Science and Technology vs. Religion

[ProfWag]

[Kevin Kane]

Life on earth includes plants and animals. Religion rarely endangers such life, but science / technology often does.

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/

[ProfWag]

[Kevin Kane]

[NinjaPuppy]

[NinjaPuppy]

[ProfWag]

"I have a solution to the world's overpopulation problem. Death penalty for a parking violation." -- Steve Martin

[ciscop]

[ProfWag]

[NinjaPuppy]

Man, Ciscop... you MUST be young. At least 'young' by my standards.

Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi
Bob Dylan - "Blowin' in the Wind"
Abbie Hoffman - "Steal This Book"
Woodstock - Peace, Love and Rock & Roll
"Never trust anyone over 30!"

Ahhhh, the memories... It was almost a way of life at that time. Then all the hippies and Dead Heads went into corporate America and it poofed.

[Kevin Kane]

[Kevin Kane]

We need more real geniuses

[ProfWag]

[Twain Shakespeare]

Kevin, humans have caused more damage to Gaia "with" technology than "with" religion, but more damge to each other "because of religion" than because of science.

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.

[Ellie]

Science and religion are two languages to describe the same thing. Gallileo said that. And he was right. But both science and religion are unfortunately corrupted to serve a desire for money, power and influence. That's why they both kill people. Probably in equal parts. But we will never know (or be able to say with a complete dataset), so it's pointless to artificially separate them here.

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.