Indeed, it wasn't the point I was taking issues with, it was the fact that the example was one which I think is a lot more complex, one which is often used by anti-science people (read:creationists, not you) as a 'trump card' when they're arguing about the truth of some piece of science or another, one which I don't think applies.
really,
i hate bringing up hitler, but i put the first two relevant examples that popped into my brain. it is a complex example for sure, but for the reasons i outlined i still think it's vaguely relevant.
Of course science can't bring all individuals happiness, fulfillment, and contentedness. But surely the fact, for example - that you're now very unlikely to die from tonsillitus, your life expectancy is now in the 70s rather than the late 20s, the fact you can communicate on the internet and have lots of spare time to indulge in photography, or whatever hobbies you wish - makes you happier than were you still in a constant struggle for food and survival, combating illness, cold, and myriad other challenges just to scrape by an existence. Thus I would argue that scientific advances (and the search for truth) do improve people's life quality.
okay -- i will concede that the individual's happiness is increased by things like having medicines and other basic things. then again, do you really think -- before all these things were known at all -- that the ancient savage's 25 year life was really unhappier than modern man's 80 year life? the human mind is so adaptable to different conditions that i think a man living in neolithic times would be, give or take, as happy with his relative condition as the average man is today. some things are worse now, some things are better now, but it all evens out in the end.
don't take this as a "boo hoo poor me having to live in civilization with all these amenities" -- but i don't think i am happier than someone who has to struggle for survival every day. i don't think having things, or being able to communicate with the world, or knowing how materia works on a particle level, is important for my happiness. i have seen no convincing arguments or statistics that this would be the case. how common is suicide and depression in the civilized world compared to among any savage tribe on a small polynesian island?
whether spare time contributes to happiness i could probably write a book on, except there have already been written better ones. for me, it does, but i think a big part of the problem is that work has become so detached from the basics of human existence. i don't think spare time matters much for he who works for himself, to survive and live.
"As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York.
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."
-- thoreau, "walden"
I'm not arguing that science should be put on the level of god, and by definition science is constantly questioned and re-questioned, and thus would be very hard to pin as an absolute authority. Very few people would argue that, even - I think - Richard Dawkins. But I do think it has brought around enough improvements to our lives to be respected (not unquestioned), and its education/practice to be protected from religious attack.
okay, i agree that under no circumstances should religion be allowed to infiltrate the realms of science. they are very different things and must be kept that way.
what i am saying is that it is as dangerous to rely on religion for absolute truth as it is relying on the science-du-jour. it is also not necessarily true that just because something can be proven to be more in accordance with the truth of the universe (to the extent that it even exists) it must be more conducive to human welfare.
to my mind, i could imagine something like a "perfect religion" which could introduce any number of wholly artificial entities and concepts and yet enable the believer to life a happier life than the unbeliever. there are comforts enabled by religious belief, benevolent to the state of mind of the adherent, that are not available to men of strict science.
while christianity, by far, is not that hypothetical perfect religion, the point is that getting rid of religion will not get rid of harmful things. there are good and bad sides to everything, and by throwing out religion entirely you would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. it is a small baby, but a baby nonetheless. i think basic human nature is such that even if we got rid of the tyranny of superstition and broken morals, there would be new forms of oppression right around the corner. gods, theories and empires rise and fall but in the end we're still FUCKED. or we're pretty decent off either way and should stop complaining -- pick one
personally, i am unable to lie to myself and doomed to think about these things, so i must create my happiness and meaning out of nothing, which is not so bad. i am still unable to say that there is any intrinsically higher value in truth than lie.
good shit
