Atheism and the existence of peanut butter

[Anomalocaris]

I agree with Anom here. The reasoning used was (roughly):

1. Light is a wave (backed by evidence).

2. Waves need a medium through which to move (incorrect premise, but backed by every observation made hitherto).

Therefore some kind of medium through which light moves must exist. (Luminiferous ether was the name given to this hypothetical medium).

***

The conclusion is wrong because premise 2 is wrong, but sound logic otherwise. All the premises were backed by evidence.

And the interesting thing is, proving the conclusion wrong is what taught us that premise 2 is wrong. As I said before: the "wrong idea" served as a sounding board for finding the correct idea.

One thing I am interested in is how such wrong ideas arise, maintain themselves, and die. Often, they seem to almost be essential steps in the process. For example, the whole notion of natural laws that could be understood by humans was developed (in part, not wholly) under theist assumptions of a good deity that created humans to use reason. Eventually, many left behind the theological justifications and now see natural laws as meaningful in and of themselves.

I think the Concept that natural law is comprehensible by humans had been in circulation since at least classical Greece, and was developed as an alternative to the common perception that nature operate by the whim of deities.     It was only later that Christians, who found it amongst their long unwanted patrimony from classical pagan civilization, and whose wont is to turn everything into a praise of their vainglorious god, who perverted it into a argument for their baroque all powerful deity.