Science

Ibn al-Haytham, the Muslim scholar who, hundreds of years before
Englishman Francis Bacon, developed a scientific method

If you drive a car, use a cell phone or computer, wash and dry your clothes and bedding in machine, and are in fact alive because you would have died of a horrible childhood disease were it not for antibiotics, you are enjoying the benefits of science. Were it not for science you would be huddled in a hovel, pockmarked with scars from smallpox and suffering from rickets, trying to stay warm and alive.

Science can be used for good or evil, but the knowledge it provides is your friend.

The roots of science originated with the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who championed the empiricism and the inductive method. If you don't know what those are you fucking should and should go and look them up before you open your mouth and make a fool of yourself.

The scientific method was formulated by Muslin scholar Ibn al-Haytham in the late 10th and early 11th centuries. In the 13th century English friar Roger Bacon used the empirical method in his studies of optics, but it was another Englishman, Francis Bacon (no relation, or at least not close enough to count) who in the late sixteenth century formulated the method of accumulating knowledge we call science.

I am not going to digress into an explanation of science and how it works, but know that it is science that has provided humanity with the knowledge and technology that has led to the modern world.

Scientists are not perfect and are as subject as anyone else to personal, non-evidence based beliefs, but the scientific method is a precious tool and only a fool disregards or disbelieves the body of knowledge that, thanks to science, has accumulated since the time of Francis Bacon.

Science, on the other hand, IS perfect. That is not to say it is not messy-- it certainly is-- but it eventually advances our knowledge. Differences of opinion and contradictory data are resolved by additional applications of-- you guessed it-- science and we understand the world and ourselves a little better.

What I'm working up to is this: you should give little credence to those who deny science. Make all the fun you want of climate scientists, but you disregard their data at your own peril.

Damn it, I am educating again! No more! I am now going after Trump!