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Saturday, May 24, 2014
We need to challenge our beliefs
This is Lawrence Krauss replying to his Muslim debate opponent, Uthman Badar. (The full debate is here.) Great stuff, isn't it?
To paraphrase something you said the other day, "faith-based thinkers START with their conclusion." I like that idea. I'll have to remember that the next time on of these religious conservative opens their mouths.
Consider what Lawrence Krauss is saying in the video from my perspective. I paint commercial lawn mowers for a living (it's pretty good money, but the people I work with aren't exactly mental giants, but that's another story). Whenever we come with a new model of mower for the new year, our engineers take the prototypes to their lab and abuse the hell out of them to find the structural and design flaws in them; "crash-testing," if you will. What a fun job to get paid to break stuff on purpose. :)
It's the same thing with science. You continually "crash-test" your ideas and theories until all the flaws are eliminated. Ford forgot that in the 1970s with the Pinto and GM more recently with those bad switches.
So I guess it could be easily said that religion is "unsafe at any speed." :)
On a side-note, I haven't been able to gouge the conservative peanut gallery in the LJS very much lately. I got bogged down with a bad cold a couple of weeks ago and I've also been preoccupied with yard work. Yes, Jody P, some of us do have a life.
Sorry to hear about your cold, Jeff. I hope you're over it now, and that you had a great Memorial Day weekend, yourself.
Religious beliefs don't really surprise me, because that's what so many people have been raised from infancy to believe. But I'm just astonished at how anti-science so many of us Americans have become.
If they won't accept science, how do they plan to tell what's true and what isn't? This isn't the future I expected when I was a kid, I assure you!
To paraphrase something you said the other day, "faith-based thinkers START with their conclusion." I like that idea. I'll have to remember that the next time on of these religious conservative opens their mouths.
ReplyDeleteConsider what Lawrence Krauss is saying in the video from my perspective. I paint commercial lawn mowers for a living (it's pretty good money, but the people I work with aren't exactly mental giants, but that's another story). Whenever we come with a new model of mower for the new year, our engineers take the prototypes to their lab and abuse the hell out of them to find the structural and design flaws in them; "crash-testing," if you will. What a fun job to get paid to break stuff on purpose. :)
It's the same thing with science. You continually "crash-test" your ideas and theories until all the flaws are eliminated. Ford forgot that in the 1970s with the Pinto and GM more recently with those bad switches.
So I guess it could be easily said that religion is "unsafe at any speed." :)
On a side-note, I haven't been able to gouge the conservative peanut gallery in the LJS very much lately. I got bogged down with a bad cold a couple of weeks ago and I've also been preoccupied with yard work. Yes, Jody P, some of us do have a life.
I forgot. Have a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend, WCG.
DeleteSorry to hear about your cold, Jeff. I hope you're over it now, and that you had a great Memorial Day weekend, yourself.
DeleteReligious beliefs don't really surprise me, because that's what so many people have been raised from infancy to believe. But I'm just astonished at how anti-science so many of us Americans have become.
If they won't accept science, how do they plan to tell what's true and what isn't? This isn't the future I expected when I was a kid, I assure you!