Science is the discipline of remaining logical and discovering the truth even as concerns complex issues. But only a small minority of people really practice it.
Religions, on the other hand, are followed and practiced by a large majority.
Science is much more efficient and fruitful than religion, which is why it has a huge effect which leads many people to imagine that it dominates the world, despite its much smaller number of effective members (scientists).
In reality, science has never been in power.
It can only do what you want it to do. Scientists never received the mandate to rethink and reorganize our political and economic systems so as to truly serve the general interest.
Instead, people always decided that scientists should exclusively work at the service of this "liberal" or "democratic" system, to provide technologies to do what our institutions want them to do. These institutions are the fruit of a sort of evolution of institutions that developed and adapted so as to grow and keep their power in a world where most people are stupid. The only choice scientists had, was between serving these institutions or being jobless and excluded from society.
Then, how can anyone hold science responsible for the bad decisions made by a system of institions that decides everything and employ scientists, but that scientists cannot control in return ?
Now if you want to know what rational solutions can be found to solve the world's problem, you can check those I developed . For implementation, no institutional power or democratic mandate is needed, but only the work of a small team of web developers. Unfortunately, I could not even find that since years that I had this idea and I could convince many other rational people about it. And many people are not interested, either because they hate reason and intelligence and prefer to dedicate their life and efforts to their religious values, that is their cult of stupidity; or just because they prefer to obey the system to get a career.
Humans wanted science to help them out of poverty. So this happened. Mortality rates dropped, and the human population exploded.
Can you seriously claim this to be a damage caused by science, and that misery and poverty which were the general human fate until the last centuries, were a good thing ?
There are many humanitarian organizations who consider it awful that many people over the world are dying of starvation or diseases, so they develop all efforts they can, with the help of science, to avoid these horrible deaths, providing means of decent life to these people.
The result of this work, is that the human population of the world keeps growing, and needs to exploit more and more of the planet's resources for a decent living.
Now, can you tell who or what is at fault here ?
Can you go and tell to these humanitarian organizations that it is a wrong thing to help humans survive because overpopulation and decent means of living contribute to the destruction of life on Earth ?
It's not exactly the position I'm trying to defend, because, well, all these problems are very complex, but...
The fact is that many troubles come from the simplistic and illogical way of thinking of most people.
And science is just the opposite of that (getting out of this mental illness, for those who can). Unfortunately, most people do not care, and prefer to follow their unreason.
Generally, I developed long arguments why science does way better than religion in terms of morality and selflessness and .
Statistics: Posted by spoirier — 11 Jan 2011, 23:21
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It is interesting however, that conflict and 'ebb and flow' is natural to our evolved brains, but that science and technology have allowed humans to utilise this natural characteristic to severely warped and distorted ends. Ends that are not suited to us. This represents a new evolutionary problem which has been observed since the beginning of what we call 'civilisation' (the adoption of a sedentary lifestyle). The original tenets (uncorrupted) of most religions attempt to deal with this evolutionary problem.
Statistics: Posted by Ellie — 17 Aug 2010, 02:06
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Greed seems to be the case of the first, (misapplied?) evolutionary dynamics for the second
Prof Wag. Yes, Korea and Vietnam were religious. Leaving aside that communism is, as Reich pointed out, a religion, a materialistic chiliastic heresy of Judeo-Xianity, on this side, the way I read the record, a Cabal of John Birch Society Fundies and their allies instituted the Cold War (Korea and Vietnam being just hot spots in the War) in the belief that Stalin was the Anti-Christ. They effectively took over the government in a right wing coup when Mark Felts as Deep Throat destroyed Nixon for going soft on Communism by going to China, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion, and don't get me started on Ronald=6 Wilson+6 Raygun=6.
Statistics: Posted by Twain Shakespeare — 30 Jul 2010, 15:15
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Statistics: Posted by Kevin Kane — 12 Feb 2010, 13:14
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The amount of science indicating increased species declines and extinctions is huge. Amphibians are amongst the hardest hit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in ... opulations
http://animals.howstuffworks.com/endang ... nction.htm
http://animals.howstuffworks.com/endang ... n-info.htm
The causes are multiple and overlapping. Most are due to human activity, changes and pollutants in the environment. Most are science and technology based or assisted. The natural sources may also be influenced by human activity.
http://www.epa.gov/oppfead1/endanger/litstatus/effects/
Statistics: Posted by Kevin Kane — 12 Feb 2010, 00:24
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