What Religious belief are you?

[Kasuha]

My personal opinion is, saving lives of too many people which would die without that care and letting them spread their defective genetic information is making us weaker as a species and may support our extinction in case our environment changes. Now, seeing such changes incoming we're all going crazy trying to divert them instead of getting ready for them?

For ages, our evolution was (likely) driven by rules lined out by Darwin and lead to us becoming self-conscious and communicative. Now, a religion is telling us we should not continue evolving that way. Well, I think we're getting emotional here instead of realistic.

Of course, the self-preservation instinct is important and useful. But it should be applied within reasonable limits.

[Bornerdogge]

@chriwi: evolution doesn't produce "better" species, it produces species that are better adapted to the environment... Thus, the most "evolved" species are bacteriae... And I think what we humans regard as the most "evolved", i.e. humans, is rather the most biologically "complex"...

@Kasuha: The human society inverted the evolutionary process, and our genetic pool is getting worse, it's a fact... But everything depens on how you define "weak specimen"... I doubt any of us could survive in the wild without technical help! Intelligence has to be taken into account... But there isn't, and there never will be an objective way to measure one's intelligence!

[Kasuha]

I have no rigorous definition for "weak species", I can do with "species more likely to become extinct".
If "only" 50% of our population died off some unknown illness we'd have very very hard time keeping our technology, leading to even more deaths. And remember that the nature around us did not stop its evolution, it's evolving new kinds of microorganisms every day. The less resistant we'll become, the worse problems await us when something bad happens.
Isolating ourselves from influence of new nature's microorganisms means giving the nature more time to develop better weapons against us.

Notice in Africa there are some horrible prevailing diseases, malaria, AIDS, ebola and many more, yet there is still a lot of people although the civilisation level is lower in our eyes. These are in fact much more likely to survive if something bad happens.

I see some chance in genetic engineering, maybe some time we'll really understand what's going on in our bodies and will be able to supply some evolution here ourselves. Surprisingly though, religions are often strongly against this, too. So it's not only about slowing down our evolution but also about not inventing defense. Calling it "humanity" sounds like hypocrisis to me.

[Bornerdogge]

I see some chance in genetic engineering, maybe some time we'll really understand what's going on in our bodies and will be able to supply some evolution here ourselves. Surprisingly though, religions are often strongly against this, too. So it's not only about slowing down our evolution but also about not inventing defense. Calling it "humanity" sounds like hypocrisis to me.

You've read "The Night's Dawn" of P.F. Hamilton didn't you? :p

Yeah that would be the only option, as it's not possible to decide which individuals have the right to procreate or not...

But I don't see the problem in deseases etc., I see the problem in the "quality" of mankind... When you watch large crowds or poor, not educated "proles", you sometimes wish there was much less of us, but on the other hand much more educated... I think there's a pretty good book on this subject called "The Marching Morons"...

[Thein]

Personally, I cannot fathom neuroscience somehow managing to explain the same exact view for everybody who has died, even those of Atheists-- or any religion at that-- who convert to Christianity after a Near Death Experience.
However...
Yes, please post some research papers on it. I would love to see some, and if it proves me wrong about what I just said, then I will just accept it... But again, I cannot imagine something proving the same view being seen from every near death experience... That is just bizarre.

I still feel though that it is all unprovable, but very worthy of notice. I absolutely agree with the fact that "Science does not try to disprove God, rather, explain things without God,"
Faith, by the way, is what keeps Curiosity going in the world. Science takes possibly more faith than religion does. It is Science that is driven by the faith and hope that we can explain things, and that everything had an explanation. Curiosity is Science's control room; it governs all of what Science really is. Curiosity comes, then an answer is demanded. Like a giant mystery novel for Life.
So Science does indeed run on Faith, but it is a different kind of faith... but it still is faith.
That is my view, at least.

[Bornerdogge]

I'm in a bit of a hurry these days (examinations soon), so I'll simply give you this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_studies
You'll find plenty of papers in the links and references; plus you can simply type "near death studies" in ask.com (as we all should avoid using google ^^)....

There are much more "supernatural" events that have been scientifically explained than is usually thought!

[mrgumby]

"Faith is the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, concept or thing"

You do not need to believe or trust in science. Science depends on logic and logic alone. A scientific result remains true whether or not people believe in it. Science works by the process of, theory, experiment, proof.

If a theory/principal/philosophy requires faith then, by definition, it cannot be proven in any logical manner. If it can be proven, then it does not require faith, any more than gravity requires faith.

This is not philosophy, this is just accurate definition of terminology.

[Bornerdogge]

+1, science doesn't require faith... But scientists need to be somehow confident (not too much though) in their results if they want to move on!

[tswsl1989]

God says "I refuse to prove that I exist, as proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing"
"Ah!" says Man "But the babelfish proves you exist, so therefore you don't"
"Bugger!" says God, "I hadn't thought of that", and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic

[chriwi]

Skience can never proof that things will always happen in the same way asobserved before. Sience can proof only things wrong by showing at least on exemption to an asumtion. Science can also froof a way things will happen as very likely by recording millions of evensts in agreement with a theory but also by searching hard never finding an disagreement, but even then science cannot proof that the 110millionth case or whatever number above the recorded events might turn out different and in disagreement with the accepted theory. Its like that for all things scientists already belive that they are totally understood and will never happen in another way as expected.
Tere is just no proof besides disproof or proof of exeptions, that is also a commonly accepted prin cipal among most scientists.
.

[mrgumby]

Sure...everything is about probability. Any event you can imagine has a probability of occurrence.
There is a common misunderstanding, that if event (a) has 1 chance in 1000 of happening, then in 1000 events, (a) will happen once. This is not true. Probability has no memory. Every one of those 1000 events has 1 chance in 1000 of (a) happening. If you have 100000000000000 events, then still each one of those events has 1 chance in 1000 of (a) happening.

What this means is that your "110millionth case or whatever number above the recorded events might turn out different" has no meaning.

Most scientists understand statistics.

[chriwi]

But this means: if you want to use a tecnical method which uses an effect scinetiffically proofn to have worked 100.000.000 times before you have to do it in the faith that exactliy this time it will not turn out as a possible case of letssay one in 1.000.000.000 that will just not work or even screw up everything completely.
Thats where faith comes in, even if it is only the faith in statistics and that something vewry unlikely will not haeppen just this time.

[Kasuha]

+1, science doesn't require faith... But scientists need to be somehow confident (not too much though) in their results if they want to move on!

Scientists need some level of confidence in their results to publish them. But there is no problem in making conclusions from matter you don't actually believe. It's very common scientific method in fact - making (and testing) conclusions based on hypotheses you don't believe helps you either disprove them or start believing they might be true. This was the case of Einstein's theory or QCD, too.
A lot of moving on in science is based on assuming the hypothesis is false and trying to find a way to disprove it.

[Bornerdogge]

Of course, but my point was, I don't think Einstein would have spent 10 years on General Relativity if he did not think at the beginning he might be on the right way...

If you spontaneously start on a basis that might very well be not true, and see what happens (eg. string theory), the point of view is very different...

[mrgumby]

Once again I will say.

If an event has a 1 in a million chance of happening, this does not mean that it will happen once in every million events.

For this to happen, it would require that something is keeping a record of previous events.

There is no record keeper. Each event must be considered as the ONLY event.

It means that for each individual event, there is a tiny, tiny, tiny chance that the "1 in a million" event will happen.

These are 2 different things.

The difference is subtle but very important......please spend a little time considering the implications.