Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. What have we to offer in exchange? Uncertainty! Insecurity!

For those of us who live in a rational world, there is a certain strength in understanding; a glory and comfort in the effort to understand where the understanding does not yet exist; a beauty even in the most stubborn unknown when it is at least recognized as an honorable foe of the thinking mechanism that goes on in three pounds of human brain.

The fringers, however, cling to conclusions with bone-crushing strength. They have no evidence worthy of the name to support those conclusions, and no rational system for forming or changing them. The closest thing they have to a process of reaching conclusions is the acceptance of statements they consider authoritative. Therefore, having come to a belief, particularly a security-building belief, they have no other recourse but to retain it, come what may.

Perhaps that is why the more "certain" a fringer is, the more angry he seems to get at any expression of an opposing view. The most deliriously certain fringers are, of course, the creationists, who presumably get the word straight from God by way of the Bible that creationism is correct. You can't get a more authoritative statement than that, can you?

I get furious letters from creationists occasionally, letters that are filled with opprobrious adjectives and violent accusations. The temptation is great to respond with something like this:

"Surely my friend, you know that you are right and I am wrong, because God has told you so. Surely, you also know that you are going to heaven and I am going to hell, because God has told you that, too. Since I am going to hell, where I will suffer unimaginable torments through all of eternity, isn't it silly for you to call me bad names?

How much can your fury add to the infinite punishment that is awaiting me? Or is it that you are just a little bit uncertain and think that God may be lying to you and you would feel better to apply a little torment of your own (just in case he is lying) by burning me at the stake, as you could have in the good old days when creationists controlled society?"