Post by rareearth on May 21, 2011 7:49:52 GMT 10
The bottom line with all of this is that there are more people today living far longer, healthier lives, with vastly more access to personal comforts, leisure time and outright freedom than at any time in the last 2 million years.
There are also far more people at any time in history who are living nasty, brutish, tedious and short lives. If you don't believe me, try moving to Sub-Saharan Africa, or to other nice places like Iran, Myanmar, or Vietnam.
The discovery of bacteria and viruses, and the means to more-or-less manage their tendency to kill vast numbers of people at an early age was, in my opinion, the singlemost important advance in human history. It was a product of medical science - not witch doctors, herbalists or other practitioners of magic and mumbo jumbo.
Do we also have to thank the doctors for all the new bacteria strains antibiotics are no longer capable of killing, or shall we blame the witch doctors for that?
If even just 70% on earth were living the "golden age" you mention, then we could thank science. However, since we are not even close to a 70% happiness rate, your "golden age" doesn't seem to have come out of a bank vault in Switzerland, but out of a Japanese sweatshop.
In case you thought that the latter place was a privileged one to work in, you should know that Japanese sweatshops are full of Thai women, whose daily existence often includes debt bondage, forced labor, and many other abuses.
Also, if we were living in a "golden age", then how come so many people around the world are waiting for a Jesus to come — or a Messiah, Imam Mahdi (or son of Mary), a Maitreya Buddha, Kalki Avatara, Saoshyant, Baha'u'llah, True Man or Pahana? Shall we undemocratically discount their opinion, and only count the opinion of a scientistic Australian?
I don't think so. Your "golden age" is not statistically significant. Your defense of science is even less impressive than the discipline of apologetics, for apologists start from a position of humility, while you start from position of unwarranted arrogance bordering on insolence.
My religion has more math and geometry to it than your science, and it will save the world, while your science is actually screwing the world up royally. Most people, even religious people, don't actually understand the very reason we need a Saviour, and why eventually a Saviour will take over the world: to save us from pseudoscience, and the creepy folks who push it like drug smugglers, who pretend to be Gods, when in reality they are less dignified than insects.