cladking Wrote:
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> What most modern people don't comprehend is that
> science as practiced
> today and as understood by most people is far more
> a religion than it
> is anything else.

I think you don't understand the difference between science and religion. They are two ways of arriving at the "truths" of some facets of life, but they deal with different arenas and they arrive at their conclusions in different ways.

Religion WAS tied with science in some forms of mysticism. I'm thinking here of the High Magicians, who practiced with formulas and substances and incantations and wrote elaborate rituals for summoning things and testing magic.

But religion specifically has the injunction "thou shalt not test the deity." And religion does not remake its major laws as evidence arises that the old ones are flawed.

> Even the knowledge necessary to
> produce something new
> through genius is usually the result more of luck
> than anything else.

And you're speaking from... experience as a scientist? From the standpoint of being a manger of a division of scientists? From whence comes your stated knowledge of science and how scientists work? Websites? Books of Alternative Archaeology written by non-scientists?

> Science can never lead to any answers to the
> important questions because
> everything which is truly important will require
> far more equations than
> can ever be developed even by a computer the size
> of the entire universe.

...and you know this how? What is it you consider truly important? Things like "why am I here" are not things answerable by science, but by faith and I don't know that computers can answer issues of faith.

> The world is governed by chaos and magic. It is
> magic which allows machines
> to work and dictates the direction we must follow.

I build robots and computers. I'm fairly certain I've never had to incant anything to get them to work. I've intoned a few phrases when my programming goes astray and the program won't work or the interface won't hook up, but I don't see how you can argue that these (or cars or other devices) work on magic. Electricity, yes, other power types, yes... magic? Well, I don't see any proof of a type of power source called magic where you hook magic on one end and a machine does useful work on the other end.

> The biggest difference between us and the ancients
> may be that they were
> well aware that people aren't smart enough to out
> think nature. Today there
> is a lot of hubris, vanity, and denial of our true
> nature.

And you know this from reading their writings, perhaps?

Or have you bothered to read them? If not, I can recommend translations of Ptah hotep (one of my favorites) and his advice -- and best of all, it's free! We can recommend others, of course, but I like this ol' guy in particular: [members.aol.com]