Comment of the Month
October 11th, 2009
Discovered on MoreIntelligentLife.com — I love this web site. Stunningly and expertly published by The Economist!
The comment:
Religion has been used as a tool to legitimize and uphold the social order for thousands of years. If you don’t believe me just look at the role of religion in ancient Egypt where the Pharaoh was regarded as a living God. People are inherently selfish and self-interested and I’ve discovered first hand that religious people are no less selfish than atheists; they are simply less honest about it ….
Fantastically well done. How have I not seen it before?! I ended up spending two hours there. Way cool. Check it out.
Hi Hugh,
As you know I’m not too fond of Religious creationism. I am also not fond of the prevailing standard model called the Big Bang which Tyson probably explains well.
Never thought myself a skeptic as a defining characteristic but if the evidence does not seem to match the explanation, and if in my opinion logic is failing, then I have to find a better explanation as is the case for the mainstream scientific explanation and the religious explanation. Science rules, in my opinion, but science does not always come to valid conclusions either.
Excellent to hear from you, Forrest! I think most cosmologists these days prefer the theory of “inflation”, which accounts for general relativity far better than the original “big bang” explanations (although still a perfectly fine metaphor). I think science is doing a stunningly fantastic job of figuring out what the universe was like 10 billion years before the earth even coalesced. Certainly better than the musings of our primitive ancestors passed through a couple of hundred generations without a shred of evidence. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but this is a divide that in my mind keeps growing larger with the weight of evidence exponentially piling up on the side of science.
Check this out for a very well written paper on Inflation:
Beyond the Big Bang
Inflation and the Very Early Universe
Copyright (c) 2002 by Gary Felder
http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/kenny/papers/inflation.html