[ExI] Hawaii telescope protests

[SR Ballard]

You have absolutely no proof that those works would have survived anyways, and again, the library was already in decline well before the fire, and again, the burning was likely not intentional.

Yes, I do think the telescopes can discover groundbreaking things, but just because it can doesn’t make it right. 

You can get upset about “imaginary friends” all you want, but the fact is that belief in the supernatural is found in all human cultures I have ever heard of. To compare other forms of belief in god(s) to the Christian God is to really display your ignorance of the subject anyway. “You think the Gods would take care of themselves” is a bizarre thing to say. In many religious traditions, men and gods exist side by side and interact quite closely. Often these gods are not even terribly powerful outside of a specific domain. 

I think you’re over-reacting to fundamental ignorance. One isn’t “excusing” barbarians by explaining how and why they do what they do. How do you get to be arbiter of who is civilized and who is not? We’re the Mongols barbarians? Why do they get to be considered barbarians but Alexander the Great is not?

Ignoring cultural issues, flat out, was stupid. Building telescopes on such a contentious site is exactly the same as replacing Jerusalem with a college, or the Kaaba with a Hospital, or the Alamo with a shuttle launching pad. Imagine how people would react if you tore down the Vatican for a space elevator!!!

These are all very valuable endeavors, but replacing cultural artifacts with scientific ones and expecting people to be okay with it is frankly illogical and juvenile.


> On Jul 24, 2019, at 10:47 AM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 10:36 AM SR Ballard <sen.otaku at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> #1 - the destruction of the library by fire is WAYYY overstated. 
> 
> Numerous books by Archimedes, the greatest mathematician and scientist of antiquity, burned and lost forever, but no big deal. Of the 10,000 lines of Sappho’s Poems only 70 survived but no big deal. We will never see the play Achilleis by Aeschylus, the father of Greek tragedy, but no big deal. Thousands of other books that we will never know anything about also went into the flames but no big deal. It baffles me why so many otherwise civilized people insist on making excuses for the actions of barbarians.
> 
>> #2 - I somehow doubt that learning “fascinating things” is more important than people’s health and safety,
> 
> Why did you feel the need to put quotation marks around that, do you think it's not fascinating, do you find the recent astronomical discoveries to be of no interest? And with the exception of central Antartica there is no place on the surface of the Earth where you could make a large construction with less environmental impact than on top of that mountain. And even the protestors don't claim the telescopes will harm people's health and safety, they claim it will harm the health and safety of the imbecilic Gods that are suposed to live there. You would think Gods could take care of themselves and would not need the help of human protestors. but apparently not.
> 
>  John K Clark
>  
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