Science could end us all

[CJ99]

I dont think anyone is blowing the dangers of science out of proportion, if anything I think the opposite happens and religion, unless its some sort of new age spiritualism, has its negative or harmful traits exaggerated.

Nah people exaggerate both a lot. If your claiming the danger of science isn't exaggerated then your just wrong! But yeah religion does get exaggerated more but theres reasons for that. And in what way is religion opposite to science btw?

I think the reason for that is due to what religion gained through its harmful traits compared to science.

Through potentialy dangerous crazy experiments scientists made loads of things we rely on these days like by playing with oil and jet engine designs (which was quite dangerous) without both of these we wouldn't be able to fly. And without making more nuclear power stations my country (the UK) are going to have an energy crisis by 2017 (thats from a guy who works in one of the departments for nuclear energy in British Energy).
So yeah its dangerous but people don't get as pissed off if it means they can have hot water, light and entertainment do they?

Whereas when religion goes and kills a load of people does it give us energy? or better transport? or longer life?

Nope. Therefore you probably tend to get a hell of a lot more pissed off about it!

 

[Katsuni]

No, that would be Satan, wielding Evolution in one hand and Materialism in the other.

I tend to be more scared of religion, actually, because it is SO resistant to modification. People can just do and say and believe crazy-ass things that end up hurting a lot of people and foster attitudes that are relationally destructive... and it's hard to get your hands on it and nearly impossible to have someone reevaluate.

Meanwhile, science actually has self-correcting mechanisms built into it just by definition. Look at any discipline and you'll actually see large flips that have occurred within them over the space of only a few decades. So as far as scientific ideology/frameworks go, they DO change if challenged sufficiently.

The main fear with science seems to be tinkering with things without really understanding the long-term implications, whether it's letting plastics/chemicals slowly seep into the food chain or a drug meant for a good purpose might cause unexpected long-term harm, or... well, just the typical "big bang boom bomb" scenario.

Agree with most of this, though yeu forgot the "grey goo" scenario as well, which we're going to run into pretty shortly if we're not careful.

That being said, though, I'd also like to point out "satan" doesn't directly oppose religion as such... technically he's a direct member of it. There's always a force of "evil" to every force of "good". Thing is, that all lies in the perspective and definition of the individual. It's actually not that difficult to read through every case of satan's mentioning in the bible and interpret it as him being a workers rights support activist / union leader for angels. Read through it again and think of it that way and it fits PERFECTLY.

Considering the idea of rights and such and those that didn't have them fighting for such was considered pretty 'evil' back when it was written, and is clearly stated many times elsewhere... it's pretty easy to see that it could just be that we've been fed a very slanted 'version' of history.

Really, if yeu have a "god" who demands worship, and sacrifice, and claims to have done "everything" for yeu, but yeu yeurself are a divine nearly godlike being yeurself... and god has never actually shown any proof of ever having actually DONE anything for yeu, he just SAYS he did... after awhile yeu'd start to wonder waaaaaait a moment... how do we know he actually did all that creation of us and such and isn't just taking credit for it? Noone actually SAW him do it...

Toss in that, rather than god silencing such an uprising, he allowed his followers to do it for him and let 1/3rd of them get wiped out in a huge war without intervening at all... yeu'd wonder that maybe lucifer wasn't entirely wrong in the first place since there's still no direct proof god did anything to even lift a finger, short of anecdotal evidence... of which most of that is skewed by the 'assumption' that he did stuff, regardless of whether he really did or not, making people falsely attribute things to him even if he didn't do it.

So, I know this's LITERALLY playing devil's advocate... but the way it's worded, he could've just been a union leader for all we know and got a bad reputation for it by psychotic religious zealot fanatic fundamentalists.

Though admittedly, in that interpretation he would probably be an athiest, or at least agnostic, which would in fact make him the direct counter to religion in that case. In the 'accepted' version, it's anything but; he just wants to be god himself because he thinks god is a stuck up brat who doesn't do anything. Which... if yeu read the rest of the bible, seems to be pretty accurate of a description, really.

Think we have to just give up on taking the whole bible at face value because so much of it, if taken with a grain of salt, would kind of imply we have it all backwards.





Also, science is resistant to change as well, yeu need a ridiculous amount of proof to 'disprove' something that's 'accepted'. Fortunately, this just takes evidence and a few decades instead of hundreds of years and generally holding people at gunpoint.

 

[Feops]

I dont think anyone is blowing the dangers of science out of proportion, if anything I think the opposite happens and religion, unless its some sort of new age spiritualism, has its negative or harmful traits exaggerated.

If you consider the popular and literary attitudes towards science years ago, for instance Jekyl and Hyde, Frankenstein, Burke and Hare, literary as well as in fact, or more recently Mengele's experimentation on people and BF Skinner's Behaviourism, mainly in fact, there was a more balance perspective. People were able to see and know "mad science" and there was nothing like the consequences then that there are now, the impacts both humanitarian and ecological of Cernobyl (spelling), mile island etc. out way anything that miracle sites or pilgrimages could have wrought (crusades and inquisitions are a different matter and reflecting a human/temporal need rather than divine grace or true revelation they do have their "rational" or secular equivalents).

You're equating pilgrimages to religion and nuclear distasters to science, then asking which one is more dangerous.

Objection!

Leading, your honor.

 

[erm]

[arrogance]

You're equating pilgrimages to religion and nuclear distasters to science, then asking which one is more dangerous.

Objection!

Leading, your honor.

Don't you know? Science dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.

Treating science as it's own entity is getting ridiculous now. It's like those B movies where they mix coloured liquids in test tubes to solve problems with "science!".

What the original post is really referring to is knowledge. Knowledge could be on the causal chain of our destruction, yes, along with other things. Cliche, but knowledge is power. It's also a very abstract and vague concept, much like science, and is difficult to talk about as a single entity.

[/arrogance]

 

[rhinosaur]

A lack of knowledge is probably more likely to end us all than science. A horrible disease is ravaging the world's population! Who would you rather have on your side -- Science or religion?

 

[Lark]

A lack of knowledge is probably more likely to end us all than science. A horrible disease is ravaging the world's population! Who would you rather have on your side -- Science or religion?

If palliative care was the only option religion for sure, if a cure was possible science.

Understand that a scientific response to the outbreak could be to fuel bomb you and your loved ones to contain said outbreak.