Sometimes it’s hard to say what I really mean without sounding preachy. For example: I would like to say that if you believe in intelligent design or creationism you should phrase omitted. Unfortunately, any way that I think to fill in that blank seems to make me no worse than the extremists who want their kids to never see a boob or get their feelings hurt in school.
It’s really hard to keep my scientist’s veneer when I don’t often have any facts to support my subconsious urges to maim when people spew sewage from their mouths all over the public.
And this is where the whole problem with moderates comes to play. The only people who seem to loudly and openly share their viewpoints with the rest of the world are the folks who sit at the far ends of the scales. And of all the people you want around for debates and arguments, they are the absolute worst choices. They are people who cannot be swayed in their opinions.
Recently, Jon Stewart had Rick Santorum on The Daily Show. In the middle of the interview Jon came to the conclusion that he was never going to get Rick to budge in his views on anything—and that was effectively where the real meat of the interview ended. You can’t have a reasonable debate if no one is willing to concede in anyway. At that point, what you have instead of a debate is a “who has the biggest reproductive organs” shouting match. People like Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Tucker Carlson really get off on this kinda thing.
What happens is that people who are willing to listen to reasonable debate, to non-extremist opinions, to civilized discourse are being drowned out and ignored by just about every talking-head that exists. It’s so bad that it’s hard to tell if anybody is actually out there who talks sensically anymore, or if everyone in the big middle of the spectrum just gave up a long time ago. The closest thing we have is Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I think there is something very important to learn about the state of affairs when the only possibility of a useful television news broadcast has to come from a network devoted to comedy.
Any time that faith intersects with science (or with anything else) you end up with a horribly exothermic reaction. On one side is a bunch of folks who are used sharing their beliefs and opinions rather vocally to large groups of like-minded individuals. On the other side you have the people who like to triple-check every number, every measurement, every fact to make sure it all makes sense; plus it doesn’t help that they are stereotypically allergic to public speaking. In that kind of contest the faith group state their opinion accompanied by fudgy or zero facts and the science folk ask for more statistics, more information to back up the faith-based opinion. After that, the discussion just becomes its own living animal until it runs out of food and it dies off—never fully resolved. Eventually someone stumbles across the emaciated creature along the side of the road, feeds it, and poof—it’s back to cause trouble.
I wish more people in the middle started yelling louder than the crazy people on the edge.
