Quote: (01-28-2015 03:48 PM)Slim Shady Wrote:
^ That is just human's trying to explain the world around them. When they had no way of knowing, they made up stories that seemed to make sense to them at the time. This evolved into philosophy, and then into science. At each point however, we must try to explain the world using the best tools and knowledge available to us. Attempting to go backwards is idiotic, against evolution and progress. Christianity and Islam are stuck in the past. They are stuck in what is wrong.
On the most important questions, we still have no way of knowing. Even the most strident atheists will concede that despite all our tools and technology, there remains a basic mystery to the world, and looking through an observatory's telescope or hearing beautiful music it's very hard to deny that (if anything the mystery is increased, not decreased). Most will agree on the existence of the numinous, and most will agree on the inscrutability of the human heart...as soon as you attempt to explain either of these, you have philosophy. Add symbols and/or rituals and you have religion.
I don't think it's any less relevant for us than for prehistoric man, and I think history teaches us that it can and should coexist with science.
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Atleast vedic religions are based on a knowledge based, science based background. Predictions are made on what is known. Progress is inherently allowed.
But if you stick to one man and one god as dogma and refuse to see any sense, you can not be helped. If you continue quoting the religion's own propaganda and self reported "history" as fact, then you can not be saved. Isn't that ironic?
Personally I'm very partial to the Vedic religious traditions so we can probably find common ground here, but touching on something you mentioned, in my view, the irony is that the modern conceptualization of "progress" demands both faith and belief. Technology increases our capacity to carry out tasks but nothing else, and science has little to offer us in the way of morality. Religious zeal without any regard for facts and evidence is a horrifying prospect, I agree, but the use of technological power without guidance or wisdom is no less horrifying (and has proved itself as such countless times in the 20th Century alone).
In the end, no matter how powerful our tools, people hanker for answers to those same questions...which is why when they turn from the teachings of religion they often formulate new dogmas in all but name, worshiping wealth or fame or even themselves. As CS Lewis noted: "For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison." Has anyone described the modern world so succinctly?