Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.”
From Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
King Canute of England tried to stop the tides.
In Huntingdon’s account, Canute set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the incoming tide to halt and not to wet his feet and robes. Yet “continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. Then the king leapt backwards, saying: ‘Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.’ He then hung his gold crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again ‘to the honour of God the almighty King.'”
Later historians repeated the story, with most of them adjusting it to have Canute more clearly aware that the tides would not obey him and staging the scene to rebuke the flattery of his courtiers.
The Indiana House decreed the value of π as 3.2
Bill 246 found its way to the Indiana House’s Committee on Education, which approved it and sent it to the General Assembly for a vote. It passed on Feb. 6, 1897. The bill nearly passed, but the senators decided on Feb. 12 to indefinitely postpone the vote.
Fighting reality is a futile course of action. Even today we have science deniers who cause real damage. They claim Vitamin A will prevent infection by measles, or that the measles vaccine is dangerous, too dangerous to use. It is nuts. These ideas can get people killed or very sick.
Believing the impossible on human life
Recently, we’ve heard lots of claims that human embryos are not human beings. Democrats in the NC House and Senate have sponsored House Bill 473 and its Senate companion, guaranteeing the right to in-vitro fertilization (IVF), which says:
§ 90-21.164. Fertilized human egg or human embryo not a human being.
A fertilized human egg or human embryo that exists in any form outside of the uterus of a human body shall not, under any circumstance, be considered an unborn fetus, an unborn child, a minor child, a natural person, or any other term that connotes a human being for any purpose under State law.
Abortionists would roll their eyes at that. I have personally debated two abortionists and deposed two others under oath. All four agreed that what they were “terminating” was a living human being.
These North Carolina legislators think that if the human embryo is outside the uterus that it has changed its nature. It is a “being” or it wouldn’t exist. And it is “human” or there would be no point to implanting it in someone’s uterus.
But it is so small!! Consider this photograph of an eight-day old human embryo, the same size, shape and appearance of the typical embryo that is conceived in a test tube outside the uterus, i.e. IVF.
That is the exact stage of development of a particular unborn child, whom Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary, called “my Lord” when John the Baptist kicked her when she was at six months. And he already had a famous name when he was conceived. Do you want to guess his name?
41 When Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, 42 and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! 43 And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord (sis) should come to me? 44 For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
Luke 1:41-45 ESV
And Dr. Seuss nailed it in “Horton Hears a Who,” when he said, “A person’s a person no matter how small.”