An Experience Over Facts

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, men of learning argued whether or not some diseases were caused by the microscopically small creatures known as “bacteria.” The champion of the bacteriologists was Robert Koch, and that of the skeptics was Max Joseph von Pettenkofer.

To prove his point, Koch sent Petternkofer a tube that swarmed with virulent microbes that were said to be the cause of cholera. Pettenkofer—to the great alarm of microbe hunters—swallowed the entire contents of the tube. Then he said, “Now let us see if I get cholera!”

Now there were supposedly enough cholera germs in this tube to infect a regiment but Max Joseph never got sick. Thus, he proved forever the mistaken notion that bacteria could cause infection.

Expect he was completely wrong. The failure of the Pettenkofer to come down with cholera remains to this day an enigma, maybe the vial was not tainted as thought, maybe he just got lucky but one thing is for sure he was not right. Just because he seemed right in this one instance, didn’t mean what he thought was true.

Many religious folks today will take a singular experience as the end all and be all even when the totality of facts show something different. A singular verse rather than the whole console of God. One bad experience with a particular preacher rather than the consistency of the entire church. A moving time when they felt in their heart a way was right rather than the reasoned study of the Scriptures. A brief misspoken exchange rather than the bulk of all that has been explained. One experience trumps the overwhelming evidence

I think we can miss out on what is right by overvaluing experience over facts. One bit of knowledge might not be all there is to know. What is seen one time might not be all there is to see. How we feel might be factual.

Make sure you have not proven something to yourself that is not been proven.

Comments

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt. He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!) Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest. Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt! Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way. He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal. As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors. But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission. It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog