(October 15, 2018 at 7:34 am)Brian37 Wrote: Not this shit again.
Star Trek didn't invent shit. It was a FUCKING TV SHOW, not a lab.
Heh.
Back when Bush II was preparing to take us to war in Iraq, I was hanging out in a discussion group that included skeptics, atheists, paranormalists, and a few Christian apologists. There was a physician there who was a hard-core skeptic, disdainful almost to the point of viciousness when it came to dismissing anything that smacked of the paranormal, supernatural, or religious.
He and I got along pretty well until the inevitable debate came up over whether we should invade Iraq. I maintained that the reasons being given -- WMDs, etc. -- where all agenda-driven rhetoric, with no supporting evidence. He insisted that there WAS evidence that Saddam was on the verge of overthrowing western civilization, and pointed me to a book, The Fist of God, by Frederick Forsyth. Not the kind of book I would usually pick up, but on his recommendation I did, and it was a pretty good read.
When I pointed out to the Doc that Fist of God was fiction, he was undeterred, and continued to argue the hawk's side of the issue, and continued to point to that book as evidence of the kind of thing we needed to be very worried about if we didn't invade Iraq. I couldn't help but lose a bit of the respect I had for him at that point, but I was mystified, too. I had no problem with him taking a contrary political position to mine, but I would have expected a hard-headed skeptic to present better evidence to support that position than a thriller novel.
People are weird.
--
Dr H
"So, I became an anarchist, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
Dr H
"So, I became an anarchist, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
