How do we know that blue whales exist? I've only seen pictures and video, and we know that those can be faked. I've read about them, but men are fallible and can lie and mislead us! How do we know that molecules exist? Atoms? Neutrinos? Gas giants? Cedar waxwings? Gatling guns? Gravity? The color red????
We are where we are today as a species and a global community because we are able to filter out the stuff that is real from the stuff that is bullshit most of the time. Even with the special exceptions we make for religion and other forms of woo, we've managed to build a pretty modern and advanced world for ourselves. If god was real and decided to make himself known, what makes anyone think that we'd have a problem figuring it out? Why would anyone expect that god would show up, perform a card trick for a few people, then duck back into his metaphysical closet and wait to see how billions of us react?
Maybe the problem is that we expect so little from god, while extolling his almighty virtues. Just show up already. We'll figure it out.
We are where we are today as a species and a global community because we are able to filter out the stuff that is real from the stuff that is bullshit most of the time. Even with the special exceptions we make for religion and other forms of woo, we've managed to build a pretty modern and advanced world for ourselves. If god was real and decided to make himself known, what makes anyone think that we'd have a problem figuring it out? Why would anyone expect that god would show up, perform a card trick for a few people, then duck back into his metaphysical closet and wait to see how billions of us react?
Maybe the problem is that we expect so little from god, while extolling his almighty virtues. Just show up already. We'll figure it out.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
