Quote:
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Originally Posted by davem
Still, as long as we're both happy in our delusions, what's the problem?
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Here's the problems:
- When I cannot speak of my secondary world for fear of retribution, and
- When belief in a secondary world kills.
If you want to believe in Balrog wings and elves and lycanthropy and feng shui and pyramid power and Atlantis and God and the Devil and all things in between, well, have at it and enjoy. When I respectfully and humbly say that one, some or all of these notions are bunk, and suddenly must fear for my life as the pitchforked mob is coming, then I think we have a problem. If you believe that God will heal your child of X, and I have a scientifically proven cure for X that you will not utilize and the child suffers and dies, then we have a problem. If I wanted a bridge built, I would ask the help of an engineer (one with a proven track record) than someone who simply really really believes that with the help of Oompa-Loompas that he/she can do just as well.
Getting the placement of your keyboard, mouse and monitor 'just right' is a bit of an art, and no two persons would arrive at exactly the same configuration, just like when interpretting John's words in Revelations, or when considering why Peter Jackson spawned his Uruks from mud, or what really made Gollum fall. We can fill in with Art that which we cannot definitively nail down.
But for somethings, we'd better arrive at the same answer or one of us is wrong. The Mars Climate Orbiter crashed as someone confused imperial units for those metric. Oops!
Not even science has all of the Answers, but with a free market place of ideas and thought, for those physical/materials things within its scope we will continually arrive at the Truth (an approximation, as some of you well know
).
And lastly, the first part of
this article, coincidencely published today (spooky!
), gives a glimpse into why we do what we do.