For all that it is in truth far more terrifying, I freely admit that expressions like “Oh, in the name of False Vacuum Decay” just doesn’t land the same. It’s s shame, really. Modern scientific curses like “may all your Li-Ion batteries grow centimeter long dendrites in seconds” are much more fearsome than they immediately appear.
I mean, “may your tap water turn to dioxygen difluoride while you’re taking a shower” would make even Satan go, “okay, stop, just… Jesus, stop.”
…That’s genius. Thanks!
See, this is one of those inconvenient situations where us Atheists really lack appropriate and proportional ways to express our feelings about things.
Ah yes, the printing press: Likely the most cumulatively subversive memetic infection vector ever conceived.
Define ‘mind-control’. Trans-cranial magnetic stimulation has been perfectly capable of changing people’s broad moods since 1985 and is being actively used to treat depression right now. The underlying technology is only going to get more precise, especially as more research on spintronics is done for other purposes. Sure, right now our understanding of how what goes on in a given brain translates to ‘thoughts’ is insufficient to change those thoughts in any reliable way, but there’s little doubt that when we do, the technology to make it happen will almost certainly be around.
Wow, framing the debate much?