Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Once a skeptic, always a skeptic

There are evidently people who do not believe that the New Horizons spacecraft actually flew past Pluto and sent us back pictures. They say NASA made the whole thing up and that the pictures are fake.

They are in league with the folks who think that global warming is not real, the moon landings were faked, and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.

I can almost understand it. When I was in grade school in the (Cold War) 1950's, we were told that the people of Russia were oppressed by a totalitarian government and had none of the fundamental freedoms (speech, press, habeas corpus) that we have; that even though they could vote in elections, there was only one person on the ballot to vote for; that they were lied to all the time about Mother Russia's achievements in every field of human endeavor (which led them to invent television, chewing gum, and the flush toilet, or so they claimed).

There came a time, when I was about 10 or 11 years old, that I began wondering about that. What if my teacher and my school and my government were lying to me? What if we were the oppressed ones, expected to believe whatever we were told? How would I ever know?

As I got older, of course, I was able to accept the view of the world that was revealed to me, taking on faith whatever I did not know or see or experience myself.

It's highly likely that I still take a lot on faith. Like the sun will be rising in the east tomorrow.

Which reminds me of something else I heard in grade school, namely that one day the sun was going to burn out and die, and so would the planet and so would I. That scared the poop out of me, but then I learned that it wasn't going to happen for a few million years, and I felt a lot better.

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