It's interesting to see how this affects different media. Creating and posting a mash-up of the Harry Potter films would be grounds for a lawsuit, and yet there's nothing to stop millions of thirteen-year-olds writing terrible fanfic and posting it all over the internet. Oh, the horror!
Well, for some reason the Catholic Church had pretty strong opinions about the sun's rotation, and they said the sun revolved around the earth. I believe that Galileo's predecessor was killed for heresy because he contradicted that. Galileo himself was placed under house arrest and made to retract his theories. My point is that it was a firmly-established belief that is now considered ludicrous.
Some stuff is crap, some stuff is good. The proportion doesn't really change as time goes on, but hindsight allows us to tell the difference between the two.
Compare evolution to the rotation of the planets: both are theories that no ordinary citizen is going to be able to directly verify, and have to take on faith (or at least trust in scientists to know what they're doing). Both are also directly contradicted in the Bible. Still, nowadays most people believe that the earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around.
Maybe we just need to give evolution time? The resistance evolution is getting is still nothing compared to what Gallileo went through.
It matters because some people base their actions on their beliefs, and their actions affect others. If our government is run by people who think Evolution is false, they can make laws to outlaw it in schools (like the ones the US had in a not-so-distant past) and the quality of education declines. I have to care about what other people think, because what they think affects me, and it affects you too.
Unless you think life as we know it doesn't matter too much, and so don't mind other people's beliefs negatively affecting your own life. Personally, I'd rather have people who share my belief in evolution run the education system so that my own quality of life doesn't suffer.
Slashdot Mirror
"Incentivize"?
It's interesting to see how this affects different media. Creating and posting a mash-up of the Harry Potter films would be grounds for a lawsuit, and yet there's nothing to stop millions of thirteen-year-olds writing terrible fanfic and posting it all over the internet. Oh, the horror!
Well, for some reason the Catholic Church had pretty strong opinions about the sun's rotation, and they said the sun revolved around the earth. I believe that Galileo's predecessor was killed for heresy because he contradicted that. Galileo himself was placed under house arrest and made to retract his theories. My point is that it was a firmly-established belief that is now considered ludicrous.
Some stuff is crap, some stuff is good. The proportion doesn't really change as time goes on, but hindsight allows us to tell the difference between the two.
It makes sense that geeks would be the ones making crop circles. Aliens surely have better things to do.
Compare evolution to the rotation of the planets: both are theories that no ordinary citizen is going to be able to directly verify, and have to take on faith (or at least trust in scientists to know what they're doing). Both are also directly contradicted in the Bible. Still, nowadays most people believe that the earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around. Maybe we just need to give evolution time? The resistance evolution is getting is still nothing compared to what Gallileo went through.
It matters because some people base their actions on their beliefs, and their actions affect others. If our government is run by people who think Evolution is false, they can make laws to outlaw it in schools (like the ones the US had in a not-so-distant past) and the quality of education declines. I have to care about what other people think, because what they think affects me, and it affects you too. Unless you think life as we know it doesn't matter too much, and so don't mind other people's beliefs negatively affecting your own life. Personally, I'd rather have people who share my belief in evolution run the education system so that my own quality of life doesn't suffer.