The flat earthers

I found myself drawn into a lengthy discussion with two Jehovah's witnesses on Saturday afternoon. There I was minding my own business watching the Indians fight back in the cricket and all of a sudden came the door knock. Now generally when you get a door knock that you aren't expecting around these parts it is likely it is one of two groups:

• A power company sales rep who will spend an exhausting and infuriating two minutes of your time trying to convince you to change power retailers and that your power company is ripping you off. This despite you having signed up with the last door knocker that came round only three weeks ago. As an electrical engineer in the power business I like to think of myself as competent to choose who best to supply my power, but it seems a degree in electrical engineering doesn't impress these people.
• The 'flat earth brigade', 'god squad', or some other religiously affiliated people. No wonder religion has so many devotees - I reckon half the people who join up just do it to get rid of these door knockers, persistent buggers.

Anyway, back with the story. So this Jehovah's witness guy (there were actually two, although one of the guys did the best ever example of 'statue man' I have ever seen and didn't say a word the whole time), decided to get into a conversation with me about why I was an Atheist. 'Dear oh dear' to use a now famous Bill Lawry turn of phrase. All the old favourite lines came out, including what has got to be one of the most un thought through and stupid things anyone could say. In response to my statement that science is the only force capable of improving our understanding of the world and through technology giving us the opportunity to live happier, more creative, more fun and more inspired lives, His retort was "but scientists created the atomic bomb and therefore science is bad, QED". Oh dear, lets just think for half a second, because really that is all that is required to see through this preposterous statement.

Yes scientists (and engineers incidentally) did create the atomic bomb of which it could be argued that the world is now a more stable place because of (although that is another story that I don't want to go into here). Even if you think that an atomic bomb, or its big cousin the hydrogen bomb is the most evil thing ever created, do you immediately jump to the conclusion that all science is bad? Gee wizz, I hope not. Why don't we think like this. Well it is simply a matter of logic. For you see if science is bad because of the atomic bomb, then well science is bad for many things - the aeroplane (think of all the air crashes over the years and all the lives that would have been spared if planes had not been invented), the automobile (anyone see the xmas road toll this year), electric power (just think of all those poor electrocuted people over the years) and I could go on.

The JW's line of reasoning is what I call an asymmetric argument. It is a common and deplorable tactic used often by religiously minded people. It is used mainly because of its shock value and "Gee I never thought of it that way before" typical response elicited from gullible people. An asymmetric argument ignores all the positive aspects of a point of view. The science is bad because of atomic bombs argument ignores all the fantastic things that science has done for humanity over the years, magnetism, peaceful atomic power, vaccines, antibiotics, evolution and understanding how we came to be, electricity, solar power, wind turbines, the automobile, the aeroplane, the digital computer revolution, medicine, engineering and more. None of these things would have been possible without the platform of science. Yes science can be misused, the atomic bomb is arguably one way that it has been, yet the atomic bomb lead directly to atomic energy which may yet prove to be our best way of overcoming the increasingly likely climate calamity we are facing over the next few centuries.

Anyway, after all that, I have to say that I enjoyed the debate with the JW, even though his arguments were rather feeble and ill-conceived. I don't hold hope that he will reconsider his view point, I think his indoctrination is perhaps a little too ingrained. Nevertheless, we can only keep trying and hope that one day the flat earthers will see the light.