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Many of the posts and threads in the R&P forum focus on various evidences, "proofs" or statements based either on scientific research or faith-based beliefs. Both are considered reliable by their proponents.
I listened this morning to NPR ("What? You're a gun-totin' REDNECK! NPR should only be listened to by nice, enlightened people!) as I prepped my home-baked French Bread dough (WHAT????) and fed my chickens and the wild quail covey I have brought from 10 to 100+ by careful scientific management.
So. Where does the truth lay in Science? I suggest the following:
1. Science HAS created and allowed a massive amount of information and aids to our daily living, many of which have saved lives or reduced inflictions and disabilities. Oh, and it's provided vast recreational interests and communications venues (like C-D). Hey: instead, we could all be plunge-press printing on our own messy Gutenberg presses right now, and lashing the results to carrier pigeons, right? How quaint.
2. Science doesn't inherently know when to stop if it is to steer clear of culturally sensitive topics. Curiosity is curiosity, and one person's question is another's inerrant and sacred touchstone, not to be trifled with by a bunch of hard-eyed guys in lab coats. Of all the nerve, I mean... reeeeeaalllyyy!.
3. Oh yeah: NPR: the topic was how mad many folks are that, in essence, "science", as an entity, has NOT provided enough H1N1 vaccine. Damn them! (Frankly, in some of my more vengeful pro-science moments, I'd deny that vaccine for the newly evolved H1Na bug to all those fundy Christians who routinely denegrate "science", but I won't hold their hard-headed illiteracy against them for now...).
Which is it? Where do we draw the line, if there even is one, at science's efforts? How do you meld our intense reliance on modern knowledge and it's provider, science, with some personal need to leave well enough alone when it comes to long-held and possibly fantastic myths, suportable only by faith and, in many cases, hokus-pokus?
Should some things be held aside from any careful inspection by a logical questioning system? Why?
With Science/Technology more prevalent in our lives these days,
I'd say it saves us time overall on many things we do on a daily basis (yet, nowadays we seem to have less time than we've ever had).
It makes many things easier, and quicker (yet, seemingly makes us less self reliant, and numb to sensibility).
We are moving ahead scientifically and technologically, but backwards in sensibility....(I'm not blaming science, just see the human effects from relying so much on it).
It makes many things easier, and quicker (yet, seemingly makes us less self reliant, and numb to sensibility).
We are moving ahead scientifically and technologically, but backwards in sensibility....(I'm not blaming science, just see the human effects from relying so much on it).
Fair enough, MrNY. Yes, we've all become overly reliant on science's ability to "save us" when we really need it. Else why should we be mad at a "system" designed to reduce errors in answering simple questions? Because it didn't get all the answeers in time? Is it science's fault that they may well eventually cure cancer, but your favorite auntie died of cancer last year? Or, would prayer perhaps have been a much better solution?
This is one of my "hidden agenda" points, in fact.
Answers to simple questions do not, in and of themselves, provide the structure for a societal system, but it's answers can and should affect the setup of that society. Otherwise we'd be painting our bodies blue and dancing around the sacrified goat in order to deal with the H1N1. Or, as the Church did during the Plague years, they self-flagellated. Real effective, I'm sure!
Should faith-oriented people, who are often mad at how science has been utilized, rationally deny it's abilities?
People living in advanced nations really take alot for granted. Life in the 1800's for the great majority of the population was filled with hard manual labor for both men and women. Before electricity was available everything had to be done by hand and just doing the laundry for an average sized family was a grueling task. Many people lived on farms and ranches without the convenience of farm machinery. Health was also a major problem and a large number of babies didn't survive past childhood due to illnesses that could easily be treated today.
Most of us have it pretty good, myself included, and we can thank scientific progress for all of it. We have more leisure time than our grandparents could have dreamed about, we live in comfortable homes with air conditioning and heat, we have transportation that allows us to travel with ease with our cars or even fly to remote parts of the world on a vacation. We're also living far longer than our ancestors did. All of these advancements are so commonplace that we hardly think about them but in fact we are truly fortunate to be living in a period of time in which science has improved the quality of life for the average human being in so many ways in just over a century.
In discussing with my 20 yr old son what he might do with his life, I was actually struck by how much life has changed even in the last 30 or so yeras. I worked at very physically demanding jobs while going through enginering school. We had every summer off, and I had to make my tuition, etc. Sawmills, a horrifying job in a chainsaw blade factory (do you know how those little grooves get ground in along the eges, back in the old days? That was me!), a cannery. My son and his college buddies seem to want to take a break after about 1.5 to 3 hours of "work". I used to do the occasional double shift in the sawmill: 16 hours of back-breaking labor.
"Why, when I was your age, sunny....!!!"
Theirs is a science-created digital and graphic world, with most or all of the hard manual labor removed. Not so in other countries, of course, but certainly here in N. America. They accept, and rely on, science and its answers. This will likely get them in trouble one of these days, but it also, I'm betting, will spell the end of the stranglehold that Christianity has held on the neck of civilization for the past few thousand years.
In the larger picture of course, the next few thousand years will just fly by (if we survivie them at all...) and then the next few, and so on.
Until, about 15,000 years from now, when "science" has actually cured cancer, old age, wrinkles, arthritis, etc. etc., plus easy interplanetary travel and the creation of life from simple precursors, all of the stuff that's now thought to be true simply because a bunch of peons has believed it for a long time (it's all relative...) will be gone. Dead and gone.
For now though ,we may be in the emerging Golden Age of Knowledge wherein science treads where only angels were allowed to go in the recent historical past! Will we be better or worse off as a culture if we hold to those artificial strictures and prolong faith-based "understandings"?
science and technology can "do" all sorts of stuff
but has it improved the quality of life on earth?
NO
don't mistake "bigger, faster, flashier, fancier" for "better"
don't mistake bells and whistles for substance
don't mistake having a lot of stuff, for having a lot of joy
don't confuse having more stuff, with having more peace
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 11-03-2009 at 04:50 PM..
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