Thursday, October 21, 2010

Celebration of the Birth of the Bab: Dawn of the Age of the Maturity of Humanity


Science is a method for finding the truth. In the past there has been agreement between most scientists and most religious people that things such as ethics were out of bounds for science and most people still think that.



But there are people who are starting to question that division such as Sam Harris. I don't agree with everything he says but I agree with his basic premise that questions of ethics and value should no longer be considered out of bounds for science.



So I'm actually agreeing with you. The problem with chemical warfare and other terrible crimes of science was that scientists thought moral questions were out of bounds. They left that to politicians and religious leaders and when those leaders said "we need better weapons" they didn't question it. Science needs to provide the same tools for objectivity, peer review, reliance on facts not emotions (or holy books) to questions of value and ethics. Of course that won't be easy. There will be more pressure to bias findings based on prejudice and preconceived ideas because questions of value hit people much more emotionally than questions about the natural world. But science is the only technique we have to get beyond those emotions and biases. Religion just gives us various sacred books and people's interpretations of those books. That is why it really has made no significant progress answering anything in the past millenia but science has made so much progress in the last few hundred years.
About Spirituality
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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