Quote Originally Posted by thir View Post
As I say, culture matters, and it is hard to distinguish cultural matters from religious ones. In basically atheist countries that is what you get, and not from a lot of thinking.
Exactly my point! People tend to believe (or not believe) based upon how they were raised. Some never venture beyond that.
As long as they keep it to their own lives. Do you see any damage to them, or to society as such, from that?
That's my entire point! They SHOULD keep it to themselves, NOT try to push it into everyone else's lives. Too many don't!
It would mean that only that which science can prove, and has so far been interested enough in to work with, or even thought of, or know about, is real.
Not at all! Science doesn't define reality. It catalogs it, measures it, tries to understand it. And since much of Western science has it's origins in the Church, one of the things they have tried to prove is the existence of gods, heaven, hell, spirits, afterlife, etc., etc., etc. And to date there is nothing there!
That is a very limitted world indeed! Don't you think that there is tons of stuff out there and in there that noone has thought of yet, or are you on the page with the 'plateau' people who think that basically we now know everything, and the rest is just tinkering?
Far from it! Science doesn't know everything. But it's my belief (and you can call this a faith if you want) that science CAN know everything, eventually. Given enough time and enough resources mankind just might learn how everything works. They might even find out WHY everything works, if there IS a why. Who knows? They might even find God someday. If they do, though, I think He'll have a lot to answer for!
Personally I belive in luck, and bad luck too, as they excist. Fate too - as in we cannot control nearly as much as we think we can. And good-luck charms too! If I decide that I can 'store' energy in a charm, and that it will help me in a specific case, then it will. Proven fact ;-)
NOT a proven fact. It's called a placebo effect. You THINK it helps you, which can have some positive effects, but when tested under controlled conditions we find that it does nothing at all.

This is the importance of science. It shows us what works and what doesn't. It helps to keep us from deceiving ourselves. Without science we'd still be wallowing around in the mud, dying of mysterious diseases, grubbing out a dangerous existence plagued by fear of imaginary beings. Science has brought us medicine that works, an understanding of our place in the world, near instantaneous communications with the rest of the world, the ability to travel to any place we want to go.

Sure, it's also brought us nuclear weapons, and more efficient ways to kill ourselves. Nobody claimed it was perfect. Science is, and should be, dispassionate, uncaring. It's people who can take the lessons of science and use them for either good or evil.