A few days ago I wrote about my goldfish, postulating hypotheses as to their disappearance. Abduction by aliens seemed a remote possibility and so I had decide to settle on the probability of the more mundane notion that they had been eaten by the local heron.
Now I find myself having to re-examine my ideas in the light of new evidence. This is a scientific approach, whereby evidence cannot be ignored and all ideas are subject to re-evaluation in the light of new findings. There are some who still believe that the Earth is flat, ignoring all evidence that contradicts this old idea. I suspect that these people are few and far between and probably concentrated in secure accommodation, but they do exist. Any idea that is not subject to modification in the presence of new information is bogus, and this is why religious faith, however hard followers try to build bridges, can never be held alongside science as a beacon of truth.
Anyhow I digress; my problem is this. The fish have reappeared, well at least four of them have, I saw them through the murk this morning. Now I have to re-evaluate my ideas. Clearly my original bird based notion has been shot out of the water, as it were. Could the alien abduction be the correct idea? If so then they have learned all they can about my fish and kindly returned them to their home. This makes very little sense, though if I were lazy enough not to think, then I could accept this and set up some sort of alien appreciation society. We could collect money from those least able to afford it, and build monumental edifices where we could meet and sing songs together in appreciation, or fear of the great fishermen in the sky. However that sort of thing has already been done and has a tendency to halt the thinking process permanently.
Putting all the recent findings together, I have had to discount the original two hypotheses, and set up a new one. The water is pretty murky so I have to concede that the fish were actually hiding from me. Hiding from me - the big face in the sky, who brought them to their world and provides them with food? How dare they? I have a good mind to smite them!
Now I find myself having to re-examine my ideas in the light of new evidence. This is a scientific approach, whereby evidence cannot be ignored and all ideas are subject to re-evaluation in the light of new findings. There are some who still believe that the Earth is flat, ignoring all evidence that contradicts this old idea. I suspect that these people are few and far between and probably concentrated in secure accommodation, but they do exist. Any idea that is not subject to modification in the presence of new information is bogus, and this is why religious faith, however hard followers try to build bridges, can never be held alongside science as a beacon of truth.
Anyhow I digress; my problem is this. The fish have reappeared, well at least four of them have, I saw them through the murk this morning. Now I have to re-evaluate my ideas. Clearly my original bird based notion has been shot out of the water, as it were. Could the alien abduction be the correct idea? If so then they have learned all they can about my fish and kindly returned them to their home. This makes very little sense, though if I were lazy enough not to think, then I could accept this and set up some sort of alien appreciation society. We could collect money from those least able to afford it, and build monumental edifices where we could meet and sing songs together in appreciation, or fear of the great fishermen in the sky. However that sort of thing has already been done and has a tendency to halt the thinking process permanently.
Putting all the recent findings together, I have had to discount the original two hypotheses, and set up a new one. The water is pretty murky so I have to concede that the fish were actually hiding from me. Hiding from me - the big face in the sky, who brought them to their world and provides them with food? How dare they? I have a good mind to smite them!
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