My dad recently recounted a story that his grandmother Eva told
him when he was younger. Eva was raised
in the strict household of a Methodist minister and his wife. The mother was very strict about not doing
any work on Sunday, or else the devil would come. “Work” included even mundane tasks like using
scissors to cut paper.
Eva and her sister decided to test out this “truth” one
Sunday. They went up into their attic, and
one of the girls cut up some paper while the other stood watch and looked out
for the devil. He didn’t appear.
I love this story. It’s
skepticism in its purest form. We have
this idea that is presented as fact, but is it really true? Can we come up with some way to test it? And what brave young girls to put their own
lives and salvation on the line to conduct this experiment.
I thought it was great, and felt proud to be descended from
such stock.
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