You must log in or # to comment.
Religious people aren’t bothered or surprised at all when their prayers don’t come true. On the other hand, if their cell phone or car or air conditioner suddenly stops working without warning, they’re absolutely shocked and dismayed.
My point is that even the most religious people actually believe in science far more than they believe in their religion. They’re just too stupid to realize it.
No one prays harder than a scientist waiting for a peer review.
Please God, I just ask that reviewer number 2 comes to their fucking senses for 17 minutes to approve my paper.
Glowing handjob hand unlocked
You’re missing part of the appeal. In the right column, there’s a huge pile of money going toward the design and production of that arm. In the left column, there’s a huge pile of money going to a faith healer’s private jet. Sure, functioning prosthetic arms are pretty cool, but private jets are super cool.
So here’s the thing about today’s prosthetics: they kinda suck. For example this 2022 study reports that 44% of amputees rejected their prosthetic:
Most responders complained about the comfort (60.87%, n = 14) as well as the weight of the device (52.17%, n = 12).
What apparently goes a long way is accepting the missing limb and living with it. And I guess religion does help with that.
Of course, it’s all primitive dogshit, basically early 20th century sticks with fancier motors. Big deal.
We need to figure out how to regrow limbs. A stupid salamander can do it.
There’s some evidence that mammals never lost the ability. Unfortunately, our scarring response is massively faster and locks wounds down.
A few years back, they engineered mice to lack a gene, to find out what it did. Initially, someone got in trouble for not properly marking the modified mice (via holes in their ears). They later discovered the holes healed completely, including regenerating fur etc.
Unfortunately, it also makes recovery from larger wounds difficult, since without a scarring response they don’t close quickly.
I mean holes in ears healing and closing up is one thing, entire limbs regrowing is another, and we already know from salamanders and lizards that things can go wrong:
Who’s to say a regrown human arm won’t have similar issues, possibly even internal issues only humans would notice due to having opposable fingers.
Yes, I’ve read some old books that talk about the “current of injury” and how you can induce something like regeneration in humans if you leave the scab alone, but only for small things like fingertips.
I suspect, as you say, that you trade one thing off for another, but we’re all office workers these days so we can probably figure out something even for large wounds, since we can just sit around for weeks and heal.
I hope that when this AI craze dies down that we can redirect our humongous computing resources to simulating entire cells, maybe entire organs.
Deep down I’m a life extension nutter but reality had a way to knock that out of me…
Side topic: I think Pascal’s Wager is stupid because what if there is a god and it only sends believers to hell? What if there is a good and it sends everyone to hell no matter what? What if there is a god and it didn’t make an afterlife and won’t interfere in actual life, so why even bother? What if there’s a flying spaghetti monster out there and that’s what god is?
/rant
That’s why it’s pascal’s mugging. You’re getting screwed for something that, statistically speaking, is a shot in the dark.
What if there’s a good? No, no chance of that, I’m afraid.
I’ve twice asked Christians to pray in Jesus’ name asking for the immediate and permanent end to torture, rape, murder, and war. They prayed, and when I next met them they were still Christians despite none of those things ending.
I think religious people are dishonest and/or unable to differentiate between reality and fairytales.
Matthew 7:7-11
7 Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 So if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!Playing devil’s advocate: science hasn’t cracked any of those yet either.
It has helped to improve on those issues though.
True, and the scientific method and results have made wars more intensely deadly; but science doesn’t make ridiculous claims like religions and other scam-artists who claims that if you say some magic words you can have absolutely anything you want. The scientific method is by far the best way we’ve found that lets us figure out what is real and what is nonsense - no other method comes anywhere close to it.
Solving those problems is not part of science’s purview.
It absolutely is. They’re sociology problems. Observations can be made on causal factors in society, changes made, effects observed, results shared.
Have a read of the book “The Science Of Racism” for how science can give a insight into dealing with a social issue.
People who are religious in the end have faith because they are selfish. They will perpetuate a religious belief that overall creates a worse world for everyone living (wars, enforced ideology, etc) in the hopes that they can have an afterlife of bliss and excess.
I guess the monkey palm only applied to current end of torture, rape, murder, and war and not future instances, but I could imagine Iraq war still being ongoing, or if it happened at the beginning of the Russian war that’s clearly ongoing
I look at it this way in terms of spirituallity… (Aka psychopath minded religion excluded.)
Kid has 1 arm.
Community that doesn’t have the means or knowledge for science helps promote hope and faith that keeps the kid going.
Science does it’s thing, as it always has and creates an arm.
Kid is able to get the new arm because the community and faith helped keep his spirits up so he didn’t suicide out of hopelessness.
…The real enemy is the marketing and psychological manipulation tainting everything. It’s not just religions. It rapes everything for all that it can benefit from. Every demographic is observed and bled of all its authentic soul. From religions, to cultures, governments, arts, and even sciences.
All major religions have people doing stuff that is to the benefit of the higher-ups in the religion and is to the disadvantage to the common believer.
But you’re right, it also happens outside of religion, like with capitalism and billionaires vs the working class.
Religion is just a means to keep the plebs from revolting.
Why not foster hope through science? Religion is unneeded for that.
Plus, if the situation was hopeless scientifically, the kid would be better off accepting reality than to endlessly hope for something that will never come. Just build with what he can instead of daydreaming about what can’t be.
Here in the states, you can now add a 4th panel. first one shows a casket, second one shows a vaccinated kid
Religion: thoughts and prayers
Science: thoughts and peerscan we stop with this early 2010s debate?
it’s bullshit all the way. Science is also used to create weapons which creates record numbers of amputees, and religion is still used as propaganda to justify those wars. And even with prosthetic limbs, access might be limited based on profitability.
the main difference is community support, class issues, capitalism…
Science and technology advancement by itself is dangerous if society doesn’t advance as well. regardless of the specific religion or lack thereof.
Saying that as an absolute science nerd with a STEM PhD,
science vs religion debate has been around at least since the 1980s.
/s
1982 to be exact, when Thomas Dolby was blinded with science much like Saul was once blinded by Jesus on the road to Damascus. It’s poetry in motion.
May the Reverend Magnus Pike be forever remembered.
that debate probably existed much earlier. wouldn’t surprise me if some shaman’s were upset at those high tech craftmen with copper tools and those craftmen though the chaman was crazy…
And even with prosthetic limbs, access might be limited based on profitability.
Let’s also not ignore the fact that many modern prosthetics just kind of suck in general. They’re getting better but they still aren’t great.
not sure how that field is going, but I’m still upset that a company managed to make working prosthetic eyes, gave blind people some sigh, went out of business, and suddenly all their clients went blind again. They wouldn’t make the code upen source because it was their intellectual property.
they didn’t get into the “bring sigh to the blind” business to help people, just for the business part.
Yeah that’s really shitty, just another shitty aspect of capitalism protecting businesses and not people. Actually actively screwing people over for money.
Another way this discussion is bullshit and leads nowhere is that religion can also explain everything science does. Oh the kid got a prosthetic arm? Yes, because put engineers in his path, it was all part of His plan. Kid losing the arm was also part of the plan BTW.
God took away the foreskin…
Science will bring it back…
I’m 14…
And part of my dick is missing…
Religion: “thanks to our prayers we made it possible for science to create a prosthetic limb”
Meh. It’s not like religious people aren’t also doing science. Like most of my labmates are slightly religious (but I’m not lol).
It’s amazing the degree to which they can compartmentalize. When I was doing my post-doc there was a tech in the lab who was a young-Earth creationist. In a microbiology lab. Where we made mutants strains by using selective pressure. He was a good tech and a good guy, but WTAF?
Don’t worry, the religious people will find a way to make this about themselves and/or their religion!
