My Life as a Skeptical Rogue.
You can't beat Coast to Coast AM as third shift entertainment. Every night I am assaulted by an host of ideas, from real to plausible to crazy. Mostly crazy. But it can be a sort of disarmingly sincere crazy. Apparently some people have an odd dream and think "boy, that was an odd dream!" while some people think "Ohmygod, I was abducted by ALIENS!!!" Some of us might see a light in the sky and think, "huh, I wonder what that is?" while some think "Ohmygod, UFOS!!!!!!" I think it is all a mixture of naive mistakes, delusion, and outright fraud. Some people think what psychics do is fine, since they bring people comfort. Religion is the same way, thinking there is some sort of order to the world brings people comfort. Right now there is a very tragic accident locally where a business owner forgot about his child in the backseat and left the car parked all day. The car was actually a very nice BMW, with a motion detector inside and the alarm would go off at intervals. At each interval the man looked to see if anyone was around his car, but assumed I guess it was false. I can't imagine the horror the man must be feeling at what he let happen. We all do absolutely boneheaded things we can't explain. One day I brought home a gallon of milk, and inexplicably failed to put it in the refrigerator. But a spoiled gallon of milk is not a dead child. I can well understand why someone might go to a psychic, and want to believe the child communicated to that person that he is forgiven. The guilt must be unimaginably intense.
Surely there must be on order to it all. A grand point. Surely. One look at nature, though, tells the harsh truth. Far more offspring are produced in the wild than can possibly survive. Many species produce hundreds and thousands of young so that a scant handful might grow to survive. Animals starve from lack of food, while slightly stronger variations go on to get a meal.
Nature is both harsh and beautiful. But we are different, we are self-aware and have the ability to take care of our weak. One thing the religions have sometimes gotten right is that it is all about the "widows and orphans." Any society that doesn't take care of those who can't take care of themselves has to be judged poorly by human morality. We put people on the streets as "homeless" who should be taken care of in some sort of center because they are mentally ill. Those people, and the physically handicapped, would be dead in the natural world. Because we have reason and know better, we ought to do better.
My entire point is just that we are those responsible for making the world what we want it do be. No one is coming to save us, either. There was no Garden of Eden or Heaven to fall from or aspire too. All we have is each other. Sure we could take Pascal's Wager, but that's just like buying a lottery ticket. Sure you might get lucky, I guess, but you could just try to build a better life for yourself one step at a time.
A funny and not coincidental thing I noticed about alien abduction stories is that they seem to carry warnings for humanity based on whatever the popular anxiety of the day is. Back in the 50s and 60s, it was all warning about atomic weapons. Nowadays it is usually enviromental warnings about global warming. I think alien abduction stories are the sci-fi equivalent of religious experiences.
My favorite part of Coast to Coast AM though is the exasperation that so many seem to feel at the lack of mainstream acceptance of their particular idea. On the other hand, plenty of people seem to take something as dumb as astrology seriously.
For some people, though, whatever is real is of secondary importance. I don't claim any special knowledge of of reality, but I do try.
Actually. my real favorite part of Coast to Coast is this insistance that science doesn't know everything. OF COURSE IT DOESN'T!! Einstien came along and demonstrated that Newton didn't have it quite right. Well, that's science. Science is a methodology of gaining knowledge. It is not some monolithic organization handing down arbitrary proclimations. People get upset when science contradicts itself. But it doesn't. Science is an incredibly laborious, messy process. The simple fact is, though, that we are always moving toward having a better understanding of reality.
Proponents of things like alternative medicine, astrology, and psychics amoung other woo-woo ideas like to treat science like some ancient conspiracy they are courageous enough to question. Science, though, is a baby compared to those ideas. Religion has been around for all of recorded history as far as we can tell. But science has done far more to enhance our understanding of the universe in the few centuries it has haphazardly existed than the thousands of years of superstition that preceded it.
Word!
Surely there must be on order to it all. A grand point. Surely. One look at nature, though, tells the harsh truth. Far more offspring are produced in the wild than can possibly survive. Many species produce hundreds and thousands of young so that a scant handful might grow to survive. Animals starve from lack of food, while slightly stronger variations go on to get a meal.
Nature is both harsh and beautiful. But we are different, we are self-aware and have the ability to take care of our weak. One thing the religions have sometimes gotten right is that it is all about the "widows and orphans." Any society that doesn't take care of those who can't take care of themselves has to be judged poorly by human morality. We put people on the streets as "homeless" who should be taken care of in some sort of center because they are mentally ill. Those people, and the physically handicapped, would be dead in the natural world. Because we have reason and know better, we ought to do better.
My entire point is just that we are those responsible for making the world what we want it do be. No one is coming to save us, either. There was no Garden of Eden or Heaven to fall from or aspire too. All we have is each other. Sure we could take Pascal's Wager, but that's just like buying a lottery ticket. Sure you might get lucky, I guess, but you could just try to build a better life for yourself one step at a time.
A funny and not coincidental thing I noticed about alien abduction stories is that they seem to carry warnings for humanity based on whatever the popular anxiety of the day is. Back in the 50s and 60s, it was all warning about atomic weapons. Nowadays it is usually enviromental warnings about global warming. I think alien abduction stories are the sci-fi equivalent of religious experiences.
My favorite part of Coast to Coast AM though is the exasperation that so many seem to feel at the lack of mainstream acceptance of their particular idea. On the other hand, plenty of people seem to take something as dumb as astrology seriously.
For some people, though, whatever is real is of secondary importance. I don't claim any special knowledge of of reality, but I do try.
Actually. my real favorite part of Coast to Coast is this insistance that science doesn't know everything. OF COURSE IT DOESN'T!! Einstien came along and demonstrated that Newton didn't have it quite right. Well, that's science. Science is a methodology of gaining knowledge. It is not some monolithic organization handing down arbitrary proclimations. People get upset when science contradicts itself. But it doesn't. Science is an incredibly laborious, messy process. The simple fact is, though, that we are always moving toward having a better understanding of reality.
Proponents of things like alternative medicine, astrology, and psychics amoung other woo-woo ideas like to treat science like some ancient conspiracy they are courageous enough to question. Science, though, is a baby compared to those ideas. Religion has been around for all of recorded history as far as we can tell. But science has done far more to enhance our understanding of the universe in the few centuries it has haphazardly existed than the thousands of years of superstition that preceded it.
Word!