(June 4, 2012 at 5:00 pm)apophenia Wrote: Oh hell, I could give you a bullshit answer in a trice, and it would have all to do with baramins.
Thinking up bullshit answers is no trick. Thinking up answers which, at least for a time, do not appear to be bullshit to critical observers — that's what takes "The Right Stuff[tm]".
Exactly. The trouble with trying to shoehorn the magic of mythology into a real-world scientific context is that coming up with an hypothetical proposal, plausible or not, is regarded by those who do it as the end of the journey. In fact, science may begin with hypothetical scenarios, but far from being the final answer, they are merely the springboard for further investigation. Anyone can come up with ad hoc explanations for anything you care to imagine; but then comes the hard work of discovering how those explanations have to work and what the implications are.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'