The Limits of Argument

Well, the debate was raging fast and furious, on the subject of ‘Should trans women be allowed to compete in women’s sports. As I believe I have written in this blog before, I’m in the same camp as Joe Rogan on that question. No. No, they should not. But, of course that got a lot of pushback because I’m apparently ‘transphobic’ and ignorant. Oh, so very, very ignorant. There was also quite a bit of conversation about the term cis, which did not exist until trans people decided that they should not be the only ones with a qualifying adjective in front of their gender, and ‘natural born’ would imply that others are not.
Anyway, the original conversation has almost nothing to do with this blog. Someone posted, without attribution, “Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it? No, I will not sign.” I read that and thought ‘By golly, that is a damned good quote, very medieval sounding, but strikes right at the heart of so, so many debates. Are there intelligent, space faring creatures from other planets? We can argue about it for days, but either there are or there aren’t and we don’t know. Is there life after death? What about ghosts? Re-incarnation? Is faster than light travel possible? Will it rain this afternoon?
So, I asked where the quote was from but it was a really long thread and direct questions often get ignored, so I typed it into the old google machine and voila. It’s from A Man For All Seasons, which is now on my list of things I really must watch, and there were some other great quotes from it, too.
You learn something new every day.