First Orbit - the movie (by firstorbit)
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People have been stealing my artwork from this comic for their own purposes. To fight this I’m trying to share my original as widely as possible. In the spirit of the season, based on the number of page views I can get, I will be donating to Doctors Without Borders (see my site for more details). So please help me by sharing this comic, thanks!
“Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops.”
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
“Viddy well, little brother. Viddy well.”
“Micro-changes in air density, my ass.”
Yes, but… wait!
Tumbled off one @yes-butno manifesto proudly saying “Yes, I’m a christian. Yes, I believe in evolution”, reblogged by 1000+s users. The message how I read it is “We’re open-minded enough to combine two contradictory worldviews in our heads, so nobody can blame us in dogmatism and hypocrisy”.
Disclaimer: if you’ve supported the manifesto but this is not what you’ve tried to say — you can stop reading here :)
OK, I saw this position many times, and I discussed it a lot, but I think it’s never too late and too much to repeat an old truth.
So, is it brave to be religious and believe in some contradicting scientific theory like Darwinian evolution or Big Bang theory? Is it open-minded and anti-hypocritical, now some commenters boast? Time to write my counter-manifesto, in the same “yes, but no” style :)
YES, you can believe in evolution/BigBang/etc, being christian or whoever else. After all, who’ll prevent you?
BUT
NO, this is not a bravery or open-mindness, at all. Rather blindness and big big misunderstanding, because it misses the main and crucial point of any scientific theory: YOU HAVE NOT TO BELIEVE in evolution or any other theory, even if it’s proven!
OK, let’s make it even stronger: you have to doubt any theory! Not just deny, like infamous AIDS-denialists, but DOUBT.
“Doubt to be sure” — that is the hardest trick! This looks like a paradox, and only truly brave and open-minded can embrace it in its entire beauty.
Indeed, the more you doubt a theory, the more you test it. The more tests it successfully passes, the more durable and trustworthy it becomes. If at some point your favorite fails — you bite a bullet and derive a new, better theory, which passes all previous tests plus the failed one. The way of doubts and tests and elimination of inadequate and maladaptive (sounds familiar?) is what can give you 99% of trust that the theory works well in most cases — but you’ll never get 100% trust (what the word “believe in” means).
This is how critical minds work, and how it’s totally different from any belief, and why the manifesto is so freakish. Those who regularly [re]invent this “I believe in <some scientific theory>” manifesto nonsense, just habitually follow their religious mindset inherited from early childhood when we unquestioningly believe what we were said; now they try to be “tolerant / neutral / many-sided”, but imperceptibly sliding down into the comfortable “no doubts, just believe” state of mind.
So, this manifesto is not a word that I’d support and spread, because if you think more and deeper, it appears not thought-out very well. Amen :)
Ding-dung…
One green and organic farm in quiet lands killed and harmed more people than a nuclear power station hit by a top-ranked earthquake and tsunami. So, what should be banned first, huh?
(Source: facebook.com)
