As a teen, I and my buddies had a hell of a laugh at the Spanish Inquisition sketches by Monty Python. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” And then I learned about the Spanish Inquisition in history. I learned about religious intolerance and persecution in the name of God and it was no longer a laugh. It made me despise organised religion – something I feel I still have disdain for. I never thought I would live in an era though where such intolerance was not just permitted but actually encouraged.

Today, we live in an increasingly intolerant society. You must think alike and tout the supposed wisdom of the day. You must not argue against it for fear of cancellation, loss of job and derision. Some demand that these people who dare to question belong in jail and eventually, should the trend continue – probably re-education in forced labour camps. I even see this same approach now promoted by people in the magical community who frankly, SHOULD KNOW BETTER.

I disagree with things like man made climate change – at least as it is argued today. I have every good reason to do so and can point to a very large and growing set of peer-reviewed published science that agrees with me not the theories the IPCC promotes or are published by the BBC. Yet, and rather conveniently, rather than have any interest in debate, I am contemptuously called a denier. I do not think the COVID19 pandemic is really as bad as the media and politicians suggest it is (and neither does Dr. Fauci if you read his medical journal publications rather than his utterings to CNN), I am not going to rush into an mRNA vaccine because it is untested, untried and brand new technology (and may well prove to be a technology of immense benefit). In all of these, I can show science, peer-reviewed publications and support from climatologists, virologists and doctors, I’m not an anti-vaxxer, I do not subscribe to silly conspiracy theories, yet I fear that in a couple more years, I will be subject to the Spanish Inquisition.

Holding a different opinion is not a crime. Hell, it’s healthy for society. Being a bit maverick in that I am likely to be skeptical of the line put out by the spotty, twenty something supposed journalist fresh from woke indoctrination at University Post Modernist, I say is what we should all be. We were given brains. We should apply that gray mass in critical thought. In fact, this is how science works.

Contrary to popular opinion these days, everything proposed by science is a theory – not fact. Yes, even things you may think rock solid proven – just theories, simply approximations to the actuality of a thing. If you learn anything from reading this at all, please learn this – science does not prove anything! It hypothesizes. And it asks everyone else to challenge those hypotheses – to think critically and subject the theory to stress. In that way, the theory is improved.

Interestingly, we have heard a lot about models recently. COVID-19 models, Climate models and so on. Now, in science, a hypothesis is modeled and the model used to make predictions that can be tested against observation. If the predictions are wrong, so is the model and it’s back to the drawing board. In both the COVID-19 and climate modeling cases, they have been shown over and over and over to be not just wrong – but way off. Rather than throw away the model though, what has been taking place – the observation must be wrong…… huh?

This turning everything into an ideology that is worshipped at the alter of wokeness is actually a dumbing down of humanity. Persecution of those who still have a critical thought in their head is simply a further example of how humanity is setting itself up for a big shock. We may no longer have a Spanish Inquisition but we have a new religion and a new group of zealots who have borrowed from the playbook of said inquisition.

If Darwin’s theory is anywhere near correct – and, under some circumstances, it appears to have values, then in throwing away our evolutionary advantages like critical thought, scientific method and a recognition of an objective reality, we are headed for extinction due to our own stupidity. And rightly so.

And yes, I have a PhD earned through undertaking scientific method to show something unique and defend that hypothesis objectively. I am capable of critical thought yet I am also human and I can make mistakes and say so when I am proven wrong. With the topic of my PhD being partly about climate, I am entitled professionally to hold an opinion and since climate science is a subset of Earth Science, let it also be known that my PhD is in Earth Sciences.

Example of climate model vs observation