Well, in the adult world, the guy who goes against the dogmas of his time is a laughingstock. I am honored to have something in common with Galileo and Darwin.
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If being laughed at is the only mark of a future hero, than clowns, Adam Sandler, and the kid who gets quarters stuck in his nose are some of the best hearts and minds of our time.
Don't worry, you're not even close to having something in common with those guys. Except for the laughingstock bit. The rational portion of the population is laughing their asses off because of your stupidity. Not because you've invented or discovered something so revolutionary, that it sounds ridiculous and would later on to be found right.
This is a textbook example of a very fine logical fallacy.
- Galileo and Darwin were going against the dogmas of their time.
- I am going against the dogma of my time.
- Ergo: I am comparable to Galileo and Darwin!
This reminds me of an example of a similiar fallacy from my textbook on basic logic:
- Academics prefer to let the lights on during sex, compared to non-academics.
- I have an important academical exam in two weeks.
- Ergo: I should let the lights on during sex from now on. Because this makes me an academic!
Galileo wasn't a laughingstock because he went against the dogma of his time. He was a laughingstock because he was an absolute dick about it. He was the very vision of a scientist who grabs hold of a pet theory and clings to it to the ends of the earth, disparaging everyone else around him, even though he has at best ambiguous evidence on his side. The fact that he was eventually proven right has no bearing on his behavior at the time.
If he'd been wrong, we'd hold him up as a warning of how a rational, respected academic can go completely off the wheels.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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