In the midst of black seas of infinity
I really enjoyed this comic from Cectic. It nicely captures the Lovecraftian vibe that often seems to underlie creationists’ desperate flailings. By way of Pharyngula.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
- “The Call of Cthulhu”, H. P. Lovecraft
“There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be…” –Douglas Adams’ speech at Digital Biota 2 Cambridge U.K., September 1998
Source: http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/
On a somewhat related note, we all hear stories of people who survive extraordinary circumstances, being adrift in a liferaft for months on end, etc. At some point the survivors will opine, “I never thought something like THAT would happen to me.”
Of course not. No-one ever thinks, “Today an old lady three blocks away is going to forget to shut her back screendoor and her cat is going to make an escape for some R&R. Said cat is going to run across my street and a gruff but kindly truck driver will swerve to avoid hitting the cat. The truck will veer into opposing traffic and cause a 38 year-old pizza delivery guy to also swerve to miss hitting the truck, he will,instead, hit a telephone pole, killing him. The telephone pole, which had been due to be replaced because of its age will break in half and fall on my car, just as I’m pulling out of the driveway to go to work.
I’m calling in sick (again) today.
No-one (seriously) thinks such save for fleeting moments of wandering brain activity. Nothing would ever get done for fear of what MAY happen.
RP
Comment by Pommer — 22 Dec 2007 @ 12:41 pm