Nothing exists.

Not an imsult at all, good sir. I was merely imquiring about the nature of your imtelligence given that our lord and saviour has yet to grace us with his umimtelligable ramblings.

Seriously though, the lack of computer literacy (in general) does bother me at times. What are people going to do in 20 years when they have computers growing out of their damned ears and yet don't have a clue how they work?

 

If I was still on my logic kick, I'd use my imtelligence to turn that around on you and tell you that you're stupid; but, since I'm not...

 

That shouldn't be the chief concern. By that time, people will be taking for granted the "fact" that google can answer all of their queries and, should they lose the internet, will become functionally retarded and completely unable to do the simplest of things. Adult diapers, anyone?

 

I was saying by that time, people won't actually need to store anything within their minds, because everything will be online. Take away the internet, and suddenly everyone's as functional as a newborn.

 

There was both a sci-fi novel with a similar plot, and the comic series "Surrogates" which was indeed adapted into a movie starring Bruce Willis, in which people bought robotic copies of themselves that could be controlled remotely, which allowed everyone to act out fantasies without gathering STD's, dying from falling great distances, etc., and actually segregated society into those who wanted surrogates to enable them to live vicariously and those without surrogates preaching that old "Live your own damn life!" rhetoric. This didn't encourage people to become functionally retarded so much as agoraphobic, i.e. "I can't actually leave my house! I could get herpes, or sprain an ankle, or get a *GASP* sunburn!"

 

Then you have the opposite extreme of those whose hobbies include knowing how to survive in the wild with only the clothes on their back and a hunting knife. As long as people like that exist, I know that the human race will survive as long as the Earth does.

 

Ice Age? Meteorite? Thermonuclear war? Apocalypse virus? No problem! My trusty hunting knife is all I need!

 

All those weeks spent perfecting the much lauded skill of skinning geckos will pay off...especially when I find a gold one.

 

Everything is nothing. Duality. Black is white. Good is evil. Life is death. Existence and non-existence. We're all a great big paradox.™

Would "claim" not be better than "provide"? The issue with science being that we are limited by our own perceptions, and thus our equipment and technology is too - there could be an immense undiscovered world out there. The issue with religion is that it tends to be limited by the perceptions of just one, or a handful of individuals, regarding certain events - on the plus side though, some religious folk are at least modest enough to call it "faith", rather than handing us the good old "Nope, this is 100% proven fact" line that science often mistakenly uses.

 

Anyone using that line isn't a scientist, they're just relying on experimental evidence to demonstrate their observable universe and calling that evidence "fact."
If what's being churned out by modern physics was "fact," the term being used to describe the phenomena would be "law," as opposed to "theory."
This is why we don't have a law of universal expansion, or a law describing any particular quantum process. The people saying "Nope. Fact. You're wrong. I have experimental evidence that shows how this is what happens every. single. time." are just as biased toward their beliefs as any zealot who says "The bible is undeniable! My religion effectively and unconfusingly explains everything, despite the various people reading the same book getting a different message!"
The truth about science is just what you mentioned in your post; our technology is not limitless in scope, and considering it's practically impossible to actually know everything anyway, all we can really hope to do with science is increase the rate of discovery as observational techniques improve. This invokes a paradox, as the more we effectively "discover," the more we will find we don't actually know.
As in, "My bike is gone...the chain is cut. My bike was stolen."
Who stole my bike?
Why? It was nothing special.
Can I still get it back?
Are there bicycle chop-shops?

 

That's a fair point that I failed to address, we do see it all the time in the media, my favourite cases being when a newspaper (The Daily Mail in the UK being my favourite example!) talks about some study or some new science, linking the original study or a paper regarding it - which completely contradicts what the newspaper claimed was true.

I think the issue is that a lot of people have trouble grasping the idea that - there are so many things we don't understand, and most of them are things we'll never understand no matter how hard we try.

This is why I trust a philosopher more than anyone else. A philosopher tends to either be unbiased or have their own admitted opinion which they can argue for and against - a good philosopher never claims to know or understand the world, just have his or her own musings about it.

 

Like Nietzsche? Schopenhauer? Kant? Wittgenstein? Berkely? Aristotle? Heidegger? Hegel? About the only philosophers who even nearly resemble the picture you've just given that actually jump to mind are Plato, Locke, and Hume; most of the rest are as stupid, narrow-sighted, bigoted, and arrogant as any religious lunatic or socially-retarded scientist.

And don't even bother replying because I know what you're going to say and what you know I'm going to say back. That and I don't really care enough to get into an argument with some little idiot.

 

Religion and science have authority. The authority of the priesthood and the authority of the expert. From the layman's point of view, this authority means that what they say must be true (even when they are lying through their teeth). Because the knowledge of these elites supposedly exceed the ability of the layman to learn the "truths" and/or "facts", the layman who believes that doesn't question. So Yes, "claim" is better than "provide," but when you factor in fact that not everyone is willing to question the pictures of reality that handed to them by authority, these two fields are indeed providing certainities to those who trust in their authority over them.

Which makes We Who Are Not Sheep, a pack of rebels in the eyes of those who shallow the party lines of the experts (even when we are not considered rebels in the eyes of the experts themselves).

Then I must not be a zealot. My only question is why does "everyone" keep reading my positions as if they were the words of zealot?

First, The Bible requires Faith; faith always take a position that can be denied, that's why it is called faith.
Second, the Bible doesn't explain Everything; it explains what it is necessary for living a moral life.
Third, those apparently contradicting messages from the Bible are not contradictory unless one of those messages actually contradicts the Bible. The differences between the various denominations of the church aren't products of contradictions (which is necessary in order to call them different); they are products of different levels of emphasis. Any demonination that wholy excludes the others is bound to be teaching strange doctrines that are not in the Bible.

 

Just stop.

 

Ephesians 6:5-9
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.

9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

Everything from 5 to 8 was repeated by slave owners and religious leaders alike during the period of slavery in the US to enforce their will upon their "property", and people today still believe the bible justifies owning slaves for this particular passage. In reality, this passage says that we are ALL slaves of Christ, and if we aren't obeying Him, we go to hell. How is that even remotely moral? How is it that some incomprehensible being can hold us to a strict moral code and essentially say he's everyone's master, and those who disobey get punished. Forever.

Oh, and some of those people even have the gall to say rape isn't as bad as masturbation, because of how it still maintains the reproductive purpose of intercourse.

 

Yes.

Are you serious? Is this for real? Have you not seen enough of his stupidity and misuse of words to anticipate what he's going to say?

 

It's an uphill battle. But I hear soccer is more challenging that way.