| json_metadata | "{"app":"Musing","appTags":["life"],"appCategory":"life","appBody":"<p>It is not technology, no matter how sophisticated, that can challenge our beliefs. It is the scientific theories that made this technology possible.</p>\n<p>Every scientific breakthrough, whether minor or major, tells us something about the world that we did not know before, or that we only subbed. It may confirm certain beliefs, but it is far more common that it invalidates them.</p>\n<p>It would be trivial if we could get rid of our erroneous beliefs as easily as a used shirt. Unfortunately this is not the case, because most of the time the beliefs work like viruses: they are transmitted from generation to generation, we infect from childhood, and we develop resistances that even the evidence does not reach to break.</p>\n<p>Religion is the supreme example. The belief in a personal God who cares about us, and that we could influence through our behaviors, is certainly one of the most effective ideas that has ever permeated the human mind. It is so adapted to our mental structure (not to mention that we have co-evolved with it), that we have built around global and interpenetrated thought systems precisely made so that it is not called into question. And yet, nothing in the world that we observe corroborates it, on the contrary.</p>\n<p>Today we come to a stage of human evolution where certain beliefs, whose assumptions have been overturned by science, become dangerous.</p>\n<p>I take the example of global warming: how to take seriously the impact of human activity on the global climate if we believe that there is an intangible divine order, that the earth is a divine creation and that final only God will have the last word?<br>\n</p>\n<p>Another example: overcrowding. Why worry about the number of human beings on earth when it says \"grow and multiply\"?<br>\n</p>\n<p>And what harm is there in chasing for their ivory the last African elephants, or exploiting other living species in the most atrocious conditions, if God created man to reign supreme and the animals to be his vassals?</p>\n<p>Science depicts a reality that is a thousand leagues from what man imagined when he invented his first beliefs. But these beliefs are still there, while the context has disappeared. It would be more urgent to get rid once and for all of the big beliefs than to update them. Since the human being is what he is at this stage of his evolution, it is a utopian vow.</p>\n<p>Since natural selection favors the individuals best suited to change, it is inevitable that religious beliefs and doctrines will be updated by scientific and societal developments, or even disappear and be replaced by others, but with a delay of more or less long. So let's arm ourselves with patience, but let's tap in when they crush our feet.</p>","appDepth":2,"appParentPermlink":"p3tdg7hh5","appParentAuthor":"royalpubg","musingAppId":"aU2p3C3a8N","musingAppVersion":"1.1","musingPostType":"answer"}" |
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