Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
I'm surprised by your surprise. Certainty is an interesting word for it; it's simply a belief predicated on a lack of evidence for any alternative possibility. If such compelling evidence presents itself, I suspect that's all it would take for people to change their minds.
There is no good reason to believe, or even remain open to the possible truth of, any sort of numinous crap on bad evidence.
As for questions asked by human beings throughout history, human beings throughout history have generally been exceedingly stupid. Most human beings still are. Pattern-seeking and an inability to cope with gaps in understanding are a part of how the human mind seems to have evolved, so it's hardly surprising that our first attempts to explain the workings of the universe involve some really dumb guesses made in the absence of any real data.
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I'm curious about this statement. I do not deny that Western science has, in the last three or four centuries, made an ongoing progressive series of wonderful discoveries that have absolutely widened our knowledge of the universe, and have also helped develop myriad technologies that have made our lives immeasurably better than they were before.
No arguments there.
I haven't even been a proponent of the after-life or any other such "woooo" beliefs in souls or whatever. I do think that in the absence of evidence, and really, the impossibility of any evidence, we can really move beyond anything but agnosticism, particularly when it comes to the afterlife.
My view is that we have not gained any additional understanding as to what it is like to be a human, and how a human must or might or could live a satisfying or decent life. In fact, the purely rationalist explanations - especially ones tinged with scientism - do a remarkably bad job of moving us further away from a reasonable premise upon which we can answer such questions.
Look at Darwin. Undeniably right. There is so much evidence behind this rather elegant theory. We absolutely know that this was the mechanism by which life came about on this planet. However, Darwin doesn't do much to explain the bizarre aberration that is man, or why man remains the best and the worst of all animals. We have no phenotype. A beaver has its lodge, man has his condo development or whatever. However, the beaver is satisfied in his lodge, while we remain unsatisfied by any environment - even ones we specifically tailor to our liking. You can live in the most gorgeous house, surrounded by the most high-tech luxury, and still be neurotic enough to shoot yourself after your wife leaves you for another younger man.
The situation we are in, as a species and as unique individuals, is profoundly mysterious to me.