Chronicling The Crazy Results Of Crazy Beliefs On A Crazy Civilization
Monday, July 12, 2010
Gusher (You're Only Doing It To Yourselves)
How's that old saying go? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you:
"Once the scientific method of hypothesis, experiment, modified hypothesis, became established by people focused on investigating the real world instead of accepting the imaginary world of wishful thinking, the human race never looked back. Or not for long anyway.
The age and structure of the universe was established; the form and relationships of different chemical elements; the development of life on earth (and the place of Homo sapiens in that development); the history and geology and climatology of the Earth; the anatomy and physiology and psychology of the human (and other animals) body. All of this was a long way from superstition, and folk medicine, and mythology, and religion, and the last vestiges of those early and primitive beliefs were gradually being swept away as the twentieth century came to an end. At last the human race was on the move into the twenty first century, after 500 years of steady advance, with a clear vision of reality unencumbered by the past detritus of failed human beliefs.
That was a scary prospect, it seems, for some people. It couldn't be allowed to happen. And suddenly all the junk thought from past millenia (with some additions) was back in the mix, spurred on by politicians and religious leaders and the media. Suddenly there were miracles, and magic remedies (homeopathy just the most egregious), and prayer, and creationism, climate change denialism, belief in ghosts and the afterlife, and heaven and hell, and mysterious forces, and supernatural beings, and faith healing, and magnets and crystals, and human domination over nature, and witches, and spirituality, all flooding back into human society and culture like an oil leak flooding into the Gulf. Just as poisonous to the human condition as oil is to seabirds."
The age and structure of the universe was established; the form and relationships of different chemical elements; the development of life on earth (and the place of Homo sapiens in that development); the history and geology and climatology of the Earth; the anatomy and physiology and psychology of the human (and other animals) body. All of this was a long way from superstition, and folk medicine, and mythology, and religion, and the last vestiges of those early and primitive beliefs were gradually being swept away as the twentieth century came to an end. At last the human race was on the move into the twenty first century, after 500 years of steady advance, with a clear vision of reality unencumbered by the past detritus of failed human beliefs.
That was a scary prospect, it seems, for some people. It couldn't be allowed to happen. And suddenly all the junk thought from past millenia (with some additions) was back in the mix, spurred on by politicians and religious leaders and the media. Suddenly there were miracles, and magic remedies (homeopathy just the most egregious), and prayer, and creationism, climate change denialism, belief in ghosts and the afterlife, and heaven and hell, and mysterious forces, and supernatural beings, and faith healing, and magnets and crystals, and human domination over nature, and witches, and spirituality, all flooding back into human society and culture like an oil leak flooding into the Gulf. Just as poisonous to the human condition as oil is to seabirds."
Nice imagery, huh? 
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