Look, being conservative and a scientist aren't mutually exclusive. Just like being religious isn't a prerequisite for being conservative. The reason science and religion have such a hard time getting along is because in the past, the church was the highest authority on all things, not just spiritual. Remember, things that we take for granted now (i.e. Earth is not the centre of the universe) almost got people like Galileo killed in their time because of the church.
You can attribute whatever you want in your life to Jesus and that's just fine with me. Different strokes for different folks. But generally there's a real explanation for everything. It's another reason why I never try to argue science with the religious. I was born a catholic, I consider myself agnostic. Some of the hard core Christians here on FR would call me an atheist or a heathen (and probably some other not very nice words too, whatever happened to "Love thy neighbour."?).
Unfortunately, party because of religion, some things look to be inevitable. Most people who grew up in the 60s and 70s took it for granted that we would expand our reach from this rock to the moon and Mars and even beyond. The days of Apollo. Now, look what religion has done. We're wasting money dealing with a group of fanatics (who have been told by their religious leaders that we are the enemy and are to be destroyed at all costs) rather than advancing the species. Now don't get me wrong, you've gotta do what you've gotta do, and we have to protect our way of life. But my argument is that we shouldn't have to.
I'm all about freedom of expression (and religion). That also means that I have the freedom to disbelieve in your belief.
As to your point about the limitations of human intellect, I will post only a quote by Robert A. Heinlein:
"Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion- in the long run these are the only people who count."
I think one reason that futurists are so maligned by the religious is that it would prove that either Nietzsche was right ("God is dead.") or that he/she/it never existed in the first place. Imagine what immortality would do the human psyche! Here's another one, by Ray Kuzrweil:
"Take death for example, a great deal of our effort goes into avoiding it, we make extraordinary efforts do delay it and often consider it's intrusion a tragic event. Yet we'd find it hard to live without it. Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it. If death were indefinitely put off, the human psyche would end up...well...like the gambler in the Twilight Zone episode."
Now...for posterity's sake I'll tell the story of the Twilight Zone episode that Kurzweil references. In that episode, a man is shot (after shooting a few other people) and goes to (what he presumes is) Heaven. He gambles and always wins no matter what. But he becomes bored with this "existence." He begs his "guardian angel" to send him to Hell. Then the "angel" tells him that he's in Hell.
In Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines (recommended reading by the way) he suggests a thought experiment. Say sometime in the next 30 years, we have the technology to replace a single neuron in your brain with a microchip. It's a cure to Alzheimer's among other degenerative diseases. Great, everyone's happy. But let's let the process go a little further. As each neuron fails, we replace it. One by one, all of your brain's neurons become electronic. You don't lose any of your memories that you haven't lost, presumably your cognitive ability is even enhanced.
The question is this: At what point do you cease to be Human? It's a rhetorical question. If you take the view of most Christians that life begins at conception, then the logical follow-on is that as soon as that first microchip is implanted, you're a machine. Now assuming we have the ability to replace individual neurons, then we probably have the technology to replace other organs, lungs, livers, kidneys. Say I take a mechanical kidney implant, or a mechanical liver, at what point do I become a machine? Are patients with artificial heart valves machines? Or how about hip replacements? These are fundamental questions that I'm pretty sure scare the heck out of the religious. Because it means immortality. And I'm sorry to say it, but the basis of religion is that you will find comfort after you leave the physical world. What happens when the consciousness never LEAVES the physical world? Religion falls apart.
I'm going to leave it at that, I'm getting long-winded.
“Say I take a mechanical kidney implant, or a mechanical liver, at what point do I become a machine? Are patients with artificial heart valves machines?”
Pacemakers! Instruments of the devil, I say! heh
Interesting question, if neural “plugs” become available to directly jack in to computers, will anyone who gets one be excommunicated in some religions? After all, its a _very_ small step between jacking in like that and having integral computer augmentation.
The whole replacing neurons with chips thing stands or falls based upon a single idea: that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter (brain activity, to be precise). If our essential selves are nothing more than computational processes — if the soul is northing more than software running on the computer called the brain — then there is no reason why duplicating neuronal functions wouldn’t allow us to seamlessly copy our minds into a virtual format.
However, there is as yet no scientific definition of consciousness, and no way of demonstrating that it is a side-effect of brain activity. In fact, there have been several well-documented cases of persons who were born without brains as such, yet who survived and functioned normally. This suggests that there is more to consciousness than mere electrified meat.
In every historical era, the definition of the universe and mind have borne the impression of the major technology of the day. In the clockwork era of the Enlightenment, the universe was a clockwork mechanism; in the Machine Age, the universe became a great machine. Today, in the Information Age, the dominant technology is the computer, and so the best minds all agree that the universe is a computer and the mind a piece of software. Now, it may be that we — alone of all the men who have ever lived — have reasoned our way into the discovery of the One True Nature of the universe and the mind. It may also be that we haven’t. Basing my opinion upon history, I’d tend to side with the latter.
Still and all, the philosophical question remains. If matter, energy, space, and time are all that exists, and if there is neither purpose nor meaning to our existence, we will eventually reach the cosmic So What?. Whether as biologically immortal beings or as uploaded state vectors in some ultimate version of Second Life, we will all eventually encounter the Wall of Futility at the end of the universe. The book of Ecclesiastes, rather than Revelation, may be the true apocalypse.
But I’m optimistic. No matter how fast our computers get, no matter how we manage to cheat death, the fact remains that Jesus lived and rose from the dead. That historical fact cannot be made to unhappen. Since it did happen, it follows that Jesus is God, as He said He was, and that everything else He said is true as well. With this in mind, I trust that God will preserve us somehow, and am therefore not afraid of anything technology might build or science might reveal.
And if He doesn’t? If the Universe really is a meaningless cloth of futility? Then I’ll die, and good for me. I’d rather be dead than an immortal living in a pointless eternity.
The American and European science fiction vision of the future predicts a state of being beyond the comprehension of modern-day humans. This is a very Buddhist mindset: future as Nirvana. Ironically, in Japanese science fiction, the future is basically the same as the present, a finite and comprehensible world, only with cooler toys. This is a very Western version of tomorrow. Why this inversion of futures has occurred, I can’t say, but I do know that deep down I find the Japanese vision of a future world where people still have bodies and smoke cigarettes and have limitations to be much more satisfying than the American/European future where we all become insubstantial ghosts in a great machine.
But that’s just a question of taste. My guess is that underlying sensible reality and the biological mind is an absolute Reaity and and Absolute Mind. I can’t prove it — but my gut says it’s the truth.
Ghost in the Shell, and Stand Alone Complex worry this to death. Good SciFI tho.
The much-overblown conflict between science and religion is a propagandistic myth of nineteenth-century historiography. Galileo's case, a much more complex event than you let on here, happened four centuries ago. It's as about as relevant to modern religion as witchburnings.
These are fundamental questions that I'm pretty sure scare the heck out of the religious. Because it means immortality.
It doesn't mean personal immortality for us. It means a computer simulation of us will keep running until the power runs out. It's the Nerd Rapture, a poor shadow of the hope for the real thing.
And I'm sorry to say it, but the basis of religion is that you will find comfort after you leave the physical world.
Your concept of religion, like your concept of man, is adolescent and reductionist.
Nice. I thought I was the only agnostic/atheist believer in science on FR! I think there are maybe 7 or 8 atheistic right-wingers in the entire country. I get the crap kicked outta me every time I post something like that. At least the guys/gals on here aren't totally mean-spirited about their attacks on us. In fact, I get a lot of blessings out of it.
Kudos for being ballsy enough to post this. :)