Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Have Scientists Failed Humanity?

I think that the problem has more to do with the human brain. We are susceptible to religion/superstition, because our brains are programmed in this way. This may have helped us in the past to survive, but today this is hampering progress.

Perhaps there is also an Anthropic reason why we are not more science minded. Civilizations consisting of intelligent beings that are very rational will evolve much faster than backward civilizations such as ours. These civilizations will develop machine intelligence much sooner than we will. These machines will become so different from the biological creatures that you could justify saying that you couldn't have been a machine.


Because the ''biological'' history of backward civilizations lasts much longer than that of rational civilizations, our type of civilization will have produced more biological individuals before the machines take over. It is thus much more likely to find yourself living in a backward civilization.

Is this the reason that "scientists" produce any garbage that gives them money? Or maybe if they were more honest, they just would do their job, and do not badmouth religion?

ES

DA MOrgan

I didn't understand your reply to me. Do we have a different definition/understanding of the term "lay-people"?

Extrasense

Why don't we turn my original question around and ask:

Could the current round of unmistakably immense rises in the volatility and vociferousness of the conflict between the "religious" and "scientific" communities in the United States actually be evidence of contemporary religion's failure to promote levels of harmonious understanding, clarity, and most importantly, unambiguous-ness, adequately satisfying to the "scientific" and even arguably the majority of the lay community?

Have religious leaders become the poorest of harmonizers and synthesizers? Preferring to plug their ears than roll up their sleeves and get to the hard work of clarifying, unifying, and answering the seemingly infinite disparities within just itself for a start? And do lay-people and scientific people, because of this, feel their understanding of religion slip further and further out of their grasps so that they feel they are choosing a much more understandably basic/fundamental religion over a more complicated and conflicted one? For example, what is religion's answer to the question: "Does God have a beard?"

Oh come on now! You just said that the proof of the system working is that it failed! And that failure may hurt the company in the very short term, but who the hell can remember which company sold what weird pseudo-scientifically named drug? I already can't remember which one of the company's it was, and I barely recall that the drug started with a V. And who is gonna even try to remember, when that company comes out with the next life saving wonder-drug that everyone believes having is a matter of life and death and its stock starts inching up again causing a rush for shares?

Maybe that's another tendency pushing people away from science and towards religion: That science is more and more discounting individual death in favor of the "greater good" while religion is nominally moving or holding on to the opposite end. I mean look at your own feably passive choice of wording to characterize the result of those deaths, "it did nothing to encourage the public's faith in that company." Instead of, "It caused the public to drive a stake through this company's heart." And of course the logical conclusion for the roots of your subconsciously understated choice of wording is the acquired belief that the benefit of this company is worth its mistakes. It of course is a valid argument, but how apologist is it?

And are you following the Golden Rule?

Kate, please delete this post, I hit quote instead of edit by mistake and can't find any delete button.

**** man! You have a plethora of hypotheses with no indication of why we should accept any of them!

I'll start for now by asking you: What makes you think that our brains supposedly being "programmed" in a way to makes us susceptible to belief in religion/superstition helped us to survive or was essential to survival? Because I don't see the link: from ambulatory amphibian eating flies, to monkey, to religion/superstition being a necessary part of survival...? I would like to see the link though...how religion was necessary for something as basic as survival...so please expound.

Going on, what makes you so sure that this particular brain "programming" that we evolved out of survival necessity is no longer necessary for survival? Are you instead insinuating that it is religion/superstition that we no longer need for survival, so that it should be replaced by some alternative intellectual construct satisfying the brain "program" which manifests itself through belief in religion/superstition? Aren't you then in effect saying that the very brain "program" which manifests religion/superstition should be altered and thus is itself at fault and no longer necessary for survival in its current form?

And lastly, for now, what makes you believe that you have this insight over nature and when was the line finally fully crossed when humans could understand the faults and deficiencies in the fundamental system which produces them enough to call for its alteration?

Are we completely part of the system or partly above the system?

This one too...did it again

Extrasense: I don't see in my job description "bad mouth religion." But I do see in my job description "teach critical thinking skills."

If you can find a difference between an invisible purple rhinoceros and a sentient omnipotent diety you are in desperate need of developing critical thinking skills. Well there is one difference between them: The sentient omnipotent diety is more of a pinkish-orange.

Planko: I think it well established ... certainly as well as anything in psychology ... that we are pack animals genetically engineered to follow an alpha.

The members of the pack engage in pack behaviour. Part of that behaviour is what we refer to as brain-washing.

Convince someone it is in their best interest to believe in an invisible purple rhinoceros and they will. Scaring children with stories of death, disease, and eternal damnation in hell is just part of the process.

If the choice of a theological perspective was not an act of brain-washing we would wait until children were adults: Say age 18. Then teach them about many different theological perspectives and let them make a choice of their own free will. There is no religion of which I am aware that indoctrination is not expected to be complete by the age of puberty: Bar Mitzvah, Confirmation, etc.

If you don't like the conclusion ... then consider the trail of bread crumbs that lead to it.

Huh? DA Morgan? Your answer is too scattered for me to make the connections:

We are pack animals *genetically engineered* (!? oh no they got to you too!) to follow an UNSEEN alpha???

Surely the connection has to go much deeper than that, given that there is no visible alpha male here!. Possibly maybe something to do with the brain's need to come to swift conclusions in order to properly perform its function of subconsciously and consciously regulating the body?

If we don't scare the kids with stories of death disease and eternal damnation then what would we scare them with? What, assuming my above hypothesis, would we use to make them come to swift and decisive conclusions? Construct actual incidences of death, disease, and damnation to show them, real-time, instead?


I don't quite get the jump from pack behavior to brain-washing, much less your mixing of the ideas of whether this brain-washing is for best interest purposes or purely to promote more detrimental pack behavior. If pack behavior is an ingrained evolved system, then why the need for brainwashing? I don't get whether you mean brainwashing is a contrived unnatural and unnecessary product or an integral and essential part of our evolved means of survival.

You are delusional about this. There is no such rises whatsoever.
There is atheistic liberal community, and it is stupid to no end. You want to blame somebody else for this stupidity.

The scientific part of the atheistic community get corrupted, and you probably again will blame somebody else for that.

e s

What? You were happy to quietly agree in the rise 2 pages ago when I originally mentioned it in the first post, but now you say there is no such rise? Make up your mind.

You agreed somewhat with my first post but when I try to turn the table around to see what happens you just call me delusional to begin with and dismiss me outright? Not very honorable of you.

extrasense:

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.

When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
~ Steven Roberts

My friend, a scientist "expert in religion" is nonexistent utopia. Science would be at paradise, if scientist could be expert in science, not its parasite as it is usually now.


ES

Remind me precisely, I do not recall agreeing with you ever.



ES

I'll leave it up to you to decide what you feel obliged to deny or confirm, extrasense.

Planko:

extrasense is demonstrating the strenghs of those that are religious and believe lying is a sin: Denial and obfuscation.

He wishes to blame scientists for discovering fire while denying it was his church that used it to burn witches at the stake.

Damned scientists invented gun powder too. Yet it is the Christians, using it in guns, that keep killing people.

Blaming scientists for what is done with the knowledge they gain is like blaming Eve for eating the apple given to her by her creator as an intentional temptation.

I would like to point out the obvious:

1. Scientists are a few, elite people who take the trouble to try to understand the very difficult. Hence you should not expect the masses to understand what you understand.

2. Many people here are highly competive, tearing into any other people's ideas with the shout "defend yourself". Might work well in the scientific community, doesn't work well in the rest of the world. Hence: you turn off the masses with your people skills. Calling others idiots will never market an idea.

3. I would postulate that science alone does not fill the needs of most people. Here in the US, to a lesser extent in Europe, but also to a great extend in third world countries, religion fills a need in many people's lives.

4. I would futher suggest that for some of you, your strict adherance to an only science belief resembles a form of religion, much as Communisum, though without a god, likewise used many of the forms of religion including hymns. Religion is a way of looking at life, a pholosiphy, a way of living. There are many religions in the world that do not believe in a supreme god.

Some of you guys are way too stressed out. Now if you have already made your great contribution by age 30, go ahead and kick the bucket. Otherwise hang cool, teach and learn. It takes a long time for new ideas to be accepted and understood.

Sparky: Lets examine what you've said and see what survives.

1. "Scientists are a few, elite people"

If by elite you mean educated and inquisitive I confess. If by elite you mean powerful, well paid, and influential you are smoking something illegal.

2. "Calling others idiots will never market an idea"

True. But then I would consider science and marketing to be mutually irrelevant. The point of science is to discover truth. The point of marketing is to obscure truth.

3. "I would postulate that science alone does not fill the needs of most people"

I'd stop using the word postulate and suggest that sex does not fill the needs of most people either.
So what is your point?

So religion fills people's needs. So does heroin. So does tobacco. So does watching reality shows on TV. So what? Like I asked ... is there a point here somewhere?

4. "your strict adherance to an only science belief resembles a form of religion"

Your insistence on demonstrating your ignorance in public is a bit embarrasing. We have no "belief" in science. We find value in substantiating things before accepting them. Now the great and all powerful invisible purple rhinoceros insists you send 10% of your income to him as tribute.