Darren New wrote:
>> Actually, scientific explanaitions seem to be particularly *bad* at 
>> giving
>> guidance for action, because they're perfectly detached from any moral 
>> aspects.
> 
> This is incorrect.
> 
> In any case, religion isn't any better at providing moral guidance.
> 

I would argue that, in most respects, it is worse. Why? Because the key 
feature of science is, "You could be wrong.", while the key feature of 
religion is, "There is one right and true way, so failing to follow it 
is automatically wrong." Its why science, in 200 years, gave us space 
shuttles, while religions in 2,000 gave us... well, not much of 
anything, since most of the stuff one can attribute to purely 
"religious" thinking, like prayer, homeopathy, natural cures, etc. are 
just variations on the same tried and failed ideas. All you get is 
"repackaging", never anything *new*. There is no qualitative difference 
between, "laying on of hands" and "therapeutic touch". The only 
difference between "old" religious concepts and new ones is the trend to 
gobble on science words, in an attempt to legitimize what didn't work 
2,000 years ago, any more than it works now. The actual methods, ideas, 
prescriptions, and even excuses haven't changed, even if *what* they are 
applied to has shifted slightly.

In reality, religions are defined by the current morals, or they fail, 
or fight to violently to try to survive anyway, while the world changes 
around them. But, in the later two cases, their "moral claims" are 
meaningless, since the whole reason they failed, or are failing, is 
because no one follows them any more. The rest, change *religion* to fit 
*morality*, not the other way around. But, inevitably, the failure to 
recognize this leads what ever new variation arises to find itself in 
the "fight or die" camp, eventually, when the rest of the world either 
becomes more stable, or more irrational, than what ever "absolute moral 
code" the religion claims to be following as a description of how to 
properly live.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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