Let's make fun of Penn Jillette, or specifically his quote, "If
every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were
passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There
might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact
nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true
and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.”
Yeah, re-read it once or twice. Now, I
used to respect him up until I caught a few episodes of his. It's not
so much the opinion presented, but how it was presented; he was just
a little over the top for me. Admittedly, I do have a preference for
just enough kill when it comes to debates, but I think once you
attack something a little too much, you create sympathy for what you
are attacking. This quote doesn't help much.
Now, I'll give him the first part; just
look at how many different religions humans have created since the
beginning of time. In a lot of ways, I'm pretty sure that although
some of the basics would be there, such as the Golden Rule and karma,
but I think that no matter how rationality is judged, you will always
have people that will believe in some form of higher being. It's
interesting how many scientists started their careers as atheists,
and now believe that there is a higher being based on their research.
So I have no problem believing that if all religion were somehow
eliminated, something would eventually take its place.
The second part is the problem. The
issue is that nasty science background I have; I'm way too well aware
that a number of scientific discoveries required a little bit luck.
I'm not talking Jonas Salk and smallpox vaccine type of accidental,
where a discoverer just had to pay attention to who wasn't catching a
disease and follow up on it. I'm looking at a number of inventions
required for technology that were pure accidents, such as the
vulcanization of rubber; if it weren't for someone falling asleep,
and it either would not have happened, or happened at a much later
date. But just look at how much our technology is based on vulcanized
rubber; the vehicles we ride on require it not just for the tires,
but valves, seals, and a range of little things. Even though some of
these have been made out of different materials, it's hard to think
of what our society would be like today without vulcanization, and
that's just one of a dozen or so inventions that are society as a
whole is dependent on that are based more in luck than actual
intelligence, and none of those are guaranteed to be discovered again
if we had to restart.
That also assumes that our technology
went the same route. There is the possibility that are technology
could have gone down more eco-friendly paths, making the society we
know now to be something entirely different. Or it could have gotten
nastier as people had to fight for resources; Europe, for example, is
notorious for its lack of arability. Or it could be just different,
but equivalent, with animals taking the place of machines, sort of
like a higher tech Flintsones. If society's knowledge base got a
reboot, there are just no ways of knowing what could happen to our
knowledge, and what we would eventually recover or find.
So...I'm choosing to disagree with
Jillete's quote. It just doesn't square with our actual science...
No comments:
Post a Comment