Science: A Religion? (long post)

[ManMachine]

Read the OP.

MM

I don't agree that religion legitimately satisfies the need for hope in people. If it did, death wouldn't be something that the religious fear and try to avoid and put off with such great vigor, and one religion would be enough for everyone.

Firstly, apologies for being blunt but I was trying to work through a number of replies.

You don't have to be religious to want to put off death with 'great vigour', I am often reminded in debates like this that scientific endeavour has extended human life, I regularly read articles about how close we are to being able to store the contents of human brains in electronic systems (who looks after the power supply?). The fear of death is not limited to the religious, it occupies us all. I wonder if other animals contemplate death as much as humans?

All of us harbour some level of misgiving about our impending death and clearly neither scientific endeavour or religion can prevent corporeal death. But religion offers some mitigation via the everlasting soul, the reincarnated spirit, the Atman or whatever you want to call it. Scientific endeavour may not invoke vehicles to the afterlife but it is certainly used to mitigate death by putting it off for as long as technologically (and biologically) possible.

How frightened a person is of death doesn't say anything about the success or failure of their chosen religion, it might suggest the level of faith they have in that religion. That I would accept.

Religions are formed initially as localised social-structures (the tribal god of the Abrahamic religions, the monastic discipline of the Buddhist religions, etc.) so its not surprising that there are a number of religions. What appears to be different about scientific endeavour is it has no localised social origin, or so it seems but scientific endeavour was forged in the academic institutions of ancient Greece, it is a very Western philosophy, sure it has spread but then so has Christianity and Islam.

As far as censorship, it provides no useful censorship that most people don't learn early in life and often by other, more practical avenues.

I'm not suggesting its useful in a general sense, the censorship is there to deliver on the promise of hope as set out by each religion. A good example of how this manifests in scientific endeavour is environmentalism, if we follow the rules (use less carbon fuels, etc.) then we will deliver on the scientific hope for a better tomorrow (avoiding climate change, etc.). But this is species-ist nonsense. Perpetuating the conditions optimal for human survival is not good for the planet and it is not good for other species, who, as a result of human activity, are becoming extinct at a rate that is approaching the last five great extinctions. Neither of which sound like good news for humanity in the long term.

MM