#HeyMF
A ship owner was about to send to sea a venerable old ship. He knew that her barnacled hull, however, had often needed repairs, and doubts were suggested to him that, possibly, she was not seaworthy. The conscientious old captain thought at once to have her thoroughly refitted, even though it should put him at great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he managed to stifle these bothersome misgivings and said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages that it was idle to suppose that this trip should be any different. He put his trust in Providence, and banished from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of the ship's builders, and, in such ways, he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was altogether safe and seaworthy. He watched her departure with a light heart, encouraging the crew to dream of the profits that this voyage would return. And he got his insurance money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales. What shall we say of him? Surely this: That his belief in the safety of his ship was justified because it was grounded in repeated, practical experimentation, rather than the hubris of rationalistic, a priori belief. It is admitted that he put his confidence in the builders of this vessel, but even this confidence was misplaced, for these were the self-same charlatans who sought to sell him gratuitous repairs later on, and Big Ship is always trying to get one over on the little guy. Further, we may see that the ship is "Religion," and the shipwright is "Richard Dawkins." The crewmates are "Empiricism," and the barnacles are "Neo-Platonism." And the captain of that ship was Albert Einstein.
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