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Originally Posted by White Fox
Your thought reflects the Progressive belief held before WWI that reason is quickly stomping out everything else and that it will eventually lead to a perfect Utopian society year by year..
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Who has claimed anything Utopian will come about?
The fact of the matter is that science and reason have been improving our lives. There's no indication that they will ever lead to perfection but getting rid of them now in favor of the old and failed ways of mysticism and rain-god-appeasing would definitely be detrimental.
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Originally Posted by White Fox
The problem with this is WWI of course. All of that reason that people thought they believed in lead to the deaths of millions of people. What about WWII as well...
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And well before the world wars there were conflicts on top of conflicts. There will likely be more.
What's interesting is that the reaction to the world wars seems to be an attempt to learn from them.
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Originally Posted by White Fox
It was a direct result of people putting faith and emotion above reason. People didn't follow Hitler because what he said made sense or because they thought it did, they followed him because he fed their hates, their fears, and the prejudices.
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Ummmm... I agree. That's why I prefer science and reason.
Not that I expect people to not be emotional and faithful... But when we all check and balance each other, we might just be able to get around that, at least with big decisions.
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Originally Posted by White Fox
So I don't know why you think this "end of the world" scenario won't happen because we've all been enlightened, it's happened like this many times before.
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And the world has not ended. Sure, MAYBE it will end from some future stupidity. I bet you the trigger of any possible scenario has more to do with blind faith than with science (even if science is the tool that builds the tools for the job, it will be faith that pulls the trigger).
Science is not about "being enlightened." It's about continuing to learn.You're getting the perspectives mixed up. It's PI's theological/philosophical mumbo jumbo that claims to know all and know all of humanity's limits.