{"id":13189,"date":"2011-05-24T15:46:47","date_gmt":"2011-05-24T19:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=13189"},"modified":"2011-05-24T15:46:47","modified_gmt":"2011-05-24T19:46:47","slug":"christians-and-credulity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/christians-and-credulity\/","title":{"rendered":"Christians and credulity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Anyone who thinks that Christians have cornered the market on gullibility should look <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikiquote.org\/wiki\/Incorrect_predictions\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> where you will find predictions by eminent prognosticators \u2013 many of them scientists &#8211; along the lines of:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?<\/p>\n<p>Democracy will be dead by 1950. (John Langdon-Davies, <em>A Short History of The Future<\/em>, 1936)<\/p>\n<p>The light bulb: Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure. (Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison&#8217;s light bulb, 1880.)<\/p>\n<p>The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty\u2014a fad. (The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford&#8217;s lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.)<\/p>\n<p>Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible (Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist).<\/p>\n<p>Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? (H. M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Bros)<\/p>\n<p>Rockets are too far-fetched to be considered. (Editor of Scientific American)<\/p>\n<p>The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine. (Ernest Rutherford, shortly after splitting the atom for the first time.)<\/p>\n<p>Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years. (1955)<\/p>\n<p>X-rays will prove to be a hoax. (Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And I haven\u2019t even started on failed global warming predictions. Take heart Harold Camping, compared to this bunch, you look pretty rational.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anyone who thinks that Christians have cornered the market on gullibility should look here where you will find predictions by eminent prognosticators \u2013 many of them scientists &#8211; along the lines of: What can be more palpably absurd than the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/christians-and-credulity\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[2131,844],"class_list":["post-13189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eschatology","tag-eschatology","tag-harold-camping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}