That's a good point, Robert. I think the rational part of our brains is a thin veneer. But we have great inventiveness. My friend Conrad (now deceased) had an analogy for the human race: We're a bunch of monkeys playing around with a loaded machine gun. -- Joe --- On Fri, 7/24/09, robtaylor3661@comcast.net <robtaylor3661@comcast.net> wrote: From: robtaylor3661@comcast.net <robtaylor3661@comcast.net> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Sigh... To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Friday, July 24, 2009, 8:36 AM I don't know why you let this bother you. People are fundamentally irrational, not rational. Most people base their beliefs on emotion, not facts. We are not the fact based creatures we would like to believe we are. Historian Barbara Tuchman in her Book "Making History" stated that historically the majority (up to 90% even in modern times) of what any society believes is fundamentally un-true. Most of us spend our lives believing a lot of non-sense. Yes, even you and me. Bob Taylor ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick Wiggins" <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> To: "utah astronomy listserve utah astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Friday, July 24, 2009 4:12:18 AM GMT -07:00 US/Canada Mountain Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Sigh... I'm just back home after my talk last evening at Bryce Canyon National Park and I'm a bid saddened. This is my 23rd year of doing monthly programs at Bryce and my favorite part has always been the interaction with the audience afterwards. But after last evening's talk a guy came up to me saying he wanted to play devil's advocate. I told him "Great!" and asked what was on his mind. At the end of my talks I always close with the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and use it to come up with a rough idea of how many stars there may be in our Universe and then note that with all of those stars out there made up of the same stuff as our Sun it's hard for me to imagine that we happen to be so lucky to have the only star with the only planet with life. Well, the guy took exception to that. He was calm, collected and well spoken, but thought that since God had created only us (here on Earth) there's no reason to believe that there is life elsewhere. We went back and forth for a minute or two and finally I said we'd just have to agree to disagree and he walked away. My one bit of consolation was that the small crowd that had gathered around us was vocally on my side. But it still bothers me that otherwise rational people will place religious beliefs over those of science without even giving science a chance. Ok, time to get News out so I'll stop here. I just needed to vent. patrick _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com