"F*cking magnets, how do they work?!"
***WARNING: POST CONTAINS MUCH BILE AND RAGE**
I realise that I can come across very agressively when I am pissed off about something I am passionate about. And that my views are my own. If you are looking for an entierly polite and sensible LJ post to read today I suggest you move along, I am not looking to offend anyone. I am just venting.
This is a mini-rant that I have been meaning to post for a over a week now. The spark that set of this little rage was something that I saw while I was staying with
verdandielske in Switzerland and given that I was only there for a week I decided not to waste any of my time by indulging in some internet ranting.
Well now I am back home. It's on.
I think it was the Tuesday before I was set to return home that I saw a chap in Zurich wearing a shirt with the slogan, 'I don't believe in science only love, sex and myself.'
Now when I saw this, two things struck me;
1. Is that shirt intentionally or accidentally misquoting Bob Dylan who I believe (and a quick Google search seems to back me up on this one) said 'I don't believe in science, only love, sex and music.'
2. ARGH WHY WOULD YOU WEAR SOMETHING THAT DECLARES YOUR OWN WILLFULL IGNORANCE! MY BRAIN HURTS JUST BEING NEAR YOU!
I don’t think this chap quite understood the irony of wearing such attire whilst at the same time sitting in a metro-link cabin, listening to music on his iphone and occasionally inspecting his battery powered watch to find out the time.
The incident reminded me a whole lot of this atrocity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-agl0pOQfs
I just don’t understand this kind of wilful ignorance that I see pop up more and more. I realise that a t-shirt slogan and the musical styling’s of Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J don’t really amount to much but I have actually heard people take this line of reasoning further.
I remember in Sixth Form being challenged on my acceptance of the theory of evolution literally with the question ‘if humans evolved from monkeys, then why do monkeys still exist?’ displaying quite clearly that although this person thought he had seriously shaken the whole theory with that masterstroke, he actually didn’t have a f*cking clue about even the most aspects of it. I went on to explain to him that there is a tremendous body of scientific evidence to support what I was saying from genetics, the fossil records and more. His response to this was ‘yea but that’s only if you believe in science.’
At the time I was more polite in responding to this moronic retort. With hindsight what I wish I had done was pull a face and shouted WHY YOU SO STUPID? STUPID!
This unfortunately isn’t the only time I have heard statements like this or similar. The real winners of the dunce hat go to statements like:
‘Belief in science is exactly the same as belief in x (where x is something that has no empirical evidence to back it up).’ No, no it is not. Observation and the acquisition of empirical evidence, that means that it alters depending on facts that we can test, retest and retest another five or six times if we bloody well like just to make sure we have it right. And if a hypothesis is incorrect then through scientifically rigorous inquiry the evidence proving so should come to light. I will admit the process isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t matter because it is an ongoing process towards better answers. Some of the most important developments in the history of science have been made by men who practiced magic, alchemy, astrology and more. They came up with the best answers they had for the world as they found it and what was important was that they experimented, challenged established ideas and discarded ideas that they found to be baseless. Science is not a matter of belief. It is not something ineffable, passive to the receiver, transient or indeed numinous. And those who claim that it is just opinion or of the same nature as any phenomenon for which there is no factual or empirical basis, are indulging in this wilful ignorance. The information is out there. It’s not going to melt your brain. Go look it up!
I realise that I can come across very agressively when I am pissed off about something I am passionate about. And that my views are my own. If you are looking for an entierly polite and sensible LJ post to read today I suggest you move along, I am not looking to offend anyone. I am just venting.
This is a mini-rant that I have been meaning to post for a over a week now. The spark that set of this little rage was something that I saw while I was staying with
verdandielske in Switzerland and given that I was only there for a week I decided not to waste any of my time by indulging in some internet ranting.
Well now I am back home. It's on.
I think it was the Tuesday before I was set to return home that I saw a chap in Zurich wearing a shirt with the slogan, 'I don't believe in science only love, sex and myself.'
Now when I saw this, two things struck me;
1. Is that shirt intentionally or accidentally misquoting Bob Dylan who I believe (and a quick Google search seems to back me up on this one) said 'I don't believe in science, only love, sex and music.'
2. ARGH WHY WOULD YOU WEAR SOMETHING THAT DECLARES YOUR OWN WILLFULL IGNORANCE! MY BRAIN HURTS JUST BEING NEAR YOU!
I don’t think this chap quite understood the irony of wearing such attire whilst at the same time sitting in a metro-link cabin, listening to music on his iphone and occasionally inspecting his battery powered watch to find out the time.
The incident reminded me a whole lot of this atrocity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-agl0pOQfs
I just don’t understand this kind of wilful ignorance that I see pop up more and more. I realise that a t-shirt slogan and the musical styling’s of Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J don’t really amount to much but I have actually heard people take this line of reasoning further.
I remember in Sixth Form being challenged on my acceptance of the theory of evolution literally with the question ‘if humans evolved from monkeys, then why do monkeys still exist?’ displaying quite clearly that although this person thought he had seriously shaken the whole theory with that masterstroke, he actually didn’t have a f*cking clue about even the most aspects of it. I went on to explain to him that there is a tremendous body of scientific evidence to support what I was saying from genetics, the fossil records and more. His response to this was ‘yea but that’s only if you believe in science.’
At the time I was more polite in responding to this moronic retort. With hindsight what I wish I had done was pull a face and shouted WHY YOU SO STUPID? STUPID!
This unfortunately isn’t the only time I have heard statements like this or similar. The real winners of the dunce hat go to statements like:
‘Belief in science is exactly the same as belief in x (where x is something that has no empirical evidence to back it up).’ No, no it is not. Observation and the acquisition of empirical evidence, that means that it alters depending on facts that we can test, retest and retest another five or six times if we bloody well like just to make sure we have it right. And if a hypothesis is incorrect then through scientifically rigorous inquiry the evidence proving so should come to light. I will admit the process isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t matter because it is an ongoing process towards better answers. Some of the most important developments in the history of science have been made by men who practiced magic, alchemy, astrology and more. They came up with the best answers they had for the world as they found it and what was important was that they experimented, challenged established ideas and discarded ideas that they found to be baseless. Science is not a matter of belief. It is not something ineffable, passive to the receiver, transient or indeed numinous. And those who claim that it is just opinion or of the same nature as any phenomenon for which there is no factual or empirical basis, are indulging in this wilful ignorance. The information is out there. It’s not going to melt your brain. Go look it up!