The Problem with Religion

The advent of teh scientific method shed light, true light in the form of knwoledge, on a society that foundedc itself on belief. Science, then, is not correctly considered to be a subject but should more properly be considered a method - most do consider this. The methodological premise of science imparts knowledge; the methodological premise of religious faith imparts belief. Belief, throughout the years of recorded history has been a longstanding partner with congnitive evolution. The earliest recorded people would deify everything that naturally controlled thier lives. There would be gods or goddesses for agriculture, the sun, the ocean, volcanoes, etc. They would lapse over the unknown with further idological foundations of 'the unknown and unknowable'. If they could not explain it, it then must be that of an unexplainable deity. This led to myraid perverse beliefs centred around Geocentric and Humanocentric thoughts. In the earliest times up to and including the witch hunts of Europe and North America people have been sacraficed and murdered in the name of placating their god. Some would eagerly take this role, as exposed by research into Aztec and Inca civilizations, and offer themselves up for sacrafice if they felt that their dying could serve some greater purpose. Today, this is continued in the East as suicide attacks run prevalent throughtout much of a structurally religious based society. Religion, then, served to offer any explanation for events which could not eaily be understood.
Science, the advent of investigation, offered a pervasive alternative to this theological base. When sacrificial offerings were made to volcanic gods and then the volcanic eruption stopped, it is a considerably honest assumption to make that the sacrafice itself served to quell the eruption. However, the scientific method, that which is continually considered to be un-godly because it seeks to describe nature (and that it should be left undescribed - read: unquestioned - and left to frail belief and blind aggreement), could have saved many lives. Perhaps every other eruption could have been given a sacrafice, and then the following eruption given no sacrafices; what would have been the reaction to see that the eruption stopped no matter what? Would people have realized through this kind of skin-and-bones scientific approach that they need not kil their families, friends, neighbours or even strangers in order to placate their 'gods'? Bring this to modern day realities, where christian churches globally (almost) killed - horribly and tortuously killed - many women and children in the name of extirpating demonic offspring. The christian church systematically, without regard to truth and or reality, killed people to fulfill a belief they had. Belief...not knowledge.

The lenses of retrospection are vividly lucid and clear, that much is well known. It is easy for one to look back and to see the errors that were at the time not visible. Perhaps this can be used as a guise for forgiveness, but it should not. And in science it is not. In religion it is.

Science uses retrospection as a tool - anything we know today came from more archaic beliefs that were mutated, so to speak, and changed to fit with the current knowledge. Not belief. SO, what is the problem with religion? It is a source of contaminated thoughts, disregard to knowledge and a proposition that humans have superiority over a planet that is being destroyed because of that superiority complex. We have a cognitive disease, belief, and it is endemic to everywhere.

Current knowledge of volcanoes tends to allow us to see that the eruption (aside from being almost imperative in the evolution of 'higher' orders of live and the almost comic result of plate tectnoics which is also itself a foundation of plant and animal development) will naturally build a head (the pre-umblings of an imminenet eruption) and then when the pressure reaches a point it will be foreced to release (the eruption) and then when the outside pressure is greater than the magmatic pressure it will stop erupting (senescence). So, naturally, volcanoes will stop.They will always erupt, so long as the heat from inside Earth is available, the plates will move and the volcanic aperatures in Earths crust will continue to spew forth its internal juice. Volcanoes will erupt. Volcanoes will senesce. Volcanoes do not need sacrafices.

Science is a method to learn and to gain knowledge. It is a constructive and proactive methodological foundation that allows us to understand with greater accuracy, but also a greater ability to change and update knowledge. It is based on experience and it is based on experiment. Repeated events that are tested and cognitively assessed by various people.

We now know why volcanoes erupt. There is no god of volcanoes.

Science does not need a god because a god is not needed - we have knowledge, religions have belief. Blind belief.

The more of the universe, Solar System, Earth and processes of Earth that is understood andquantified to some degree, the more fascinating it becomes. There is a spirituality of knowledge that science is uncovering. Spirituality is discordant with religion because everything is supposedly known (read - believed) . There is no wonder, but science, rather than dumbing down nature, increases the wonder and asks poignant questions. Science breeds spirtuality - a reverence for knowledge and wonder for the world and knowing how that world works.
Why I consider an atom, or the makings of a cell wall, or how a water molecue spends its life from glacier to ocean (and back) it is highly spiritual and mind bending. It is wonderful. Learnign is a wonderfully spiritual quest, and it has nothing to do with beileif and faith.