Intelligent design being taught as science?
People actually believing the whole Apollo moon hoax thing?
Is it just me, or is there something really wrong here?
Boing boing’s challenge is amusing if misguided. There’s really no need to stoop to their level. Evolution’s value is not in whether or not someone can provide empirical evidence of it, but in whether it is useful in explaining the world around us. In the world of science, it is, and there is no other theory which is even worth thinking twice about. I have no problem with people believing what they like about the origin and development of life of earth, and for all I know they might be right. Yes, God, or a Flying Spaghetti Monster, may well have created everything. I can’t disprove it, because it’s not a falsifiable claim, which means that scientifically, it’s a useless claim. Even if it’s true, science doesn’t care, because it doesn’t help to understand or model anything.
Tonight I went to see a lecture as part of the Australian Science Festival about the hoax claims around the apollo moon landings. Basically, it was just a debunking of the good old Fox documentary, and nothing I hadn’t read before, but the idea that people actually believe this stuff worries me. I liked the X Files as much as the next person (probably more actually), but there comes a point in your life where you have to start trying to separate fact from fantasy. I can understand that very biased documentary introducing some doubt into people’s minds, but with little bit of thought you realise that a hoax involving tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people over 30 years is a lot more unlikely.
Anyway, perhaps I’m just in a ranting mood.