huh? what i didn't understand that.

 

There is a divide between those who want empirically based facts and those for whom facts are a testament of faith. So one claims an eternal certainty and the other uses what was most recently observed until replaced by better observations. For example, Galileo Galilei and the issue of heliocentrism.

It was a testament of faith that everything rotated about the earth, the center of God's kingdom. But Galileo used observation, facts and data, that said we are but in orbit around the Sun, as Copernicus had claimed before. For his efforts, Galileo became a person of interest to the Inquisition.

So when we talk about reality, the facts and data, it helps to understand there are some for whom nothing but painful reality could ever change their minds ... their delusion of the facts. In contrast, the children of the Age of Enlightenment are totally driven by observations that can be replicated by others. However, this often leads to great shifts in our understanding of the universe.

Newton completed Galileo's work and gave us classical physics and calculus. Then Einstein turned it on its head. Then Heisenberg make it a 'crap shoot.' In each transition, the empiricists have moved to the newer, better understanding with a breathtaking speed. In contrast, there is the creationist museum in Ohio ...

Does that help?

Bob Wilson

ps. I also drive a hybrid electric ... to bring some relevance to the discussion.

 

It is truly very easy to call others intellectually challenged when they do not agree with our opinions, whatever they may be. Do I believe drilling is the answer? No. Do I believe conservation alone is the answer? No. Do I believe one person's fact is another person's fairly tale? Yes.

People do not like pain, do not like discomfort, and yet do like the easy way out, and will run in the direction of percieved no pain, no matter how much of a mirage that path is. Hence the move to want more drilling instead of conservation. There may indeed come a day when this resource is gone, and at that point all the arguing, name calling, profiling will have been but wasted words.

Oh, and to address those who feel that people of faith do not possess the intellectual capacity to understand or appreciate what science and technology can do, you are casting a very wide, very profiling net. I am a person of faith, and glad that I am. Yet facts are facts, at least until our understanding and appreciation of their merits cause us to explore them and their foundations even more. That is the beauty of learning and growing, yet appreciating the marvels of this world and universe we live in.

 

I very much enjoyed your posting and like you, also carry my faith in heart and soul. But I don't go to my Bible to deal with the natural sciences nor to science to find my faith in God and the teachings of Jesus. These worlds live quite happy as long as each addresses their respective areas of expertise. So we do unto others what we would have them do unto us ... not what they done did to us (sometimes a hard choice for a moderator.)

I grew up in Oklahoma and even now can recognize the signs of a buffalo wallow, a game trail or the former site of a wildcatter. The latest burst of energy prices (more are coming) is moving us towards a functional conservation of energy. Houses are being insulated, driving is more for purpose, and temporarily folks are getting a clue.

Hybrid skeptics in the past tried to paint us as "green", which for me meant being frugal with these Yankee greenback dollars. I'm also "green" about not liking mercury in the fish I catch or the duck and turkey populations crashing from lead and wasted pesticides or deer inedible with spongy encephalitis. I like diversity in fallow fields but I also accept that we must change and will change our environment. The question for me, will these changes be a suicide pact?

Bob Wilson

 

ABC news reports 10 BILLION miles less were driven in May 08 compared to May 07.
40 BILLION less than this time last year....