Poll: The Scale O' Zealotry!

[The Bum]

You know that last one sounds kinda like scientology.

I gotta say 60-40 on this on cause when i was young we always went to church and i was rasied
a southren baptist so it pretty much makes me who i am. But hey we need science to right?

 

[Zhukov]

Uh... you do realise that science and religion aren't mutually exclusive, don't you?

 

[IzisviAziria]

This sounds made up. I just don't think you have good enough reasons to halt scientific advance. If you're talking about weapons, there are plenty of people who wish to reduce the amount of funding we offer to arms research, yet otherwise support scientific progress.

If you've got GOOD reasons to halt scientific research not pertaining to weapons, lets hear them.

It's certainly not made up, and while you're right that plenty of people do wish to reduce the amount of funding we offer to arms research, there are certainly also still people who don't. They're not incredibly numerous, but neither are the people who believe CHRIST OR DEATH NOW. It's simply the far-end of the spectrum.

As far as valid current research that I'd prefer we weren't continuing, I can't exactly give one. I can say that I wish certain developments had not been made, the biggest of which being nuclear technology. Or at least that it had been done in a more cautious way, and driven by a desire for knowledge rather than weaponry. And maybe it's not really something we can say beforehand that, "hey we're not ready for this", maybe it's a trial-and-error thing. Develop the technology and hope that we can handle it responsibly. In which case, there isn't really any way to limit technological growth to let societal growth catch up, and any limitations would be quite arbitrary.

*shrug*

Dunno. It's late and I'm all discussed out but I'm sure I have an example floating around in the back of my head somewhere. For now, I think I'll have to concede the point though, as I don't have anything of modern relevance.

 

[IzisviAziria]

Uh... you do realise that science and religion aren't mutually exclusive, don't you?

I do. But zealots don't

 

[Zealous]

Atheist/Agnostic for me. I believe in the concept of some higher power that created stuff, but i don't want to commit myself to a specific church with whom I don't share all the same beliefs.
I believe in science (but not scientology and shit) and the the big bang and dinosaurs and stuff.
Zealotry of all forms (not just religious/scientific) is destructive to yourself and others around you. It's best to be moderate and accept people for what they are. Only if they harm other humans/animals/societies/etc. because of their beliefs are they truly evil (or just disillusioned).
Be moderate. Be kind. Be human (or something like that).

 

[Fetzenfisch]

Recent post activity has got me thinking rather heavily about zealotry and its various forms. There is, of course, probably the most common form discussed on the internet, that being the religious zealot. Muslim, Christian, Jedi, they come in all shapes and sizes.

But it seems to me that there is a directly opposing form of zealotry, that being scientific. Science = Progress, seems to be a scientifically accepted mathematical truth, which to me seems just as zealous as someone telling me that I'll burn in hell for all of eternity unless I drink some juice to wash down a bland cracker.

No its not. The one is telling you the truth, the other one tries to scare you every 5 minutes if you do something they don't like.

Now, I'm not one to judge. It truly takes all kinds to make the earth go round,

No it doesn't. Actually it would be much better without them.

and I'm (almost) always interested to hear another persons take on a similar subject, especially (most of the time) when said person's take on the subject differs to mine. So I'd like to know, Escapist: Where do you fit on the Scale O' Zealotry?

Its not my job to convince people out of their believe, if they arent capable to do that on theirself it would be a waste of time.

I'll kick this off, with #4: Who am I to say? And expanding, I suppose you can say that I lack the faith to believe that singing loudly in a room full of other people singing loudly will change my afterlife, while simultaneously lacking the (apparent) intelligence necessary to believe that science is the only way forward.

*PS* Ya, you guys I was quoting with in the Life-extension pill thread, please feel free to bring the discussion back up here. I'm completely willing to discuss it out, so long as we're agreeing to keep it mature.

Well you've pointed out the problem of the average modern man. Education is good enough that the knowledge of things got into most households, but the people are still lacking the intelligence to say goodbye to superstition.
Well or the strenght to face the world and life in this very moment, instead of talking fairytales of an afterlife, where everything will be fine again. That's Escapism .

I know that faith can give a lot to a person. It can comfort them, let them live through hard times. But so does alcohol, opium and all the other poisonous things weak people need in such situations. Reducing your Horizon isnt worth it, take the tequila if you must.

 

[theultimateend]

You said this:

And if it's not bullshit, I have no desire whatsoever for this product to exist. Sort of like how I have no desire for time travel to exist, and no desire for the Large Hadron Collider to be trying to duplicate the Big Bang. There are certain things that humans just don't have any business messing with. Immortality is one of them. Especially with our limited food supply/expanding food demand.

***Please don't start throwing random scientific factoids about the LHC at me, telling me nothing will go wrong and that's not even what they're doing, it simply frightens me that nobody can truly know what caused the Big Bang, and I'm pretty sure that someday we'll figure it out by causing another one, wiping out the entire universe and creating a new one... Which may very well be an inevitable thing, and simply time/existence recycling its own loop, but I'd just prefer that it happens AFTER my time here is over.

People called you out on it being rooted in extreme ignorance and being almost entirely based outside of anything that will reasonably come to pass in the next Millenia, if not the entire existence of man.

The odds of humanity causing a BIG BANG, in the next century (as long as I'm assuming you'll live) are equally as small as you spontaneously turning into a goat.

People calling you out on that is not narrow minded, it is not zealotry. It is no different than me calling someone out who says "All white people are Korean." It's stupid, and should be treated as such.

>You< might be a nice person, I don't know you and I'm not going to judge. But that statement was just wild. Utterly wild. I had to reread it a few times just to see if I caught it correctly because it IS 4:22 in the morning here (maintenance is going longer than expected).

That's what offended me personally. I am admittedly acting out towards you for a state of mind that is becoming increasingly popular in the US (best exemplified by the Tea Party). "If I don't understand it, it is bad, and thus I don't need to research it in the least."

Not that you necessarily believe in that at all times, but that is the message the above quoted post conveyed.

Just to show I'm not trying to be a jerk to you let me quote some smart things you've said.

While I'm a firm believer that scientific progress CAN be beneficial, I'm also a firm believer that not all scientific progress IS beneficial. The amount of scientific research devoted to learning how to more efficiently kill other human beings, for example. As humans, we now hold in our hands the potential to completely obliterate our own existence.

That was good, the rest of the post wasn't but that was good.

Few people, even adamant lovers of science would argue it is all beneficial. I'm fairly strongly against all advances in military sciences. The Neutron bomb for instance is a horrible idea. A Low Yield Nuclear Device eliminates all necessity to think before you bomb since you leave behind all the material wealth and merely obliterate organic matter.

But Science must move on because who decides what should go on and what shouldn't?

Censorship is a nasty thing, the less of it the better. The hope should be to improve people's interactions instead of trying to hinder intellectual growth.

And that is all since I gotta go home and sleep.

 

[IzisviAziria]

snip

I severely regret the post about the LHC, I'm not HONESTLY in any fear of waking up tomorrow and experiencing the end of time. I was throwing some faint, unlikely scientific possibilities out there and it was taken much more seriously than I meant it. Yes, it is just as likely that I'll spontaneously turn into a goat. But I'll be damned if there isn't at least some remote possibility that I'll spontaneously turn into a goat (though I'd really rather not).

But I also want to point out that there's the same likelihood that Christians got it right. Or that Muslims got it right. Or that the Greeks did. Or the Mayans. A lot of people that are fervently pro-science seem to completely deny the possibility of a spirit/soul/god/afterlife/whateveryouwannacallit, and for no better reason than because it cannot be quantified. To me, each individual has a consciousness, and that consciousness cannot simply be a matter of tissues, electrolytes, and proteins squishing together in just the right way. If there is nothing beyond our physical existence, then it should theoretically be possible to create an exact clone of me as I am now, memories and all.

I'm not necessarily denying that possibility, but it seems much more reasonable to me that there is something beyond the physical realm which contributes to a persons individualism. I look forward to the day I die (though I'm certainly not rushing it in any way, minus my eating habits) for no other reason than because I truly believe there is at least SOMETHING waiting for me afterward. It's not even wishful thinking, or needing comfort.. I went through a period in my life where I simply believed that once you died, you were dead, your consciousness stopped, and that was that. But that somehow doesn't make sense to me.

I think back to the Big Bang (ignoring the LHC)... If that's how it happened, where the fuck did that all come from? The required gases had to have come from somewhere. They can't have simply ALWAYS been there.. Or can they? What happened before the Big Bang? And what happened before that? And that? There's always one step backward that you can take. Unless you're going to put forth the idea that the Big Bang is the beginning of time? In which case there wouldn't really be a before.

Then you have the possibility of dimensions, still being explored... If there are dimensions which we can't see, or affect, or detect in any way (yet), why is it so impossible for there to be an afterlife we similarly can't see/affect/detect?

Any scientific theories you can give me to debunk either of the above two paragraphs would be great, I'd love to hear them. But they are just that, theories. No more truth than my own (although they are at least attempting to put it into fact, whereas I have merely accepted that it cannot be fact). But the longer I think about things like this, the more firmly I believe that there's much to our existence that we don't/cannot/will not understand. Perhaps we'll understand when we die, or perhaps not, but I'm certainly looking forward to the adventure.

 

[nick_knack]

I post this here, instead of the other thread, because it is getting kind of off topic.

I completely forgot, when I posted, that I was in a place completely dominated by the same narrow-minded folk that believe just as zealously in science as the most far-right Christian zealots do in Christ.

Not quite, I've had this debate before on this site, you aren't the only one.

And I shall ignore your equally small-minded belief that scientific progress is always good, and ask you this: How many people with AIDS have died because they couldn't afford the medication?

And the negative impacts of globally extended life-expectancy have already been mentioned in this thread. Do you really want something like this marketed to the masses? It wouldn't even be intelligent to market it to the masses. It would be downright dangerous, if it works in the way it's being advertised. If you instead, make the pill an elite thing, something only those with a great amount of money could afford, you still become filthy rich while avoiding a significant negative impact on the population.

Would you have us go back to living in caves? We are too far down this road to stop now, even if we wanted to.

I am by no means saying that every discovery is good for our species, but to decry science because of its negative impacts is just silly. The discovery of germs, for instance, led to hygiene in hospitals, possibly the single most significant advancement in medicine ever. It also led to bio-weapons. Nuclear power, developed for the atomic bomb obviously, but leads to fusion, probably the answer to our power problems. You see what I'm saying here?

I also noted your statement about how we aren't mature enough as a people for the technology we have. I don't necessarily disagree. But how are we to learn if not from our mistakes? I also point to the Cold War as proof that we can learn to not fuck everything up with our toys.

As for the drugs, I must repeat my statement that it is difficult to speculate on a thing of which we know no details, but since when have big companies ever operated with foresight toward long term implications? Though we are over-populated as you say, that is hardly a problem technology cannot solve. (Inter-planetary migration, tower farms, genetically engineered food, etc.)

Too poor for AIDS? It seems like a pretty awful thing that I've never heard of. Likely because drugs are much cheaper in Canada, and hospitalization is free. American style capitalism does have a lot to answer for.

Finally, on topic. I thought you were something of a technology hating moron when I read your first comment on the aforementioned pill thread. With that in mind, I made a rather scathing comment directed at you. I see now that while I still disagree with you, you are in fact an intelligent individual with defensible views, and that my previous jabs at your mental capacity were unwarranted. I am sorry for that. I hope that with this post, I too seem like less of a raving zealot, blind to the negative aspects of his chosen prophet with a worldview to match.

Something I am coming to realize of late is that more people than I previously thought are actually worth talking to.

Of course, crazy people who latch onto an idea and don't bend to fit reality are still out there, never really met one of the scientific variety you're talking about, though its quite likely that just sows my bias.

 

[Free Thinker]

MY LIFE FOR AIUR!

Sorry.

I'm on to you...ninja.
OT: Who am I to say? I'd much rather be indifferent than pick a side.

 

[Anarchemitis]

"My experiences with science led me to God. They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we really light a candle to see the sun?"
-Werner von Braun

 

[Berserker119]

Doesn't matter to me.

 

[Thedayrecker]

I'm technically an Atheist, but if a voice started speaking to me, and told me it was God, I'd go with it. I mean, even if I was crazy, I might as well be a happy crazy person.

 

[Lord Devius]

My response: I am better than your God.

Science makes technological progress, and civil discourse and reasoning with each other leads to societal progress. EDIT: Exceptions include oppression leading to rebellion.

Religion starts wars.

/opinion

(my choice comes from the song featured... here. http://betterthanyourgod.tumblr.com/ only post so far, pet project of dissecting the Bible when I have time.)

 

[Anarchemitis]

Science makes technological progress, and civil discourse and reasoning with each other leads to societal progress.

Interestingly, Werner von Braun also said "Science is like a razor. If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently."

 

[MetroidNut]

Off-topic: I don't think we can accurately look back and say what scientific advances were for better or worse. Nuclear weapons, for instance, are frequently mentioned here as the epitome of the "for worse" category - but one could very easily argue it was nuclear missiles that prevented World War III. I certainly would.

OT: In the end, I think trying to halt science is futile and self-destructive. Though I don't believe it makes me a zealot to believe that which is best supported by the evidence. Meh.