Bill Nye, the harmless children’s edu-tainer known as “The Science Guy,” managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.
As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.
But don’t tell that to the good people of Waco, who were “visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence,” according to the Waco Tribune.
Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College’s Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption.
But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: “God made two great lights — the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.”
The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.
At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled “We believe in God!” and left with three children, thus ensuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they’d always suspected.
This story originally appeared in the Waco Tribune, but the newspaper has mysteriously pulled its story from the online version, presumably to avoid further embarrassment.
Not only a reflector, but a poor reflector at that. Too bad Bill Nye didn’t hammer home the fact that the moon only reflects about 10% of the light from the sun – lunar dust is very dark grey.
Bill Nye’s a nice guy. Reality is much harsher.
He probably did. How in the heck do you convince someone that the moon is a poor reflector of light when they believe its glowing! An adult in that state is already lost and will argue till they are blue in the face (I’ve met several, they really turn blue!)
Science is a bunch of men in lab-coats telling people that Jesus is a myth. It’s impossible to talk to them, just like fundies in the UFO field they instantly turn to personal smears and insults when their beliefs are questioned. It is a sad way to deal with things and it is amazing to me that w allow religious people (of all stripes) so much latitude in bad behavior.
Yes I see your frustration. It’s a pity, but a problem that won’t go away since people usually don’t have to suffer the consequences of their ignorance.
A person who denies even all the basic premises of science can still go ahead and use many technologies that are based on science. Thus living happy and fulfilling lives while deeply entrenched in whichever delusional worldview they prefer. Not to forget making lots of happy homeschooled children.
I am definitely a pessimist, but I can’t see how this will ever change.
What?! People suffer the consequences of their ignorance all the time. One consequence is as you put it, making lots of children and not understanding that already have around five billion more people on this planet than we really need. There is no biological reason for it outside of the hardwiring in their skulls, programing that was written when we were still running around on the savanna hunting gazelles. Each time someone fires up an automobile, sends an email or consumes a slice of bread in the west, someone elsewhere in the world dies. The US is like a gigantic butterfly flapping it’s wings, sending a hurricane of changes to the rest of the world.
. There is always change. Our system is unstable which makes quick, decisive change inevitable. If we tolerate ignorance we only hold change off for a moment. The only way we can survive is to understand the coming changes, anticipate them, leverage change for benefit and teach. Always teach others. Challenge ignorance whenever we see it and keep a sense of humor in everything.
For that is one thing an ignorant person cannot have.
; )
The greatest irony of all is that every single thing we see with our eyes, which is not self-luminous, is seen via reflected light. That’s why it’s difficult to see in the dark – because there is no sun in the sky to reflect off of objects. This is so terribly, terribly elementary, that it’s a first-class doofus who spends his/her entire life on this planet, seeing things, and never, ever reasons it out.
All physics aside, it’s practically self-evident. But only when you use your brain to entertain manifest reality, as opposed to wearing the blinders of religious fantasy.
Coasting through life on illusions. It’s a really crappy way to live, imho.
What I mean is that the ignorant person does not suffer the consequences herself/himself. Yes, other people will get affected.
I agree with you – that is why we must continue to encourage rational thinking and disseminate good science.
But the ignorant group of people themselves aren’t affected, even many generations later. In my view one reason why is because of the increasing emphasis on user-friendly technologies that don’t require a basic understanding of anything to work.
Another reason is that the responsibility of fixing world’s problems are shouldered by a small group of problem-solvers, so most people don’t have to care.
Which means our work will never end.
OK, I know that I am playing devils advocate here, I do that!
People model their world-view based on their beliefs. To a religious fanatic, thinking that the moon is self luminous is mild compared with believing in the Christian pantheon replete with it’s terrible inconsistencies and apocalyptic leanings. We all use a rather crappy camera/video processing system inside our skulls. It is so crappy that our minds must fill in much of the missing data moment by moment, making the whole mess so unreliable that anomalous “visions” happen to just about everyone. It is up to the individual to interpret this noisy system and they do it by using a malleable set of rules. Things like the moon cannot be reasoned out by most people. Only a handful of folks in history were able to independently concoct a model of the Earth/Moon system that fit all of the observational evidence. The rest are quite satisfied with the model that others tell them about, this includes most believers in the “moon is a large rocky body, 1/6 the mass of the Earth” model.
No doubt about that! I’m in an industry that hands very powerful tools to grownup- children and expects them to make sound derisions regarding their use. The ironic thing is, the rel kids know far more about these things than the grownups.
Alas, that is the way the world has always been. In the past, pure intuition, superstition and traditions guided people. Now science which is truly understood to a very few has guided human enterprise to an extent where we can have electric lights, automobiles and plentiful food supples. Most people, when they bother to think of such things at all cannot comprehend that humans made all of this stuff. For example many “saucer fiends” still think that IC chips fell out of an alien spaceship in the 1940s. There is no point in telling them that the history of computer technology is well documented, it all fell out of the sky and the evil government is keeping free energy and flying cars to themselves. This is simply a modern-day dress of the “god said it and I believe it” argument. Nothing much changes and fanatics will always be fanatics.
This question of whether the ignorant suffer consequences of their ignorance: of course they do.
Missing out on opportunities that might have improved their lives, if they weren’t ignorant about them.
Impaired ability to make cohesive choices about their lives based on being informed. For example:
-Ignorant person thinks Dubya is a real good Joe, votes for him. Dubya makes heap big war, person’s son joins army, steps on a toe-popper in Iraq. Loss of child sends them into a spiraling depression, that impacts their life in every way.
-Ignorant person puts difficult life decision into the hands of imaginary God, rather than taking intelligent, informed action. Situation goes to hell in a hand basket.
-Ignorant person bases day to activities on horoscope.
-Ignorant person thinks having his/her ass roto-rootered is the key to good health. Gets perforated colon, peritonitis, and dies (this actually happened).
-Ignorant person buys into hairbrained get rich scheme, loses ass.
-Geologically ignorant person builds house on floodplain, loses house/life.
-Ignorant person doesn’t understand dangers posed by plug-dome volcano in eruptive phase, enters restricted zone, gets roasted alive in pyroclastic flow (57 dead – Mount Saint Helens, 1980).
Ignorant people suffer consequences large and small, day in and day out, and their collective ignorance accrues to impact them and the entire population in ways subtle and gross.