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Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Phil Harris :: Townhall.com Columnist
The Hand of Man and Delusions of Grandeur
by Phil Harris
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Will the Dems' health care Christmas Present to America be an improvement or detriment to our health care system?


Zeus and Thor are sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck near the top of Mount Olympus. Thor is flinging bolts of lightning at hapless humans, who scurry frantically in all directions, looking for cover.

Thor scores a hit, causing one pitiful victim to do a triple back flip, landing with a bounce in a smoking heap. Zeus blows beer through his nose and falls on the ground in a fit of laughter. Immortal life doesn’t get any better than this, they agree.

It is a god-scale version of the good-ole prairie dog hunt, and there was a time when such tales seemed plausible for explaining tragedy. After all, there must be “someone” to blame when life becomes difficult and painful.

Having a grasp of the science behind natural forces like thunder and lightning is a good thing. Having such knowledge can sometimes give us half a chance to protect ourselves. Well, maybe the chance of not-being struck by lightning is not so much improved regardless of how much we understand it. That fate depends a great deal on being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Modern man has developed an annoying characteristic; an over-bloated, self-aggrandized view of his capabilities. Educated people have come to believe that we now belong on those god-pedestals of old. The thrill of understanding a few principles behind the forces of nature has caused man to lose all perspective on his puniness.

I used to enjoy watching scientific docudramas on cable television, but these last few years have made me less apt to waste my time. Many begin with stunning photography and interesting observations about whatever-it-is, but then they invariably launch into wild speculations; declaring how man has changed whatever-it-is and because of this, life will soon come to a tragic end.

This knowledge fueled ego-mania has killed all perspective of scale, especially when discussing the precarious nature of what makes our planet a life-enabling oasis in the Universe. For example, the atmosphere is indeed a very thin layer of gas, especially when compared to the bulk of the planet. But when you overlay the scale of that thin layer of gas onto the miniscule pile of flesh that is all of mankind, the atmosphere is pretty darned enormous. Continued...
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About The Author

Phil Harris is a software engineer, author of Cry for the Shadows and blogs at Citizen Phil.

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(37 comments so Far)
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Reply # 1
Date: Jul 25, 2008 - 1:08 AM EST
Polly
For the record, I am not disagreeing with you. I also believe that we have plenty of resources of our own that we should tap into . . . especially since the technology for safely doing so has improved greatly in the last 15 to 20 years.
There is no question that the "true believers" in HUMAN activity as the PRIMARY catalyst for global warming are behaving like a bunch of panicked religious fanatics. That was exactly my point. The statement by author Michael Crichton that true science should have nothing to do with consensus of mere OPINION is very accurate.
The "true believers" are indeed wrong when they say the science is "in". There are simply too many factors involved as possible contributors to the problem for us to have any definitive and incontrovertible answer at this stage in time. I was simply saying that we do not need to panic. While we may not have much control over NATURAL disasters, I believe that, collectively, we do have the ingenuity to deal with problems of our own making . . . IF objective science, free of ideological agendas, can prove, beyond any doubt, that they really are of our own making.
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Reply # 2
Date: Jul 24, 2008 - 9:29 AM EST
Myk
You may be correct that "There are renowned scientists on both sides of this issue who respectfully disagree with each other," but mostly we hear from the Believers, who castigate the Non-believers as "deniers" and demand that their credentials be yanked and/or that these deniers be tried as war criminals. You see, "the science is settled" and "there is consensus." I don't know, that just doesn't seem "respectful" to me.

I'm all for diversifying our energy sources, though the enviro-wackos veto most other sources, too. But few fuels are as cheap and plentiful as oil/gas/coal, and we could stop contributing to terrorist countries if we would tap into our own resources. (Of course, the terrorists make BIG money selling us opiates, too, and as a libertarian I could suggest ways to end that income source also.)

Heck, I wouldn't even mind if the federal government co-ordinated the effort to become energy-independent. Unfortunately, more than half of the current Congress would prefer that we all suffer, even if it means we continue to send billions of dollars to countries that hate us.
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