Since we’ve been talking, you have claimed that the word of a flying pink elephant on a teapot from the Planet Z is an unimpeachable reason to kick someone in the face. You have argued that a bowl of diarhea is just as inviting as a tuna nicoise, or at least you can’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t be. You have also argued that a wrinkled haggard old woman is more beautiful than Natalie Portman. This is just a short list of the sort of positions you have found your view to committed you to.
You point to science. Scientific truths. Nobody would disagree, right? Wrong—just wrong. There are people who think the earth is flat, that the sun revolves around the earth, that aids is God’s punishment, that the world was created in 7 days. They have their reasons. But they’re not equally reasonable.
You are not the present King of France. The disagreements about whether aids is a result of punishment no more is a problem for science than is our disagreement about whether the dog ought not have been treated that way. It’s no objection to me that I have been accused of high treason by the present King of France.
Do not misunderstand me, I am prepared to treat the present King of France in his nice purple robe with the highest respect. I will give him a loyal servant—a woman in a white robe. I will set him up in secure quarters with the finest soft padding as decoration on the walls. His throne will have a thin well-used mattress on a steel frame that somewhat resembles a hospital bed. And we will be so kind as to strap him down lest he fall out of it, at nighttime.
You might find yourself in a car. Cars are like philosophical outlooks. They take you places. If your car takes you to the front lines of a plan to break-out the King and return him to his former status in the palace… well then, time to stop letting the car drive itself.