Any absurdity may be imagined - does it matter if it is one person's imagination, or an orchestrated folie \ufffd millon? Does quantity of superstition outweigh all observation?
Merely postulate a meddlesome Gawd - who plants carbon-14 in unlikely spots and alters its half-life, for good measure, while saying what-if-? And in that direction lies the madness of human sacrifice.. to appease such a chimera.
Children are malleable and ductile.. and are unable to learn critical thinking about the environment they inherit, when told by adults that "something which might have occurred" is of the same CLASS of thought as -- simple observation, experiment, debate, further experiment.. and the process by which that has DEMONSTRATED: that it becomes possible to make predictions [without snake oil].
You appear to be uninformed of the track record of Believers, in concert with political exploiters - in this country, hence you likely cannot see that Ross's concern about the prognosis is hardly hyperbole. The Right-Wing / Religio axis of political power in the US is no imaginary phenomenon. Nor is that joint thirst for $/Power merely slander.
But even in more bucolic places, it takes little history study to recall the Crusades and the Inquisition - in all their Gory.
And to the extent that we still have amidst our various populations, medieval minds of similar ilk - but now with vastly more lethal weapons to employ in Winning The Endless War for (what many of these dare to call 'Jesus's or Mohammed's Sake) - it's the same old battle against a remorseless homogeneity among those who have guessed what may be: and will kill to preserve their illusion over any other may be, slightly different.
In an (imaginary) sane society, there is beaucoup room for The Mystery of Existence (metaphysics) and.. for the (science) of 'demonstrable cause & effect". In our present milieu, it is solely the True Believers (of all the varied One-Truth persuasions / mutually exclusive of the Others' One-Truths) who constitute a threat to all life -- and not vice versa.
'Science' needs no enforced inculcation of beliefs; 'scientists' are not concerned with being Right-eous, merely Correct-eous as current information and thought permits. Only the Terminally Panicked can think in terms of 'killing a Commie for Christ'. 'Iraq' has occurred precisely via these Fundamentalist roots of disdain for the 'welfare of the world' -- Bush + handlers' self-anointing Angels of a Wrathful Deity. (Bush has confirmed his personal-certainty, if one allows for the Texan-translation).
See ya on the barricades. Some things *ARE* worth fighting.. for and against, brethren. (Nuke-assisted terminal dumbth would seem to be one of those. Even for those in hopes of bein Raptured-out of what they have incited, on Good-ol Gawd's behalf)
Ashton
Scratch an Evangelist and often you'll find the suppressed rage of an infantile "left-out" Ego, just lookin for armamants + venegeance. (I grew up around such - I don't have to 'imagine' anything)