The future of science and basic skepticism in America lies with the children: what they are taught and how they are taught to think will have ramifications for decades. Unfortunately, there are many forces which almost seem to be conspiring to make the situation as bad as possible. Rather than teach children how to think scientifically and skeptically, they are being taught to be as gullible as possible while accepting whatever nonsense is handed to them.
So I was channel surfing, and ran into Discovery Kids. I swear I watched the program for an hour and was floored. I've been working as a substitute teacher for a bit and have been stunned here and there by all the drug use and sex going on in schools... however nothing blew me away as much as watching an hour of Discovery Kids.
I turned on a program ("Truth or Scare" Hosted by Dawn from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) regaling the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle! I chuckled. And recalled something interesting that Dawkins had suggested to Randi that 'if there isn't a phenomenon it's worthless to investigate it'. There is no point whatsoever in suggesting theories for how psychic phenomena works if there is absolutely no evidence that that it works at all. First you find something interesting, then you try to explain it!
In any event, this program went on and after about four minutes of shouting I was ready to change the channel. Well, my nephew chimed in and wanted to watch it. I didn't really have anything else to watch so I put down the remote. It got worse and worse. Accounts of ships which went missing and the only thing people could suggest is that they were sunk by the giant storm, that perhaps the airplanes flying in the wrong direction had something to do with them dying, or that two ships over a period of several hundred years is coincidence. The continued talking about this theory and that theory, magnets, electric clouds and finally they cited the lost city of Atlantis. I laughed loudly at that one and called my brother in the room.
Then at the last couple lines they had the audacity to "miss if you blink" mention that there's no statistically greater likelihood that a ship goes down in the Bermuda Triangle than anywhere else. Something which I was yelling at the screen for half an hour. You don't need electric fog taking you to another dimension if you don't even have a phenomenon in the first place!
I would have hoped that the Discovery Channel could put together interesting and compelling programming that still teaches good science and strong skepticism — but apparently I would have been wrong. It would have been possible to make a program that is still entertaining, but which emphasizes the importance of discovering that there is no phenomenon in the first place; their choice not to says a lot about them.
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OK I have a question for all you smarty pants skeptics and non believers who don’t think there are mysterious evil forces running loose in the world. Why is it? If you are washing your car and you let go of the water hose and let it drop to the ground, the handle of the spray nozzle will always strike the ground first, resulting in a short burst of water. When this happens, the nozzle will always be pointed directly at your face!
This weekend, I was burning brush–and no matter where I walked, within just a few minutes the smoke would be blowing in my direction again…coincidence?
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Seriously, this has been my issue with god’s actions for a long time. Many Xian apologists spend an extreme amount of time trying to prove things that god did–without bothering to prove god exists _first_–as if they feel that’s not necessary.
Just as the Discovery Kids example–they’re building theories without having a phenomenon. There’s no god shown to exist–and yet there is no end to stories about what he does, what he’s done, and what he will do. He’s responsible for EVERYTHING in the minds of many–but not one person has bothered to verify god even exists yet. They only fight to “prove” he is the logical cause of things. But how things _seem_ is not always how they _are_. If god is not shown to exist, then it’s pointless to argue over what he’s done. Here’s why:
They’re proof god did X usually consists of trying to cast doubt on other theories. They don’t seem to grasp that even in light of no competing theories, god must first be shown to exist before he can be used as a theory himself. If you can’t find any way to observe the mechanism, why do you believe it exists and is causing other things to occur?
I once told an ID’er that even if he and I agreed that the universe certainly does seem to be designed, that only leaves us with a guess, based on what could be faulty interpretations of our observations. We can’t _know_ if what it “seems” like is actually what it is–until we verify our guess.
In order to know whether or not gods (or “intelligent designers”) created the universe, we have to actually verify the designers–if the designers still exist. If they don’t still exist, we have to figure out some way to verify they did exist. Saying, “I can’t think of any other way this could have happened” doesn’t make us right. In fact, it’s hardly even compelling in the context of trying to explain the origins of the universe–a thing most of us hardly grasp.
But showing that a thing logically “seems” to be true to a lot of people is not the same as proving it is true.
If this was all it took, then we’d still be treating people for imbalances of the humors in order to treat depression. Many people assumed the humors were real, and it made perfect, logical sense to them that this is what caused emotional imbalances and some illnesses. But it wasn’t until we began to investigate further–to verify what “seemed” to be the truth–that we found the humors were just–to the surprise of even scholars–a fantasy.
ID is the same way: getting people to agree with you that it’s logical leaves you with as much evidence as we had for humors. Unless you can show “humors” exist and can impact emotional and physical well-being, you have nothing more than a fantasy–even if it “seems” to make sense to you, or me, or even everyone.
Popular consensus is not “proof” that an idea is true. It’s only proof that many people believe it is true.
And saying “humors cause illness” without showing (a) humors exist and (b) they can cause illness, is no different than saying god created the cosmos, without showing (a) a god exits and (b) it can cause cosmos.
Given the predelection of some to ascribe mysterious or supernatural interpretations to just about anything, I suspect that if the point about the Bermuda Triangle not having a particularly high rate of nautical accidents, disappearances, etc. were emphasized, someone will likely turn it around to say that the Bermuda Triangle’s influence has spread. The rest of the world now has just as high a rate of marine mishaps. Oh my gosh, how mysterious!
Ned…you’re freakin’ me out, dude…!