But you never know!

Andrew Hearst over at panopticist torrented a recent BBC broadcast of Richard Dawkins screaming at a wall… or rather, debating the age of the Earth and the theory of evolution, with an Evangelical pastor.

I’ve done this a few times (not on BBC4) and have resigned myself to never bother with it again. I have had door-to-door evangelical old ladies promising to pray for my soul from the doorway of my apartment and a lady on campus pamphletting me when I was trying to do homework accuse me of not having any morality. On the flip side, I’ve demanded in all seriousness of a past co-worker that he cease all use of the toys of science (modern medicine, transit, telecommunication, consumables, etc) and return to pre-renaissance dark-age beliefs so that his refusal to eat swine and weekly fast-till sun-down (born again christian cult, notin this case) would have a remote possibility of helping his life.

People like to lie to themselves. Struggle with the lies of others and both sides of a debate will simply dig in deeper. Niven’s 16th law will always give the other side what they consider to be ammunition.

A common argument of people on the fence about religion, pseudo-science and the like: “But Grant, you never really know! It’s a possibility so you have to consider it!”

Perform a study of accupunture, or prayer for the sick, or phrenology, or the dietary guidelines of the old testament. Refine the guidelines and techniques! If it is an accurate method of healing a person, or prolonging life, fuck, everyone should have a shot at it. Prove even that all these things do is match placebo in a controlled environment and then prove that placebo is better than nothing at all by a statistically valid margin and I’ll start pamphletting it. For some reason these studies keep being done and the response is always “But you never know!”

This frustration applies equally to the cargo-cult science in the below dirty ice post.