The Simple Truth about Light

[Aegon]

So much for a casual joke, but ok we can take this down a serious thread.

I fail to see that in any of the Abrahamic religions. Can you show me how Christianity does?

Sure, look up sanctification. It's a really common Christian dictate.

I don't understand how it relates. We can't be referring to the same thing. I'll respond how I think you meant that, and feel free to correct me. Christianity benchmarking itself to the highest standard of Christian within the umbrella of Christian standards is far from what I'm talking about. The opposite, actually. Forget the term "wishful thinking," it is about man's ego.

The scientific process is the least ego-driven process we have of ascertaining what is true.*, because the goal is to figure out things that are objectively true independent of subjective human experience, to the best of our ability. There are limits to it. There are flaws inherent to it. But it is the best we've got. Religion, on the other hand, seems to be entirely based on subjective human experience. Abrahamic religions are painfully obviously stuck in egotistical thought... and it starts with a God who acts just like a king in a religious philosophy that mirrors the familiar hierarchy of the time, and snowballs from there. Man thinks too highly of himself, and through a desire for self-preservation creates a God that interacts with and protects him in addition to a worldview that allows a permanent self to survive physical decay. These, to me, are irrational attachments born out of ego. It is an awfully narrow view that, for the life of me, I just can't understand. Things are so much bigger than us. Unfathomably bigger.

How is trying to rise to the standard of a saint a way in which an entire belief system checks itself? I was more interested in learning how Christianity may correct itself in light of new information, but I don't think it has; hence my question.

* One could argue it is egotistical to think that man can figure out what is true, and maybe you'd have a point. But that's a different argument and doesn't contradict what I'm saying.

The belief itself also has material tools (dogma, Bible, doctrine) to tie it to reality, making it not wishful.

Is it not wishful thinking to hope those things are actually remotely true? At least in the scientific method you have ways of verifying things independent of us. Our eyes may deceive us and trick us into thinking that there is a moon above us, but calculations tell us there's got to be something massive up there fucking with the water.