*heh*
Well, either him or his clone, thinking exactly as he does.
Example, a snippet dealing with education, Darwinism and Intelligent Design:
“So long as the idea of scientific method — the generation and testing of falsifiable hypotheses — is shown, I don’t have any great worries that bright kids won’t figure out their own answers to matters like intelligent design; and I don’t really care if my auto mechanic believes in his heart of hearts that he was divinely created and endowed by his creators with certain inalienable rights as opposed to his having evolved from bonobos without attention from his creator. I do worry that he knows how to read the output of the computer test equipment, and that he can figure out what the funny squeak is…
“…Mandating the “correct” position and requiring local schools to adopt that is a more dangerous principle than teaching an alternative to Darwin, without regard to whether Darwin is “really true” and belief in Darwin is so fragile that teaching an alternative would undermine belief in Natural Selection. I am not convinced that there is a school district that would teach “flat earth” as an alternative to the conventional wisdom, but if there were, I do not think the republic would fall if that were allowed. There would be ridicule and merriment and mirth, but I doubt the consequences would be much greater than that.”
Read more at the link and here as well.
Heck, go a little further than Dr. Pournelle’s very calm and reasonable argument and (BUY AND) read James P. Hogan’s, Kicking the Sacred Cow. Hogan may go to extremes at times in his aversion for Dogmatic Science practiced as a religion, not science, but he marshalls his facts pretty convincingly in an accessible presentation for laymen.
Similarly to Hogan, it really chaps my gizzard to see purely religious views presented as “science”–and conversely to see religious views denigrated because they are not scientific. As my old chemistry prof was wont to say, the two manners of approaching reality deal with entirely different sets of questions and using the thinking of “blind faith” in science is just as stupid as attempting to use scientific reasoning to prove/disprove matters of faith.
Science cannot ultimately even ask or answer real “why” questions, just as religion cannot deal satisfactorily with “how” questions. ANd people who cannot see the differences in the two manners of thinking and the sets of questions they can effectively deal with are just dumber than a bag of hammers, no matter how high their IQ may test or how much alphabet soup they may string after their names.
Trackposted to Maggie’s Notebook, Right Truth, Adam’s Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, D equals S, McCain Blogs, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Celebrity Smack, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
