Velikovsky nut butter (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, October 27, 2012, 19:45 (4411 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Here are two weird theories for you to consider:
1) The astonishingly complex mechanisms that govern life and evolution assembled themselves by sheer accident.
2) Human intelligence is so complex that it could only have been designed. So it must have been designed by an even greater intelligence that didn't need to be designed.
Any weirder than the theory that the Earth has been subjected to catastrophic collisions and near collisions? Ah well, perhaps I'm too tolerant. I love all these nuts, and I really don't want to wave goodbye to any of them.-DAVID: I am one of those nuts. You know I don't use religion to establish proof of God. I ignore religion. It has no basis in fact. Give me good scientific findings and I can prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt, God exists. Ask Eben Alexander! Velikovski as a shrink needed a shrink. But we need the nuts to make us think and defend our positions.-Eben Alexander was not converted by science but by a subjective experience. However, let me reassure you that I do not regard you as a nut! Nor do I regard Dawkins as a nut. Nor do I regard Velikovsky as a nut. You have all mingled science with unprovable, non-scientific conclusions, but I am in no position to judge let alone prove which of your non-scientific ideas correspond to the truth. Nor are you, nor are they. No-one is. When scientific claims are proved beyond a reasonable scientific doubt to be false, by all means let us discount them. If Velikovsky were alive today, he himself would certainly be revising many of his own theories. But that does not invalidate his integrity, his claims to sanity, or those ideas which have borne fruit despite the scorn poured on him by the scientific establishment. And may I very gently and respectfully point out that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones!