SETI public: One way to deal with ID and its supporters

• Previous message: LARRY KLAES: "SETI public: FW: Re: Creationists using SETI to support ID"

"Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its
tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of
Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now."

- Arthur C. Clarke in Childhood's End

http://www.2think.org/ce.shtml

Of course I recognize that one big reason Zeus and Thor and the rest of
their pantheon have few followers these days is because they were supplanted
by another pantheon of deities starting about two thousand years ago.

Science and reason are being threatened at every turn these days. Now
certain groups are trying to use the very things they rejected as warped
tools against the things that keep barbarity and totalitarianism at bay.
Science itself may remain aloof from such matters in order to stick to its
tenents of objectivity, but I don't think scientists can do the same, for
the sake of the discipline. The question is, are the so-called science
leaders and the rest up to the task? The first thing they better understand
is that those who promote ID and those who follow will not using their own
brands of logic and understanding, with a heavy dose of emotionalism added
for good measure.

And remember something else: You can't just "take away" these people's
beliefs and leave them with nothing in their place, no matter what the truth
is. People have the right to believe what they want, especially those who
would probably collapse in a reality where there is no benevolent
Father/Mother Figure watching over them. What we are defending here is to
make sure that science and reason do not get plowed under by those on the
other side who do not play by the fairness and equality rules.

This recent news has simply reassured me that SETI and its success is more
important than ever these days. Otherwise we will revert back to a world
controlled by a theocracy where everyone thinks that the whole Universe
circles Earth, if they even think that far. If you don't think that can
happen, just look at the Islamic world, which once had the highest of
sciences and culture until the fundamentalist religious leaders suppressed
their works and ideas.

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled
long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no
longer interested in finding out the truth... It's simply too painful to
acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken."

- Carl Sagan

"I'm a seeker too. But my dreams aren't like yours. I can't help thinking
that somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man.
Has to be."

- Taylor (Charlton Heston), Planet of the Apes (1968)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Apes_%281968_film%29

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