USN_Squid

I knew some talk about Religion would bring you in Fenix

I see your point. What I was trying to highlight was the tendency of humans to grasp for answers where they may be no question if you follow me.

Where evolution tries to explain things with demonstrable facts, religion makes large assumptions based on few facts. I agree with that, although I also believe niether has proven their case beyond a doubt.

I was comparing conspiracy theories with religion in that they both take some facts, along with some assumptions and then apply a grandiose theme to connect them all. Behind both is a desire to make sense of our reality even if it means suspending critical analysis.

There's plenty of good reading and facts to show some attempts by elites to control economies, cultures, schools and even science, but like Jex said it's damn near impossibe to wrap it all up nice and neat and prove it all.

__________________

TheFeniX

Why not? It something people will always take a hard stance on, and it's fun to discuss.

No, it sounds like a semantics arguement like "The pen is mightier than the sword." Are we talking about human imagination surrounding things they don't understand?

Religion is based on faith not fact. Faith is what you have when demonstratable fact shows otherwise. Hence, there is no evidence that God exists, but people have faith that he does. It's not a competition. Well, if it is, that's because creationists made it that way. Scientists (for the most part) aren't conerned with showing up creationists and proving them wrong. They are concerned with validity.

If scientists found an angel buried in the ground and conclusive tests showed it to be real, their entire viewpoint would be changed.

If creationists found a complete fossil record that showed an ape transition completely to human form over numerous intact skeletons, they would probably claim Satan put it there.

It's not comparible though. Mystisism and reiligion seeks to understand via ignorance (no that's not a typo). Science seeks to understand via knowledge.

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the reason Martin Luther broke away from the church was because it was heresy for a non-priest to read and interpret the bible? So once he did read it on his own, he realized the clergy was full of crap?

It's the bible, right? Why would the clergy get mad for people reading it on their own? Oh wait, because it would disolve their power-base. That's a real life conspiracy theory.

I agree, but my point is: who cares? Those with money and power will always overshadow and plot over those who don't.

__________________

jex

So how about this for a theory.

Human beings are generally stupid things. We think we know lots we bur in fact, we know very, very little. However, there are a few privvy to elite knowledge. They have a far greater understanding of the universe than joe pleb ever will. This "elite" look at human society and see it for what it is - a band of scrabbling fools out to get as much as they want, ignorant and argumentative. So laws where introduced because the people couldn't manage themselves, all the while there being a great "master plan" behind the scenes that the elite are manipulating. The final result of the plan is to bring enlightenment to the human race but to do so, many evils must be introduced so that the plebs can learn.

Now that could be just as plausible, could it not. right now, if you took away every law and said "do what you want", does anyone seriously think we'd all light a camp fire, join hands and sing cum-by-yar (however the hell it's spelt).

No.

Instead we'd go on a rampage of rape and pillage. grabbing what we can for ourselves. At present, joe pleb is not qualified to look after himself. Laws, however sucky they may be, need to be in place because people cannot behave. That's what you do to children when they cannot behave, you introduce rules.

Now if you were one of those "elite" people, with advanced knowledge, what would you do? Try and teach society to love and respect each other or think "screw this, I'll take what I can get". You become a bigger part of the problem, but at least your rich and powerful

__________________
Jex

SephirothValentine

Conspiracy galore!

__________________


- "Children in the back seat cause accidents, accidents in the back seat cause children."
- "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

~ SephVal <--> TG-303rd Master Sergeant (MSG) <--> Distinguished Sniper - Class I


~ COD4 Sniper <--> Owner of the Golden Dragunov

Wintermute

The best and most thought provoking book I have ever read is called The Illuminatus! Trillogy. It deals with these issues in a very alice-down-the-rabbit-hole way, deliberately confusing the reader. It does this by first convincing them there is a conspiracy, then that there isn't, then that the conspiracy theory is a conspiracy and so on.

On a similar veign is Umberto Ecco's "Foucault's Pendulum."

The article here is in many ways thought provoking however if authors want to be taken serieously on subjects like this they need to do better. Why weren't all his quotes properly referenced? Any student at university is expected to include a comprehensive bibliography citing author, year and publisher for every piece of evidence cited and every quote. On top of this his style is not exactly scientific, as Fenix pointed out with the example of the authors concrete opinion on The Matrix. I would never dare hand in an essay in such a state, regardless of the quality of the ideas it contained.

There is no denying that, on some level, there is a loose 'elite class.' In England and the US there are "old boy's clubs." If a job applicant went to the same private school as you, the same oxbridge college or was in the same US fraternity then you give them the job over everyone else. If daddy is well conected then he makes sure you get an important job e.g. the Kennedy dynasty and the Bush family. The only question is how fundamental is the elite class to the structure of our society and is it possible to increase transparency, fairness and democracy to do away with it?

One important measure of our success in this is social mobility. How much does a person's wealth/power depend on their parents wealth/power in a given society? Research is done on this and countries are ranked. Go look it up.

__________________
Wintermute

Play EVE online. It's like being an accounting addict in space.

www.MakePovertyHistory.com

><JohnGalt><

I am not a religious man, I am more of an agnostic. But I have taken A LOT of upper level and graduate biology courses and the way the body works and the way life is perpetuated forces me to pause every now and then and wonder if there isnt a grand plan at work. ALso, you should read the writings of Einstein, possibly one of the smartest men of our times, also a very relgious man.

__________________

TheFeniX

As do I, but that doesn't make it a matter of fact.So? God didn't help him discover relativity, math did.

Many scientists are in fact religious people. But they leave him at home when they go to work. God does not belong in a laboratory.

__________________

><JohnGalt><

"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details." A.Einstein

__________________

jex

__________________
Jex

TheFeniX

Your point?

__________________

USN_Squid

Can I still play pc games if I take the Blue Pill? If I can I'm all good.

__________________

jex

No - you are only allowed a console

__________________
Jex

rs_al

Einstein discovered relativity at a young age. Do you know what he did with the rest of his life? Almost nothing. Do you know why? His faith blinded him.

Einstein knew a lot about the universe. He had a dillemma: if gravity pulls everything together, why don't all the galaxies collapse on each other? Around the time of Einstein, the big bang theory was picking up, and Hubble was publishing reports that all the galaxies were moving apart from each other. But Einstein refuted all of that. He thought if god created the universe, it would be static and unchanging- the bible doesn't leave room for either a Big Bang or a Big Crunch.

So he devoted his life to finding how he could take that assumption and monkey wrench it into physics. In the end, he developed a Cosmological Constant, an energy emitted by the vacuum - the nothing - in space, pushing all the galaxies apart so that they didn't fall on each other. There was never any evidence to confirm it, and empirical evidence suggested the opposite, but nontheless he chose to do science in exactly the wrong way and in the end he walked away with nothing but a silly idea and a lot of lost time (though the idea does pop up now and again with some interesting results, it is still unproven and theoretical).

So pointing out that Einstein was a man of faith is probably not the best thing to do- his faith ruined him. It didn't just stop him from helping explore the origins of the universe, he also rejected Quantum Physics based on his faith, and thus that too was without his support.

TheFeniX

So what you're basically saying is that by using science: Einstein helped advance his field, but his faith in God turned his science into an abomination and caused him to try and "cram" his facts to fit his conclusion?

I'm not going to argue with that. If anything, your example helps prove that belief and fact need to be (and are) mutually exclusive.

__________________