads an introduction to the belief system on the Jeranism.com website. "We all felt we could rely on our parents, teachers, preachers and those in the scientific community to teach us about reality. But the truth never came and what they said was true, didn't match our reality. When you are finally fed up with all the lies... open your mind... there's truth inside!"

A hand-painted message on the boat directs passersby to check out the website globebusters.com/jeranism -- which is a nonexistent page on a British travel agency, rather than a link to the jeranism.com/globebusters video page that was likely intended.

Other hand-painted messages mock NASA as a joke that uses "really bad acting."

Police also found a baffling assortment of items inside the boat, including clothes, memory foam and the book, "Mysteries of the Unexplained."

Security guards at The Centre on Barton said they had contacted the boat's owner and asked them to remove it.

The newspaper noted a poem that was painted on the boat's port side:

That was a good one, the joke was on us

I know it sounds crazy but it's God now we trust

The Key-Wit is flowing, hear them all hiss;

The Globe is a joke and I'm not gonna miss

I know it sounds Crazy, As if Stars are Souls

We all live on a Plane and there's only one pole

The Great Grandmother, She's not the only one,

There's lots of others, gonna come undone.

Police said they would let the city's bylaw enforcement department decide what to do about the boat if its owner does not remove it from the parking lot.

Many flat-earthers welcomed the publicity generated by the boat display, but others cautioned that its muddled message might do more harm than good -- and some warned that it might have been deliberately set up by government agents to discredit the jeranism movement.

"We're playing the flat-earthers as crazed conspiracy theorists," said Jesse Spots, who promotes conspiracy theories about transhumanism -- or the fusion of humans with technology. "Jeranism cannot be blamed for this instance. It is exciting because it's this random story, but it has psy-op written all over it."

Jeranism fits into a growing mistrust of conventionally accepted truths about any number of topics -- including vaccine and climate science to historical accounts and political science -- and the acceptance of impossible-to-prove conspiracy theories.

Most of these ideas remain on the fringes, where they're promoted in lengthy YouTube videos and shared on social media, but some of these wacky theories -- such as a rejection of climate science and the Jade Helm 15 conspiracy theories -- are promoted by Republican lawmakers and candidates.

Recent polls have suggested that one in four Americans are unaware the Earth revolves around the sun, just as one-fourth of Americans believe President Barack Obama may be the Antichrist, 33 percent hold creationist beliefs, nearly 40 percent believe global warming is a hoax, and about half believe in one or more medical conspiracy theories.

"Star Trek: Voyager" actress Kate Mulgrew and physicist Lawrence Krauss both claimed they were tricked last year into appearing in a film, "The Principle," that questions whether the Earth revolves around the sun.

Watch this "Globebusters" video about the so-called "concave earth" theory: