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Quote by: Suburbanite  Personally I wouldn't like a world ruled by the doctrines of science. I don't imagine that, democratically speaking, forcing science on people is a more democratic process than forcing religion. |
What do you believe are the "doctrines of science".
I believe that science, technology, and engineering (all irreligious practices) are the answer to many and most of our problems. Look at the agricultural and industrial revolutions - what they have done for humanity. Also look at the current information one. You'll see where I get my values from.
The highly religious muslims make up 25% of the world's population but only have 6 Nobel prize winners. If that religion were to dominate the globe I fear we'd be entering a new dark age. Similarly with the other religions, at least in principle. It has only been through the removal of power from religious institutions ( and the institution of rational scientific economics) whether in the west or maybe china, only with secularisation and independence from the tottering scriptural hand of the clergy, that society has advanced beyond medievalism and progressed towards modernity. Perhaps nowadays we take for granted what would have been seen as miracles or even magic - unimagined things - by the previous more religiously doctrinairre generations. We forget the lessons of history. Democracy helped the west, but only in the context of rationality and the abandonment of scripture as the source of knowledge.
If you have a problem with your health then you visit a doctor, medically and scientifically educated. You don't get out the mantra manual and pray to Allah. Well thats what you do if you're lucky enough to live in a reasonably enlightened country. I don't see why we shouldn't want that for the rest of the world....what kind of society would you like to live in if you had to be randomly reborn? A place where prayer is expected to do good? Repeated parapsychology experiments have shown that prayer doesn't work.
I see the promotion of science as a matter of rational principle based on knowledge of it's benifits, and enlightened self and social interest. Religious tollerance is at best an expedient political ploy, at worst a celebration of ignorance and folly. Take things to their logical conclusion. What do you want? Health wealth and happiness or the sacrifice of our insights and technologies for the promice of an illusory arterlife in the hope of appeasing an imagined G*d? I might be accused of using a slippery slope argument here but I'm honestly afraid for culture and progress. IMHO only by safeguarding science can we safeguard advanced civilisation, and only by promoting it on a worldwide level will we reasonably hope to guarantee progress in a safe and peaceful way.