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Re: Queen mother (of Britai...

Graeme
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SubjectRe: Queen mother (of Britain) has died
FromGraeme
Date2002-04-11 20:46 (2002-04-11 20:46)
Message-ID<20020411144619.22879.00003333@mb-mc.aol.com>
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Newsgroupsalt.fan.tolkien
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FollowupsAC (1h & 41m) > Graeme
Aaron C said:

I don't think that speciation requires much in the way of specialized

training. It may require that things be pointed out to the layman, but so does subatomic physics.

Sub-atomic physics isn't intuitively obvious either, so that fits in fine with what I'm saying. The laymen DOES need to have these things pointed out, and can't be expected to know them as easily as watching a sunrise or dropping a banana and seeing it fall. (Bet you thought I was going to say "apple", didn't you?)

Something does not have to be intuitively obvious to be a fact. It was not

obvious to anybody for thousands of years that the Earth circled the Sun. From the limited observational abilities of even the most learned astronomer, such a view would not have been immediately obvious.

I think you're missing my point, which was not about facts, but about the way people react emotionally to facts. Whether or not evolution is a fact has no bearing on whether or not people can make a cult out of it.

It was not obvious to anybody for thousands of years that the Earth circled

the Sun. From the limited observational abilities of even the most learned astronomer, such a view would not have been immediately obvious.

Exactly so. It's not intuitively obvious. There are probably perfectly sane people today somewhere in the world, who aren't aware of it. Possibly even some who don't care especially.

Sherlock Holmes' famous "What the deuce is it to me? You say that we go around the sun. If we went around the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work." comment may be a bit extreme, but was made in good faith. Copernican theory may be true, but there's no taboo against questioning it. At least not any more. There is such a taboo with evolution, and taboos aren't good science. Neither is discouraging questioning.

Alternate explanations of planetary motions were every bit as acceptable,

because there was no way to falsify any particular theory. However, when people like Copernicus and Galileo came along, any other theory of the solar system became extinct (positions of certain Church officials not withstanding). I would not call Gallileo a practitioner of "bad religion" because his peers didn't believe him

Oh, the church definitely had egg on their face over that. Because they had stepped out of their field and had attempted to interpret science. Science gave us the terracentric view, and the church offered their own explanation of the facts. "Oh well, the REASON why everything revolves around the earth is because the earth is so important, don't you see." Then science steps back in later. "Whoops! Sorry, the sun doesn't go around the earth after all, it's the other way around," and the church looks silly, justly so, for trying to pass their wild guesses off as something doctrinal.

Very embarrassing for them, to be sure. But some have tried to take it even farther, blaming them for the existence of the terracentric view in the first place, and citing its discrediting as an example of science disproving religion. Actually no, it's a case of science disproving itself (since the the old view was perfectly acceptable in its time, as you say), and religion looking foolish for hanging its shingle where it didn't belong. Or at the very least for statings its guesses as facts.

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AC (1h & 41m) > Graeme