Re: (TV) This Case Is Closed!/Maybe I Should Have Been A Research-Librarian/Exact Location

[Joe Hartley <jh@brainiac.com>]

On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 06:37:51 -0700
Russ Van Rooy <russvr@pop.nwnexus.com> wrote:

> p.s. She (Leah,my wife) is an *astrologer* - me, I'm an amateur 
> astronomer. Sometimes the media cannot get those two disciplines straight.

Russ, I too am an amateur astronomer, and help run a public aboservatory
( http://frostydrew.org/observatory ).  My wife is into astrology as well,
which causes me not a little chagrin.  I mean c'mon, it just doesn't make
sense!

Does the fact that they've discovered another planet(*) mean that all
charts made so far are wrong?  Or doesn't it matter?  And if it doesn't
matter, how does ANY planetary position matter?

Oy.

But that's nothing compared to the occasional creationist fundamentalists
we get who have as their personal mission to convince us that all the
science we've learned and has been passing on is wrong.

"The stars cannot be millions of years old - God only created the Universe
about 4500 years ago."  (We get this 2-3 times a year.)

To answer, we have 2 tactics we like to use.  First is to ask if they
believe that dinosaurs existed.  Either a yes or no answer leads to the real
question, how does one explain the existence of dinosaur fossils that to
our best knowledge are millions of years old.  Sadly, the answer is often
that God created the world with fossils already in place.

The other tactic is to ask why they assume that God's day is 24 hours long.
Who's to say that his day isn't 2 billion of our years?  (That would make
the current estimate of the age of the Universe match with 7 of God's
days.)  But nope, the Earth is the center of the Universe, it's the only
planet God put life on, all those other billions and billions of stars
out there were completely ignored by the omnipotent Creator.

Sigh.

Sorry if I've bored/offended any of you folks with this off-topic gripe,
but it really does bother me when people give up all signs of rational
thought to swallow any religion or unprovable pseudoscience.

-- 
======================================================================
       Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh@brainiac.com
Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa
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