Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Aaaaaaaaaiiiiiighhhhhh!

In the soundtrack to my mental life, the effect that plays during moments of disbelief and shock is Gibson Haynes's opening scream to the song "Helicopter" on the B******* Surfers' 1990 EP "Widowermaker". (Good song, BTW.) You'll have to mentally substitute your favorite sound effect as you read the rest of the post.

Anyway, I saw this bumper sticker on a car in the parking lot of Grantley Hall today:

Few things depress me as much as the general lack of understanding of science in our society. The evidence for the factuality of evolution is profound and overwhelming; see any book by Stephen Jay Gould, for example. The theory of evolution by natural selection is a fruitful one. We can use it to explain evidence, make predictions, and all those other good things that allow us to test the worth of scientific theories.

I could speculate on the reasons why people deny evolution, but what's the point? What really concerns me is not so much the denial, but the feeling that these people are so fixed in their views that nothing could convince them that their views are wrong. And how can you argue against that?

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