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"If even one-tenth of world research were focused on spiritual realities, could benefits be even more vast than the benefits in the latest two centuries from research in food, travel, medicine or electronics, and cosmology?"
Uh... no. Are you stupid or something, or have you just taken the last two hundred years of human achievement and thrown it out the window? Industrial revolution? Unimportant. Vaccination? Who cares? Space exploration? There's nothing out there anyway!
Actually, let's ask this question: how many times in human history has religion caused reactionary movements that increased human suffering? Hmm... how about *all* the time? Inquisitions, radicalism, fanatacism - there has never been a religion that hasn't caused one of these things. I don't think even the most fanatical of scientists have caused one-tenth of the suffering that the most fanatical religious leaders have.
To see an old man, a great physicist, proclaim that there is intelligent design in the universe makes me very sad. It is the height of pride and ego, and a great example of something akin to Fundamental Attribution Error, to insist that the universe centers around you. It is practically a willful ignorance of the nature of the universe - that complexity emerges from simple systems.
But he's on the fence regarding the question of immortality: "I can't prove (it happens) but I see no reason to disbelieve it."
Well, a true scientist would apply the principle of parsimony - the underpinning of all of science. Someone objective would be able to examine such a belief and proclaim that "immortality" does not matter and that belief in it is unnecessary.
Science and religion are not "almost indistinguishable". Science and religion may draw inspiration from the same sources, but they are clearly not the same thing in any way. They may both incorporate "epiphany" but that is a part of human nature, not a part of the fundamental structures of belief. You may as well claim that radical Islamists are the same as any other Muslim; it is an equally naive statement.
I would do anything to remove the religion meme from human consciousness. "Religion" as it exists today is nothing more than a barrier between people and true spirituality. Ritual and rote dull the mind and prevent exploration and growth; these organized, viral patterns overwrite human minds and close them off to the possibility of experiences different than the ones that are "allowed" - and they only exist to propagate themselves.
I had the presence of mind to cast off the filters. My religion is in the sky and in the sea and in the earth - it is in the wonder I feel when I look at the sunset, the bond I feel with another animal, the pleasure of other people and the fulfillment of my goals and desires. I don't need to pray to "a personal external being" of dubious existence - and if "god" is the universe, why not experience god directly?? Why would you employ a false mechanism that somebody else (somebody who lived thousands of years ago!) told you is the "right way" to talk to god? You *know* how to talk to the universe without anyone ever having to tell you. Everyone does.
Uh... no. Are you stupid or something, or have you just taken the last two hundred years of human achievement and thrown it out the window? Industrial revolution? Unimportant. Vaccination? Who cares? Space exploration? There's nothing out there anyway!
Actually, let's ask this question: how many times in human history has religion caused reactionary movements that increased human suffering? Hmm... how about *all* the time? Inquisitions, radicalism, fanatacism - there has never been a religion that hasn't caused one of these things. I don't think even the most fanatical of scientists have caused one-tenth of the suffering that the most fanatical religious leaders have.
To see an old man, a great physicist, proclaim that there is intelligent design in the universe makes me very sad. It is the height of pride and ego, and a great example of something akin to Fundamental Attribution Error, to insist that the universe centers around you. It is practically a willful ignorance of the nature of the universe - that complexity emerges from simple systems.
But he's on the fence regarding the question of immortality: "I can't prove (it happens) but I see no reason to disbelieve it."
Well, a true scientist would apply the principle of parsimony - the underpinning of all of science. Someone objective would be able to examine such a belief and proclaim that "immortality" does not matter and that belief in it is unnecessary.
Science and religion are not "almost indistinguishable". Science and religion may draw inspiration from the same sources, but they are clearly not the same thing in any way. They may both incorporate "epiphany" but that is a part of human nature, not a part of the fundamental structures of belief. You may as well claim that radical Islamists are the same as any other Muslim; it is an equally naive statement.
I would do anything to remove the religion meme from human consciousness. "Religion" as it exists today is nothing more than a barrier between people and true spirituality. Ritual and rote dull the mind and prevent exploration and growth; these organized, viral patterns overwrite human minds and close them off to the possibility of experiences different than the ones that are "allowed" - and they only exist to propagate themselves.
I had the presence of mind to cast off the filters. My religion is in the sky and in the sea and in the earth - it is in the wonder I feel when I look at the sunset, the bond I feel with another animal, the pleasure of other people and the fulfillment of my goals and desires. I don't need to pray to "a personal external being" of dubious existence - and if "god" is the universe, why not experience god directly?? Why would you employ a false mechanism that somebody else (somebody who lived thousands of years ago!) told you is the "right way" to talk to god? You *know* how to talk to the universe without anyone ever having to tell you. Everyone does.