Science by consensus: why it’s BS

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• http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Isaac_Asimov

  Isaac Asimov was a humanist and a rationalist. He did not oppose genuine religious conviction in others but was against superstitious or unfounded beliefs. ...

  Asimov was a progressive on most political issues, and a staunch supporter of the United States Democratic Party. In a television interview in the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy at what he saw as an irrationalist tack taken by many progressive political activists from the late 1960s onwards. His defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island incident damaged his relations with some on the left. He issued many appeals for population control reflecting the perspective first articulated by Paul R. Ehrlich. In the closing years of his life Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York on the shrinking tax base caused by middle class flight to the suburbs. His last non-fiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer.

  "I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending."

  • I stand corrected, bus as I said...a LOT of years ago.

  • he question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism,

    centuries before isaac, who's hard sci-fi was really good, but fiction nonetheless, God said, come, let us reason together.

    also, Prov: 9:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding. That being said, I recognize that my God is not universally worshiped, let alone recognized as the only true and living God.
    just sayin'.

  • From what you say PD, it sounds as if he was, in his much later years, one of the founding fathers of the smoking 'bath salts' movement.

• I knew there was a reason I always loved Asimov.

  Many years back, I read his autobiography....Both volumes, both about as thick as War and Peace (if memory serves), although much easier to read.

  • Too bad he was an atheist and raving lefty, and that his comment there would most likely have been directed at people more like us than Saint Albert the Blowhard.

    • Funny PD, I don't remember him coming off that way. But as I said, it has been a LOT of years ago, and I can't remember what I had for dinner half the time anymore
      I guess I will just keep the fond memories, and take your word on the rest.

      I DO know, however, that the movie I Robot was NOT as good as the book. Only because they never are though.

      • Perhaps I was a bit harsh, I don;t think he was as obnoxious-in-your-face about it as a lot of the current crop of writer/scientist/politicaloids seem to be. But unless I'm grossly misremembering, I believe he was on that side of the fence. I'll take a few minutes when I can here to check up on that, and retract and apologise if I'm wrong.