[meteorite-list] Mohamed's lunars and meteorites and ******

From: Sharkkb8_at_aol.com <Sharkkb8_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:54:00 2004
Message-ID: <11d.b9346be.298f4ce0_at_aol.com>

 
<< bible-thumping creationists >>

<< why are there still so many people who insist on dredging up old myths
from 2000 years ago and blindly following it calling this ignorance "faith"?
Don't walk too far guys, you might fall off the edge of the earth!! >>


I always find this so amusing. Every society since the Dawn of Time
considers itself to be "The Enlightened" one, including our own. A few
generations ago, the then-dominant religious faction heaped scorn and
derision on scientists, viewing their studies as heresy, and condemning them
for daring to defy the then-current religious wisdom of the day. We look
back and wonder how they could have been so myopic.

Of course, a hundred years later, the scientific world now does PRECISELY the
same thing in the other direction. They lay pious claim to "The Truth", and
haughtily dismiss and insult their now-dominated religious "opponents". The
exact mirror-image. The science of the year 2002 makes the science of the
year 1902 look amateurish. Does anyone here think it will be otherwise a
hundred years from NOW? Think today's scientific certainties just might be
regarded as quaint and amusing, a century hence? Think maybe the views you
believe to be unquestionable at this moment, will be proven to be inaccurate,
long after we've shuffled off this mortal coil? Has it ever been otherwise,
in the history of science? The arrogance today, in the name of transitory
science, is staggering.

Both positions - the blind faith of the religious and the blind
secular-faith of the scientific - exhibit the exact same
self-congratulatory hubris: the assumption that THEIR position is the only
one worth believing, and thus anyone who has the sheer temerity to consider
other possibilities must, by definition, be an idiot.

I don't happen to be particulalry religious, but it always astounds me how
both positions can be so viciously intolerant, while criticizing the other
for its intolerance, presumably with a straight face. The human capacity
for hypocrisy is breathtaking. Even a reasonably thoughtful centrist
position, such as believing that a Supreme Being created evolution, is
regarded with hostility and suspicion, from both radical flanks.

Science vs. religion. Mortal enemies. So much for today's trendy, pious,
hypocritical praise of "tolerance" and "diversity".

    Gregory

(Go Pats!)
Received on Sun 03 Feb 2002 09:33:04 PM PST