"When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said, 'To know one's self.' And what was easy, 'To advise another.' - Diogenes Laertius, 'Thales'
"During a good chunk of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, the federal government, in the guise of the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) did just about everything it could to keep dying patients and their caregivers from responding quickly and effectively to terminal illness. It was only after massive, coordinated pressure applied by gay-rights groups that the FDA made partial and selective exceptions to its lengthy and widely criticized drug-approval processes...
Worse still, the FDA continues to choke down the supply of life-saving and life-enhancing drugs that will everyone agrees will play a massive role not just in reducing future health care costs but in improving the quality of all our lives (in 2000, Columbia University’s economist Frank Lichtenberg estimated that"increased drug approvals and health expenditure per person jointly explain just about 100 percent” of the seven-year increase in life expectancy at birth between 1960 and 1997)."
Neil DeGrasse Tyson is Awesome. - Why Revive 'Cosmos?' Neil DeGrasse Tyson Says Just About Everything We Know Has Changed:
"DF: Do you think we live in a universe--or a multiverse?
NT: We have excellent theoretical and philosophical reasons to think we live in a multiverse.
DF: Why is that?
NT: Quantum physics, which is the physics of the small, behaves in odd ways. Everything that the tenets of quantum physics predict about the universe--we go out and test it and it's there. General relativity, which was put forth by Einstein, is the theory of the large--gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe. That also works. Yet they don't work with one another. If you take the universe all the way back to the Big Bang, well, the entire universe was really small. So now you take the shotgun wedding--quantum physics and general relativity. In that shotgun wedding, if you follow through with all the predictions quantum physics gives you, it allows multiple bubbles to form--one of which is our universe. These are sorts of fluctuations in the quantum foam. Quantum physics fluctuates all the time. But now the fluctuations are not just particles coming into and out of existence, which happens all the time. It's whole universes coming into and out of existence...
People feel some major urge to say oh, he's a black scientist so let's have part of the conversation about being a black scientist. I never initiate such conversations. Ever. In fact, I decline invitations to speak during Black History Month. If you only think of me during Black History Month, I must be failing as an educator and as an astrophysicist. By the way, if my professional identity involved strong racial issues, then it would be unfair and unrealistic to decline such invitations. But I never talk about it. I never volunteer to talk about god or religion, but people feel compelled to talk about it.
DF: Do you believe in god?
NT: I presume you've pre-specified which god you're asking about?
DF: Define god as you would.
NT: You're the one who's asking the question. So pick a god and ask me if I believe in that god.
DF: The Judeo-Christian god.
NT: OK, if that god is described as being all-powerful and all-knowing and all-good, I don't see evidence for it anywhere in the world. So I remain unconvinced. If that god is all-powerful and all-good, I don't see that when a tsunami kills a quarter-million or an earthquake kills a quarter-million people. I'd like to think of good as something in the interest of your health or longevity. That's a pretty simple definition of something that is good for you. That's not a controversial understanding of the word "good." So if Earth in two separate events separated by just a couple of years can kill a half-million people, then if the god as you describe exists, that god is either not all-powerful or not all-good. And so therefore I am not convinced.
DF: Can science and religion be reconciled?
NT: As religion is now practiced and science is now practiced, there is no intersection between the two. That is for certain. And it's not for want of trying. Over the centuries, many people--theologians as well scientists--have tried to explore points of intersection. And anytime anyone has declared that harmony has risen up, it is the consequence of religion acquiescing to scientific discovery. In every single case."
Bearcats know what's up.
True Story, Bro.
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