Opinion/Editorial

SCIENCE

When you take your kid to the doctor and the doctor says he must give your child a shot of heavy duty antibiotics, then what you have is the result of something called science. You have just been impacted, by a life-saving liquid as it pumps into your child’s arm by the culmination of decades, maybe ions of knowledge. This span of knowledge going back in time, from other humans, most of whom are dead or gone, acting upon that collected knowledge is what we today call science. When the shot works, and other shots given before it are proven to have been effective too, then that conclusion is what we call the result of the scientific process. That process allows those living on the planet to know that each and every time something proven from the past is applied, that its chance of working is pretty strong. When you turn on the lights in your home, after coming home from work, you don’t even think about the process of data accumulation and actions that allow this wonder of light to spread warmth and visibility all about the space you’ve isolated for your private habitat. Science is about what works, keeps working, and has been proven to work in the past; time after time after time.

So, why is any discussion of this vital word and process being written about here in this opinion article? It’s here because disaster lurks right beyond the next corner, and potentially just beyond the sign post up ahead. The results of scientific advancements, made over the past thousands of years, are being questioned by small groups that are given credibility by the mass media and many neocon controlled educational systems. The idea that somehow, in spite of all the archaeological and anthropological evidence gathered through the centuries, mankind is about a couple of thousand years old is being offered as fact. You see, the prophets in the Bible lived for hundreds of years each (longevity evidently resulting from drinking massive amounts of holy water), and certain groups have strung the length of these lives together to take us back to the first days when God created everything. That’s fine for the Bible, but if you actually start believing that kind of pure unscientific crap, then weird things will start happening to you. For example, with this kind of poppycock stuck in your head, it’s easy for you to begin believing vaccinations cause autism, and so stop having your kids vaccinated. Words like Polio, Whooping Cough, and Small Pox have been forgotten, as well as their whole family killing virulence.

If you let go of your belief in science, and how all of human technology and civilization have come to be, then you stand every chance of dooming your children’s children to living on an earth that you helped make inhospitable for their continued survival. To deny the existence of global warming is to deny the results of scientific study, and if that is your established bent, then your lack of belief translates into something easier to understand. That thing is called selfishness. But before you can be solely condemned for coming to this selfish end all on your own, the road to this perdition must be explored. Why, in God’s name (for you Creationists), would the media and many world leaders fail to accept the results of science in their dealings with the rest of the American public, and humanity as a whole? It would seem counter to everyone’s ability to have a modicum of comfort and survival potential to have so much of the population disbelieve the results of scientific study and its conclusions. Believing in science, although entirely logical, does not reflect the intensity of competition and willful violent confrontation that humans exhibit in attempting to reward their own families and the spawn of those families.

To put it simply, if someone was to truly understand science in one area, let’s say in this example, the science of flight, and if you lacked understanding or did not believe in scientific results in this area, then a huge advantage could be gained over you by the person understanding. This advantage would be entirely secret because the truth would never have to be revealed. This ‘someone’ convinces you that the airplane you are about to fly will go much further than fuel burn rates and the amount in the tank (scientifically derived) has determined, and you believe that. You fly off and your plane runs out of gas and crashes. The person that advised you is never revealed, of course, or that he or she sold you on the idea of ignoring scientific fact. But, the result would be that you would be taken out of this huge contest for the stuff of comfort, and even life itself on this planet. When people are convinced to believe in things that science rejects, they are invariably being guided into ‘eddy’s’ of quiet water where they can be taken out of the mainstream competition and dealt with.

Check out the preacher at your church or, if you don’t go, then the one running a church a few blocks away from you. Instead of listening to the preacher teach the bible, check to see if the preacher’s house is a rental or paid for. You may be surprised when you discover that his house is paid off, as are most preacher’s homes. Check out the success of his children (and there are very few female preachers) and see how they are doing. You will be surprised again. They are doing great, and as they age their homes will be paid off too. Churches are among the most continuously ‘profitable’ institutions in America, and on earth. But the reality of almost all Christian churches has little to do with financially helping parishioners. Amazingly, it is exactly the other way. Poor people who attend church are encouraged to give whatever pennies they have. If they need money from the church, they often will receive counseling on how to live without it. The preacher and his family are all about their survival. Generally, they are also all about science, but they will probably not be delivering sermons about the application of it.

There are plenty of expressions about ignoring what you know must be true. “Don’t believe your lying eyes,” is one of them, and “ignore that man behind the curtain.” Maybe the most applicable one, in thinking about those among us who would have everyone stop believing in science, might be “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” Don’t be convinced through belief to give up your eyes, or what they tell you.   And be extremely careful of the media. The media is paid to tell you whatever it is that someone with money wants you to believe, in order to maximize the owners and deliverers of those beliefs’ survival potential, at the expense of your own. The beliefs you receive from them, however, are not called that. They are called ‘the news.’
~~~James Strauss

The Eagles