Religion is
a perfect example: people believe what they want to believe.
Instead of
using the scientific method and starting with evidence and building to a
conclusion – people start with a conclusion and try to collect incidents to
justify their premise.
Recently
there has been a resurgence interest in UFO’s. The History Channel (the name doesn’t fit the
programming) is running a new series: The Blue Book (proof of alien visitations.)
Let me state
this categorically: NO – space travelers are not covertly traveling to the
earth and abducting people to probe their ass for farts.
Astrophysicist and astronomers constantly use microwave telescopes, inferred telescopes, radio telescopes, telescopes in
space and satellites with cameras; NASA can track asteroids, smaller than a
mini-car, hundreds-of-thousands of miles away that may have a close encounter
with earth – they can track a wrench lost on a spacewalk, among space junk,
that may threaten the space station. The
military blankets the surface of the earth with surveillance technology that can
detect a nuclear missile within minutes of launch, they have cameras in space
that can watch an ISIS soldier crapping on a sand dune.
I am not
saying that there is not other life in the universe - the odds are there
is; but, the nearest planet in our solar system that falls within the (life as
we know it) zone is over a million light years away; which means that a
traveler from that planet would have to travel at the speed of light for over a
million years to reach earth.
People like to believe in fairies, ghost,
angles, vampires, werewolves, gods, zombies, Big Foot and things that go bump in the
night.
I have a
friend that absolutely believes in Big Foot.
If he finds bear crap in the woods it is proof of Big Foot. There was a woman who claimed that Big Foot
often looked in the window when she was bathing at night: I don’t know why she
didn’t pull down her shades.
I was
intrigued when I first heard stories of Big Foot when I was ten years old –
almost seventy years ago. In those seven decades no hunter has ever
killed a Big Foot, no body or skeleton has ever been found, Big Foot (who often
crosses roads) has never been hit by a car: in short, no animal that size could
exist in the United States without some hunter hanging his head on their
wall.
Let’s face
it: the human race is gullible. We
invent religions that then take over our lives; we blindly follow charismatic
con men, we seek allegiances with groups that reflect our ideals, we can be incited
with patriotism to the point of risking our life and limbs.
And, we are
not as bright as we think we are, which leaves us gullible to fantastic
beliefs.
THE FALLACY OF RELEVANCE: The premise is not sufficient to the conclusion.
the Ol'Buzzard
