Yet Phil, despite knowing how everything works, we still seek religious answers. New religions are born, existing ones modify or die away. We're still wired for religion. What's interesting though, is how the model of religion changes. We go from gods who are much like humans, each having reign over some supernatural force, to gods who exist in other dimensions and not only reign over supernatural force but moral force as well. Now we seem to be coming full circle, reinventing nature cults based not so much on spirituality as in mysticism because, it seems, mysticism is the one component of religion that neither science nor metaphysics can conquer with reason.
Well, Jason...I would point out that we most certainly DON'T know how everything works. We, for example, have no idea how electrical currents generate magnetic fields... we just know that they Do....
But beyond that... the vast majority of scientific "answers" are totally invisible or incomprehensible the the average person.
They lack either the interest, the education, or the intelligence to understand even the questions science is posing, much less the complicated answers...
But the human brain evolved to WANT an answer it can UNDERSTAND... to use for the purpose of controlling their environment in a way that will enhance their individual survival.
Thus, for most people, the fact that a guy in a lab coat far away might understand how somehting works is not going to reassure them... is not going to make them feel personally more secure.
An Answer you can not comprehend nor put to effective use, does not really qualify as an answer at all... Especially when the Answer that the scientist can offer is that "we don't know"... or, worse still, that something is simply random....
most people are simply not going to be able to accept that uncertainty, that helplessness.
So, it makes perfect sense that religion still thrives. And that it thrives the strongest among those with the least amount if education or native intelligence, and those with the highest levels of anxiety.
Religion offers more than just a Kindergarten level explanation that is EASY to understand...
It ALSO evades the random nature of events by offering the comforting delusion that God can be SWAYED by your entreaties or belief into granting YOU exceptions to that randomness.
So most folks are faced with a choice...
Accept a certain level of uncertainty and randomness in exchange for REAL power over a small number of things... a world with no ultimate intent and no one in control...
OR believe in an Absolute and easy answer to ALL things that promises you can have real influence over events beyond your understanding...and in which there IS 'someone' in control, in which there IS an intent for every event.
Guess which of the two is more comforting and more self centered?
Religion is the comforting delusion that you are far more important to the way reality unfolds than science say you are.
And to Drifter...
When science was new... it was easy to be a scientist... you could demonstrate your ideas directly, make your observations with the unaided eye and bend new understandings to solve the easier problems that had been unsolvable for ages.
And you have very little competition.
Today, you wonder why, with so many more people, we donlt have so many more Newtons and Galileos...
But we do.
It is just that they have become SO common, they are not remarkable... and its just that the problems they are addressing are so esoteric, that is hard to understand the questions they are asking, much less the answers they are coming up with.
Science has progressed from the easily observable and solvable... to progressively harder and less obvious....
With each generation, the issues being addressed are the ones an earlier generation could not solve.
Today, 95% or ALL the scientists who ever lived are still living.
But their work affects every aspect of our lives in such minute and consistent fashion as to have become part of the backdrop of what we have come to expect.
When Franklin invented the lightening rod... he forever changed a world that had known very little in the way of change.
For all the things Gallileo and Newton uncovered and made apprehensible, what, really, did they CHANGE?
Shoes were still made the same way, Ships still used rope and fabric to move goods, writing on rag paper was the the only method of processing information....
Things changed at glacially slow rates...
But today... we have come to COUNT on the speed with which new wonders are laid at our uncomprehending feet.
Everything from how your shoes are made, and of what, to how you process information, communicate, move, work, eat, cook, .... its all in continuous flux.
The scientists are there in large numbers...
They come up with real wonders that directly affect your life every single day.
The only difference is that you have come to expect that of your world, rather than be set back on your heels in wonderment...
I mean... MRI's? Being able to take pictures of your insides based upon the polarity of the molecules of which you are made?
How can that not astonish?
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