T. buddah said a mouthful. Beerina's #1 applies to scientific skepticism as well. There are Sylvia Brownes out there that want to decieve you and take your money.
Science works, but it hasn't totally worked yet. In fact, it could be said that it has caused us a lot of problems; some seemingly insurmountable, like the invention of nitrogen fertilizer, which has allowed a vast and temporary increase in the carrying capacity of the globe. Without science, no 6 billion plus people.
It's only temporary
if you let politicians get in the way.
But the case could be made that religion works too.
It only works in the sense that it has adopted some rules that work in reality, such as "thou shalt not kill". But wrapping that in a lie that some god exists who told you not to do this is not a good way to go about it, as we have seen historically.
I do
not lob softballs of "well, there's
something good there", either to religion or to politics. Insofar as they overlap things that "work", it's almost coincidental.
Does anyone here think that if the whole world was atheist, there would be no cause for war?
Of course not. Religion and politics are two facets of the same larger reality: the evolution of memes that band people together in power structures that, by growing, thus "reproduce" the meme. Insofar as they are "correct" in that they adopt positions that "work", they are, as mentioned, nearly coincidental. However, many positions are actually somewhat harmful, and thus more akin to a parasite, but not one that kills its host. In this case, it means it doesn't shrink the population.
We are currently seeing a massive conflict between two locally dominant memes: Western society and Middle Eastern society.
Western society recognizes rule of law and rights to freedom and property, which is its
real engine of power, though "democracy" and "Christianity" are often incorrectly touted.
Middle Eastern society uses their dominant religion, Islam, in much the way the West did in the middle ages with Christianity: as a parasitic meme that has managaed to evolve and gain control over the whole region. Internal mental models of reality involve a god who wants you to enforce rules. Looking at it externally, as Skinner might, you see a bunch of simple behaviors of killing off dissent, i.e. those with a different mental model.
Which will win? Clearly Western society is progressing much faster technologically. But they also have a slowing birth rate.
However, the meme itself is evolving, increasing the desire for immigrants to compensate.
But Middle Eastern society is evolving, too, expanding beyond the Middle East, it's meme spreading to many other cultures.
I predict Western society will win because it "rescues" people from a downtrodden land, whereas the other one merely induces a mental model switch, but leaves the person downtrodden, and hence, "rescuable" from downtrodden status.
