Alok Jha, science correspondent
Monday January 1, 2007
The Guardian
People's fascination for religion and superstition will disappear within a few decades as television and the internet make it easier to get information, and scientists get closer to discovering a final theory of everything, leading thinkers argue today.
The web magazine Edge (www.edge.org) asked more than 150 scientists and intellectuals: "What are you optimistic about?" Answers included hope for an extended human life span, a bright future for autistic children, and an end to violent conflicts around the world.
Philosopher Daniel Denett believes that within 25 years religion will command little of the awe it seems to instil today. The spread of information through the internet and mobile phones will "gently, irresistibly, undermine the mindsets requisite for religious fanaticism and intolerance".
Biologist Richard Dawkins said that physicists would give religion another problem: a theory of everything that would complete Albert Einstein's dream of unifying the fundamental laws of physics. "This final scientific enlightenment will deal an overdue death blow to religion and other juvenile superstitions."
Part of that final theory will be formulated by scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator at Cern in Geneva, which is to be switched on this year. It will smash protons together to help scientists understand what makes up the most fundamental bits of the universe.
Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard University, highlighted the decline of violence: "Most people, sickened by the bloody history of the 20th century, find this claim incredible. Yet, as far as I know, every systematic attempt to document the prevalence of violence over centuries and millennia (and, for that matter, the past 50 years), particularly in the west, has shown the overall trend is downward."
John Horgan, of the Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, was optimistic "that one day war - large-scale, organised group violence - will end once and for all".
This will also be the year that we get to grips with our genomes. George Church, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, believes we will learn "so much more about ourselves and how we interact with our environment and fellow humans".
Simon Baron-Cohen, a psychologist at Cambridge University, focused on autistic children, saying their outlook had never been better. "There is a remarkably good fit between the autistic mind and the digital age," he said. "Many develop an intuitive understanding of computers, in the same way other children develop an intuitive understanding of people."
Leo Chalupa, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Davis, predicted that, by the middle of this century, it would not be uncommon for people to lead active lives well beyond the age of 100. He added: "We will be able to regenerate parts of the brain that have been worn out. So better start thinking what you'll be doing with all those extra years."
same old stuff rehashed... freemasonry and the philosophers of the age of enlightenment were saying much of the same things, then the darwinians of the 19th century, then the edwardians of the early 20th before WWI. nothing new under the sun...
I predict that, in coming decades, Mankind will develop the intelligence to disregard inane newspaper predictions rehashing the same old claptrap.
In the alternative, I predict that television and the internet (present company excepted, of course) will keep people dumb enough to continue reading articles by lazy reporters parroting pseudoscientific nonsense from self-proclaimed "thinkers".
What do you think Richard Dawkins would do if you took him into a full-on exorcism and he heard demonic voices speaking through the possessed person, levitation of objects, etc?
How would he rationalise that? I'm interested to understand the workings of his mind/soul if he was presented with overwhelming proof of the supernatural.
Simon Baron-Cohen, a psychologist at Cambridge University, focused on autistic children, saying their outlook had never been better. "There is a remarkably good fit between the autistic mind and the digital age," he said. "Many develop an intuitive understanding of computers, in the same way other children develop an intuitive understanding of people."
I have an autistic man in my class who fits this description perfectly. He is the type of autistic person they call "little professors". And he is really good at his comptuer stuff. But I sure would not want my fate in his hands. Other than his whiz stuff he is really limited, especially in relation to other people, not that he doesn't (poor sod) try.
And I agree, each aqe thinks that they have the tiger by the tail when it comes to technology and progress putting an end to the problems of the world. Problem is, seems to me, that their ramblings have an effect on the world in which we then have to live for they can chance the architecture of our culture.
Dawkins wudl retend the exocrsism didnt eixst, ro at leats elements didnt. IE, the voices wher ejust the poduct of mental illness, and no objects levitated.
I have friends hwo rewerite Hisotry all the itme, so it fits into what they'd prefer to beleive.
By the way, for the Americans who don't know any better, the Guardisn is liberal trash...
Alok Jha, science correspondent
Monday January 1, 2007
The Guardian
Quote:
...and an end to violent conflicts around the world.
Actually, violent conflict is set to increase.
Quote:
Biologist Richard Dawkins said that physicists would give religion another problem: a theory of everything that would complete Albert Einstein's dream of unifying the fundamental laws of physics. "This final scientific enlightenment will deal an overdue death blow to religion and other juvenile superstitions."
Yeah right. Let them explain gravity first. Ha Ha Ha. Did you catch that the "biologist" was giving us advise about physics? What an arrogant @ss.
Quote:
Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard University, highlighted the decline of violence: "Most people, sickened by the bloody history of the 20th century, find this claim incredible. Yet, as far as I know, every systematic attempt to document the prevalence of violence over centuries and millennia (and, for that matter, the past 50 years), particularly in the west, has shown the overall trend is downward."
Reminds one of the good old days. You remember 1914, don't you? War was impossible. _________________ Viva Cristo Rey!
I'm not so sure. St. Paul didn't after all and he was as anti-Christ as Dawkins.
The voices can't be a product of mental illness if they are speaking in Hebrew, then Latin, then Sebo-Croat, i.e. Languages that the "mental" person didn't and couldn't know and this sometimes happens during exorcisms. What about if Dawkins himself was seized by an invisible force and hurled across the room. What would he put that down to?
I know he'd attempt to deny it, but I reckon every person has their breaking point if given the graces by God to be woken up from their sin. In most cases God won't interfer with free will to such an extent, but in some cases he will.
It would be an interesting experiment to pick someone like Dawkins and pray for his conversion enmasse. I wonder whether if enough people prayed for him God would give him an opportunity to convert that was so overwhelming that Dawkins would see the light?
I'm not so sure. St. Paul didn't after all and he was as anti-Christ as Dawkins.
The voices can't be a product of mental illness if they are speaking in Hebrew, then Latin, then Sebo-Croat, i.e. Languages that the "mental" person didn't and couldn't know and this sometimes happens during exorcisms. What about if Dawkins himself was seized by an invisible force and hurled across the room. What would he put that down to?
I know he'd attempt to deny it, but I reckon every person has their breaking point if given the graces by God to be woken up from their sin. In most cases God won't interfer with free will to such an extent, but in some cases he will.
It would be an interesting experiment to pick someone like Dawkins and pray for his conversion enmasse. I wonder whether if enough people prayed for him God would give him an opportunity to convert that was so overwhelming that Dawkins would see the light?
I emt "The Great" RIchard Dawkins.Let me twll you, the Epitach "The GReat" is taken very seriosuly bu him. EVen those who hung on his every word as if he where soem sort of divine figure tellin ageless truths whewre insutle dbyt he man. I couldn't, of ocurse, debate him. He was in TN, and I was a reporter coverign the story.I interviewed him.
I've also read a good deal fo mateial writtne by him.The man ceased beign a Sicneists 15 years ago and havent prodiced naythign at all itn eh field of Biology. A good 85% of all his papers nwo ar eon how evil religion is and how faith blinds thsoe hwo have it , and his comment son sicnece are based not on sicnece at all, btu on Progressivism, a philosophy that disctates a graduak increase and movement forward.It wa sin vouge int he 19th century. (Read up on Manifest Destiny.)
It'd take a Hell of a lot to convence Dawkins, and I mean the word Hell quiet literllay.
He coudl, for instance, raitonalise that te possessed person had, in fact, elarned Hebrew, or Latin, or such, picked it up soemwhere wihtotu anyone, even himself, knwign it.
Or maybe he'd just falsify his memories abotu being tosse dby an invisible force accross the room. ( I've seen peopel falisify memories too.)
He coudl say the mentlaly ill person did it.
It'd take a full on visual contact with a Demon to convenc ehim of a demon, and veen then he'd try to deny God.
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