Can You Build A Bridge If You Don't Understand Physics?

Yes.

Plenty of bridges have been built by people who couldn't write down the equations for momentum, kinetic energy or gravity acting on a falling body over time.

A perfectly adequate bridge for a woodland trail.

Can you build a suspension bridge without an understanding of physics and, by extension, mechanical engineering? Perhaps, but it's risky.

Can you construct a sequence of sophisticated bridges which allow roads and railroads to span a continent, carrying passengers and freight with a high confidence levels of safe passage? No.

Imagine that you don't know physics or engineering, but can design and construct a 4-lane bridge that crosses a 100' ravine with a 80% probability that it will handle the required traffic. That would be quite a feat of intuitive genius, but let's posit that for the sake of argument.

If someone needed to travel across states, all equipped with your bridges, and had to cross 10 of them, what is their chance of safe passage?

0.80 ** 10 = 11%

Hmm. I don't think I'm up for that journey.

What if there were 20 such bridges?

0.80 ** 20 = 1%

You can definitely count me out of that trip.

When I go on and on about marriage and John Paul II's Theology of the Body, this is one of the things I ponder. Can you live a happy life taking wrong-sex hormones and amputating healthy body parts? Perhaps. Can you fashion a happy community when 10% of your children are doing this? Almost certainly not.

Can you raise happy and successful children as a single parent? Possibly. Wife kitteh and I worked very hard at this and our results, through no fault of our kids, were hit and miss. Can you have a happy and healthy neighborhood when everyone is a single parent? Definitely not. Can you have a happy and healthy society when 30-40% of your families are headed by single parents?

Do you want to cross 1,000 bridges in a row constructed by someone who doesn't understand physics or engineering?

Physics isn't just a series of think-tank, policy essays, it's an accurate representation of the real world in mathematical terms. Dittos for engineering.

Dittos for Theology of the Body.

When the University of San Diego embraces racial segregation and gender theory, the problem isn't just that it is failing to pass on the Catholic faith to our children, it's that it is teaching falsehoods. It is implanting false equations in their heads.

Now imagine if our bridge designer above wasn't ignorant of physics, but instead was taught false physics and diligently applied invalid engineering equations in his bridge designs as a result.

I ain't crossing those bridges, no sir. 

And yet, right now, we do.