"That
a person could enter some metal device--like a car with fins--and
rise into the air, and be sustained there, and move forward, why that
clearly violates everything we know about the law of gravity and the
laws of physics. If we have learned anything from a thousand years
of study of the natural world, it is that an object heavier than air
must return immediately to earth when it is tossed into the sky."
"Hear, hear," two or three people muttered.
"Now, if you perhaps mean that these 'airplanes,' as you call
them, are somehow flung into the air for a short distance and then
fall to the ground, well, then perhaps that would be possible." The
professor looked expectantly and a bit condescendingly at the
traveler, hoping that the man would take this face-saving opportunity.
"No, no. You don't understand," said the traveler. "The
airplanes have powerful motors and the craft rise into the air, and
they stay up as long as they want, as long as the fuel holds out."
There were several audible "hmmphs" around the room.
"Tell us then," said another scholar, in a saccharine voice,
"how this device works. What makes it fly?"
"Well, I don't know exactly how it works. It has something to
do with air flowing over the wings."
"You don't know--you cannot explain--how it works, this device
that runs counter to everything we know about the natural world, yet
you believe in it anyway.
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