Thursday, November 15, 2012

Anti Is A-OK

Some people see a problem with atheism because it's being anti something rather pro something. In response, an analogy might work to help understand--if there is an attack by someone a wielding a baseball bat, it's perfectly okay to be anti people who have weaponized baseball bats without being pro anything else. Anyone can also take a position as anti ancient aliens, board games or car alarms without being pro anything else.

Detached Discoveries

A fact is not dependent on the person who discovered it. For example, if the person(s) who discovered radiation for some reason decided it wasn't real wouldn't have stopped x-rays from being taken or the atomic bomb from exploding. Galileo's recantation under threat of torture didn't put the earth at the center of the universe. 

I think we need to maintain distance between people and their discoveries. Otherwise, we make huge mistakes about what constitutes proof of something.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Dictating Documents

It seems to me that we mistakenly treat the dictionary and the constitution in the same manner. Both are records created by us that we then use to dictate to us!

Dictionaries record our use of words (it does not determine definitions for us) and the Constitution is a snap shot of what political leaders thought at one moment in time (it is not an infallible set of timeless instructions).

We keep trying to find a way to fool ourselves into thinking we aren't responsible for ourselves, but it's just an illusion. We are all we have.