Let's see, a little knowledge of history can be.. humorous

Let's see, a little knowledge of history can be.. humorous

I got a real kick out of the Letter Writer's comment, that science has been wrong before.

The beauty of science as opposed to "revealed" knowledge is that science is self-correcting. The scientific method allows that knowledge is perfectable. Each scientist can build on the facts and research of previous scientists.

Knowledge can be built on, and leads to better lives and a fuller understanding of the world. Remember, vaccines, electric lights, medicine, surgery, antiseptics?

I find it a sad commentary on how slow the wisdom does accumulate, when some people still insist that ignorance is better for young people. Do they really believe that people unaware of the facts of human biology, are better off than those who know how babies are conceived. Do they actually believe that pregnancies are increased, because of sexual knowledge. The consequences of normal human sexuality have not not changed in hundreds of thousands of years.

Do you really think that knowledge of sexually transmitted diseases should be kept hidden from young sexually aware young people? I have as a parent made sure, my children, understood human sexual facts, and the consequences that can be wonderful, miraculous or dangerous.

STDs and Immune Difficiency diseases will not be reduced by ignorance.

One last comment about science, those who would dispense with it's self correcting progress. I assume, then that in your hut, you use, oil lamps, after a long "bright" doing subsistence hunting and gathering. I'm sure you avoid the printed word, a technology from the late fifteen hundreds.

I'm sure you also have banished TV, RADIO, CARS, COMPUTERS and Medicine. Likewise I'm sure clearly you also avoid even animal husbandry as it must certainly be another of the many mistakes of science.

That you know someone literate and computer savvy enough to draft a letter to the editor, I suppose is a tribute to your open-mindedness, or more likely, just more of the blindspots in your world view.

See you after the great bird eats the shiny-disk in the sky.

A Working Scientist
Rick Spisak