Blind Acceptance

I little while ago I attended a friend's church service. The pastor give an interesting sermon--they call the Message. At one point she said "Just as twins separated by great distances can feel each other's distress, so can ..."

I wrote her a letter. In it I explained that one of my goals as a physics teacher is to have students think, examine, and test hypotheses and claims before accepting them. Many students enter my classroom being firm believers that Earth has been visited by aliens, that we have not gone to the Moon, that ghosts exist, that mysterious disturbances happen in a Bermuda triangle, that people can read minds and move objects by pure thought, and so on. I try to persuade the students to look at these claims sceptically. And here she was talking pseudoscience.

I mentioned to the pastor that there was no reputable scientific evidence that separated twins can sense, for example, when the other breaks an ankle or has a bad dream. I requested that she refrain from stating dubious, unsupported claims as fact(and using them to support her argument).

But this brings up an interesting question: Where do I stop with my request? Obviously, I can't ask her to stop repeating untestable claims about the existence of God. To her God's existence is a fact. I'm trying to be fair to her, here. Regardless of whether I'm believer, agnostic, or atheist, I feel I have to let her state claims about God as facts as she sees them. But I want her to stop stating OTHER unsubstantiated claims as fact.

I think there's a line here that the pastor, priest, rabbi shouldn't cross, but it's a little tricky justifying it.

I am reminded of the requirements for good science fiction. We allow certain breaches of the laws of physics (warp drive; transporter beams; instant communication, perhaps). But having granted this limited latitude, we want consistency with the rest of the known laws of physics. I have a hard time explaining to my wife why I allow one "magic" device but not another. If you are a sci.fi. fan, though, I expect you know what I mean.

(I remember one episode of Star Trek, the Next Generation where Geordi and Ro were in a semi-dead state, or a different dimension, or something ("cloaked and phased", actually, they need the anyon beams to wipe out the chroniton fields!). Anyhow, they couldn't be seen by normal matter (i.e. everyone else). They could run through walls! My 10 year-old daughter saw the inconsistency: If they pass through the walls, she asked, why they didn't fall through the floors!)