Humankind Has Everything It Needs, Right Here At Home

I’ve always been a big fan of Occam’s Razor, the principle that, all things being equal, the simplest explanation is the best.  (It’s actually not quite that straightforward; those wishing to learn more can follow the link above.)

I liken this assertion about human knowledge to this excerpt from Strunk’s The Elements of Style. “Omit needless words. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”

When I hear people calling for new laws to prosecute terrorists or perpetrators of hate crime, I ask, “Isn’t murder already a crime? If a guy shoots up a school, he’s going away for first degree murder.  Isn’t that sufficient? What do you want to do?  Execute him twice?  Revive him from the dead so he can serve another life term in prison?”

When I was young I had a friend who told me that God created evolution.  I don’t normally challenge people re: their faith, but I do recall saying, “May I suggest you pick one? You seem to have more “stuff” in there than you need.  If you believe that God created the Heavens and the Earth, that’s fine, but you don’t need evolution.  If you believe in evolution, that’s fine too, but you don’t need God.”

We haven’t spoken since.

Just kidding; we used to love to get into philosophical talks like this.

I feel the same way about the people calling for a 28th Amendment to ban assault weapons. We already have laws that ban individual citizens from owning machine guns, hand grenades, land mines, nuclear weapons, surface-to-air missiles, etc.  Just classify AR-15s the same way, and we’re done.”  We’ve long ago interpreted the Second Amendment such that it doesn’t protect your right to own any “arms” you like (though there are people who claim this is tyranny).

Though there will always be more good ideas that come out of the human mind, we already have everything we need to survive very nicely here on our home planet.  All we need to do is implement the tools that are currently at our disposal.  Let’s make it happen.