Science beats religion if...:

I get that you're implying that science should be tempered with religion. I just don't really understand how that's saying anything other than that there's a problem with science which only religion can fix.

 

Also, the idea of 'human beings coming to Extinction' may be evolving to the concept of the End of Science (much of that may be the failure to realize the 'discovering of major Scientific Theorems'). I don't think only religion is necessary to fix science, because science can and will mystify any semblance of spiritualism (which is an unfaithful attitude to accepting the given of Creation, and also conservation of matter and energy).

 

I think whether we need it is almost irrelevant; we'll always be curious as to why it happened.

Arthur C Clarke said that any technology sufficiently advanced will be indistinguishable from magic. Since all technology has its roots in nature, I see no reason to think that evidence of the so-called "supernatural" will not one day be shown to just point to natural phenomena that we don't yet understand. This isn't exactly at odds with the idea of the paranormal, just our interpretation of it.

Take ghosts: it makes total sense that our senses would glitch now and then, and it makes total sense that someone suffering from grief, moving into a new home, etc., would be more likely to be under the kind of stress that we already KNOW makes the senses unreliable. Couple this with the attractiveness of the idea of ghosts and we've got a plausible explanation for a hell of a lot of "supernatural" things within the framework of known science. (I don't want to rely on The Great Deceiver angle because I happen to like Descartes, but I think it's more reasonable to explain away the odd anomaly in such a way than the whole of reality.) We may not totally understand them now, but we get the gist enough to at least point in one direction and know whether we're making any headway or not in understanding them.

In a lot of ways, I think religion and philosophy are totally at odds, far more so than religion and science.

 

Maybe you think that because of my first post in this thread were I said:

But went on to say:

which indicates that the problem is not with science, which has no intrinsic good or bad, but with mankind , which is not ready for the knowledge that he has.

As for saying science has brought us to the edge of extinction, I can only hope I didn’t say or imply that. I would hope that I said or implied that that it was mankind’s misuse of science that has done that.

That is why I said almost the same, you are correct, the blame does not go to the tool but to the person who uses it for the wrong job, just as I feel has been done to science by mankind.

As for a gun being the wrong tool for killing people, I guess you could say it is, because we shouldn’t be killing people with any tool, but that may be a little nit picky.

 

QUOTE:
"In a lot of ways, I think religion and philosophy are totally at odds, far more so than religion and science."

Don't need that. At last I see where you're coming from. In the nineteenth century there existed the positive ambition to, as it were, marry Science and Philosophy. In any case, 'I' reads something like the analysis of tree barks from the broad perspective of geological time. Did fern like trees of the Carboniferous have bark on them? For that matter is it the property of Man which permits Him to rake up the OIL industry from it's decomposition and stratification in sedimentary layers? Just like todays property in the land used next to housing, roads construction, and over-all outer growth of the remnants of Nature independent of civilization.

So we possess the clear value of the meaning of Man's imposition on nature, and in spite of what enviromentalists may mean the inability to conceive otherwise. Thus we have an Idea farther Objective than any ordinary literary reading could conceive. It isn't Poetry but it the truth of something like poetry. Maybe the next stage is , science fiction, amnogst the literary Genre.

 

What would you suggest are our options then? To use religion to make us mature enough to handle our existing scientific? Or to use religion to stop science where it is now, perhaps even reverse it to a point where we think we are mature enough? Because for the latter, read Anthem by Ayn Rand, or, I dunno, watch The Village if you want a dumber equivalent.

I don't know that you did. Your examples were ambiguous enough, anyway. Then again, one referred to economics, which is more of an art than a science.

Well that would make it the right tool for killing, and killing something we shouldn't do. I don't want to nitpick, but I felt that, despite appearing similar, the two analogies were substantially different. I don't believe that science is the wrong tool for doing something, just that we need to take responsibility for what we choose to do with it.

That was my point: it's unfair to suggest that, if we used science to kill each other, science is to blame. But I don't think putting the genie back in the bottle is the answer. You say we're not mature enough. I say, we'd better get mature, and sharpish, because I'm sure as hell not going to try and persuade people to give up what science already gave them.

 

I guess in a way.

What I'm really saying that mankind doesn't seem mature enough for the science he processes, kind of like a very young child with matches. Nothing wrong with matches just maybe not a good idea to let children play with them.

It just seems to me mankind needs some serious maturing and nothing seems to be able to fit the bill like religion. Like it's been said, it's not the job of science and philosophy isn't doing the job, so where else to turn.

So like I was saying, before we use science to replace religion maybe we should stop and think about it. It could mean our own extinction. Religion could be part of the delicate balance that keeps us from blowing ourselves away.

 

I kind of see it like an "Arms Race". Mankind has let science race ahead of our maturity.

Now there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle, so we need to catch up. I don't really care how we do it; it just needs to be done.

It just seems like to me, if we could stop beating each other over the head with it and use it like it was intended, I think religion could do the job. But if you can come up with something else, fine.

When the cure for cancer is found quicker than a better faster way of killing more people or blowing things up, I’ll know we are on the road to maturity.

 

Thing is, I don't see it as us as a species having to mature. I think you or I could probably deal with an atom bomb. We'd just not use it.
The problem is that we keep letting people who can't deal with atom bombs have them. I don't think people like us need religion to be told not to drop the bomb exactly: we need it to remind us, that we're doing the right thing, when the guys who jerk us around appear to get all the babes and all the bucks. Those guys aren't going to be converted by any religion, but if it seems like there's no advantage to being better than them, we won't be.

 

I have to say re the other post you made there, I don't see that anyone has to be saying "We should replace religion with science!" I think it's more a battle of (perceivedly) opposing ideologies. Not that science and religion don't have some serious differences - the basic one being that science updates its "holy texts" constantly, something which some uberChristian actually insisted to me was a weakness rather than a strength. But I think it's more gradual. Science tends to push religion out of people's frame of mind, not because it says you can't believe in god or because it actively seeks to replace religion, but because (IMO) science just makes specific religions look a bit silly, and then specific religions' response to this makes them look even sillier.

 

Hoatzin, I just wanted to thank you for the discussion. I was able to think some thoughts that I hadn't thought of before and that is rare, so once again thank you. I think we may have rung all the juice out of this subject, at least for me. So I'm moving on for now. Hope to discuss another topic with you later.

May Science satisify you and may Mankind be as mature as you think it is,
OWB

 

It's a fairy tale, you seriously think there's some invisible man up in the sky who knows and watches and creates everything? Come on, it's childish and stupid, you only believe in it because you were told to as a kid.

 

wow you've totally shattered all of our beliefs....

 

I believe in God even less now!

 

And your proof is?

 

Not sure who this was in response to, but just to clarify: I'm not religious and I don't believe in God, Allah, Krishna, Jah or the Tooth Fairy. I just don't care if someone else does, if it doesn't impact on my life.

To be honest, your reaction seems exactly like what I was inquiring about. You feel obligated to ridicule those who believe something which, yeah, you're probably right, probably is just some fairy story. And for what? What has been gained? Probably nothing. What has been lost? Probably nothing.

Again, I'm not religious. But I don't see any value in insisting that people shouldn't believe something. Obviously you do think it's worth telling people how stupid their faiths and beliefs are. Perhaps you could explain your motivation to me.

 

God is a metamorph (if that's the right word) for something bigger, maybe people feel the present of something universal, and they made a god person out of it.. but to deny any mystical existence of something bigger without any fundemental agruments is just foolish.. keep your mind open for anything.

 

Ok I'm sorry, I was a bit rude, but to me, it's just perplexing that people can believe in it, surely people need to realise that, it's just not real. It's like, if someone said they believed in Apollo the sun god, as in, really truly believed a man in a golden chariot made the sun rise every morning, you would genuinely think there was something wrong with them, I don't see the difference between Apollo, Thor, tooth fairy, goblins etc and the current God, except the only difference is you've been brought up to believe one is true.

It's like brain washing, kids believe whatever adults tell them, and if you're told god exists, you'll believe it, no one here believes in God because they chose to, they believe it because they were told to.

 

But do you think it's such a problem for someone to believe in any of those things, if they don't hurt anyone as a result? I mean, if it comes to it, is it really a problem if someone is insane, if they don't hurt anyone as a result?

 

why?

I couldn't disagree with this more. On a personal level, my views are radically different from anything that my immediate family holds true, and different from everything I was told as a child. I hold my beliefs based on subjective realizations and experiential knowledge.