complich8′s journal

Was reading this abcnews story about how Terry Shiavo’s autopsy revealed that she probably wasn’t abused (though couldn’t conclusively prove an eating disorder as the cause of her initial collapse either), and that she was definitely in a persistent vegetative state from which there was zero hope of recovery. Further, it found that her brain had literally degenerated to somewhere in the neighborhood of half the mass of a normal human being’s, including massive degeneration to such imporant areas as her visual cortex. Half of her brain was gone, people.

Which makes the following line quite disturbing: “Nevertheless, attorney David Gibbs III said Schiavo’s parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, continue to believe she was not in a vegetative state and questioned the conclusion that she was blind.”

Yes, that’s right. The Schindlers, the people who fought to preserve their daughter in her state not-unlike cabbage, despite seeing HALF OF THEIR DAUGHTER’S BRAIN GONE, STILL believe that she was fine, was recovering, was doing better every day.

This points to a schism, that I’ve noticed a bit in the past too, and more and more now, and it’s growing. The gap between rational and irrational people. Particularly the gap between scientific people and blindly religious ones.

This got me thinking … what IS the big difference between scientists and religious types?

And I digressed to evolution (link on the right). And really it comes down to this: one group uses thinking to justify thoughts, the other group uses feelings to justify feelings, and then calls them thoughts.

Or something. I guess. I dunno. But there’s definitely a schism between the thinking and nonthinking people in this country, and it’s definitely getting bigger.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 at 10:41 pm and is filed under observational, On the net/In the news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.