Fear Of Science
We are all afraid of science.
We should be; it is the most powerful tool in the universe.
Wielding the most powerful tool in the universe demands an extreme sense of responsibility.
Even if I admit that our fear is justified, it should be pointed out that by doing nothing about it, this justified fear will simply exist as a sterile sentiment, because the dangerous domains of science are already being practiced in secrecy, without our knowledge or control.
Instead of sitting in a corner trembling with fear of science, we better think of ways to overlook and control the scientific inquiry.
Direct Democracy allows us to do just that.
Our fear of science is justified for two major reasons:
First,
People who hire scientists naturally use them to serve their interests.
When we realize that the militaries of our nations hire armies of scientists, then every human should feel a shiver up his spine, not only the "other" humans directly threatened by our militaries.
Even if a clan or an alliance is a leader in the matter, it really does not matter.
The "others" are following.
What does it matter if five grams of a poison kills ten thousand people or five kilograms kills ten thousand people?
What does it matter if you have a thousand nuclear warheads twenty megaton each or "only" a hundred nuclear warheads twenty kiloton each?
What does it matter if you have more efficient technological delivery systems or more efficient intelligence delivery services?
What does it matter if you can over-incinerate your "enemies" five hundred times over or just once?
IT DOES NOT MATTER...
Leader or not, there are many opposing clans that are as lethal as the leaders, because they can never afford to fall too much behind, hence the arms race.
Just because some clan discovered a new or a more efficient weapon does not mean that the same clan will not fall victim to the same weapon after some time when the "other" clans find the way to have it or to have its equivalent.
On the long run it does not matter who has anything first.
It never does. Eventually the opposing clan will be forced to have it.
What difference does it make for any of us which clan has the more lethal weapon first, when all it matters is that all of us and/or our children will eventually be subjected to "better" ways of being mass murdered or mass diminished for identities we feel comfortable in keeping, but we never chose.
What difference does any pretext make to keep the ongoing arms race?
The only "sold" pretext was: "We have to be the stronger to dissuade" ...
This chestnut got a little stale with the fall of communism, but a fresh, perfect walnut appeared, much more dangerous... the invisible enemy amongst us, protected by our civic rights ... terrorism.
Our civic rights serve terrorists ...
Any pretext, and our military budgets get multiplied ...
All this quantity can never be used only as dissuasion.
All it takes is only one error of any kind.
Since "risk assessment" is inescapably subject to human error, or manipulation...
Things don't look good ...
I am also disturbed to find among the private companies that hire huge numbers of scientists, the ones engaged in vital sectors like food and pharmaceuticals.
Unlimited profit, characteristic to private companies, integrates the inescapable mechanism of creating the need for their products.
The impossible reconciliation of unlimited profit with any vital sector for mankind is disturbing.
I lack the information and the desire to accuse anybody of foul play, but I think that competition, unlimited profit and vital human sectors with scientists helping you to make more profit is a bad mix.
We should be terrified of the direction that science is forced to take, but it is never the fault of science.
The only alternative to render science safe and useful is the planetary scientific endeavor, with direct democracy being its companion and the first prerequisite to make it serve its objectives.
In direct democracy nothing can be hidden. We can multiply the quantity and quality of the scientists along with the budgets, and still maintain the tightest control over the domains of research, insuring that every drop of effort is directed to the domains defined by our consensus, with long, healthy life and abundance being probably the first on the list.
If there exists a sure way to control scientific inquiry, then direct democracy is our best bet.
Second,
A religion related issue with scientists.
The "religious" or "hoping" scientists.
As long as man wants to be comforted to know something is watching out for him, he will be extremely dangerous for himself and all life on the planet, because:
Somewhere in his being he will rely on something other than himself to be responsible for his destiny/fate, even responsible for what he does...
All scientists need not be that irresponsible. Just a fraction being irresponsible is enough to justify our fear of science, and for good reason.
Man (the irresponsible scientists included) will be like a child juggling with live nuclear bombs for fun, thinking that whatever he does, the entity watching over him will never let something happen if it should not happen, or thinking that if people decide to use the dangerous thing he discovered, then the entity "watching" must be fine with it, or else He would have stopped it.
Man (yes, always including the "religious" scientists) is acting as if the creator promised him in writing (which He supposedly did... three times...), in their own language (that too...), to make things happen in the way that they should, in this world first, and maybe in the hypothetical next, even if supposedly He has granted us free will.
Man has found a way to reconcile mutually exclusive conditions of life; being watched over, being taken care of by the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob, and having "free will", meaning being inescapably subjected to the "free will" of others...
Are we taken care of by the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob, or by each other's "free will"?
How can both be simultaneously true?
Hope concerning issues in this world is wishing that the way God makes the thing happen, will coincide with the positive outcome of our expectations.
Everybody (the scientist included) is doing that from his corner of existence.
But both butcher and butchered indulge in contradictory hopes.
Of course only one of them will have a positive confirmation of his expectation/hope.
The positive confirmation of one's hope will become the inescapable fate of the other.
Here is an example of the most "reliable" category of hopes, the absence of which is synonymous to cardinal sin; religious hope.
I, being Armenian, the people who adopted the second monotheistic religion, Christianity, as the only religion of our nation in the year 301AD and by doing that became the first Christian nation on the planet, the nation that spared no sacrifice to follow its teachings, the nation that believing the Genesis-Exodus, blessed "His people" as the "holy", even was the first to name its sons and daughters after "His people" which transgresses the "blessing" that was demanded to become total adoption of "His people", the nation that defended Jesus and died for Him (and His father who was also supposed to be ours) for more than 1700 years, can claim to have a small idea about the real benefits of hoping, and about how monotheisms affirm knowing the creator, the project of the Creator, and the plan for the project of the creator...
Monotheisms know everything important about creation, just because every time a single man claims knowing (by revelation)... or knowing better (by a better "revelation")...
Difficult to further discredit and minimize a creator...
Maybe the monotheism-presented God, namely the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob loved the Armenians so much that He called us to Him prematurely to save us from temptation or something...
But,
What can be the necessity of the group rape of early teenaged babies, the cutting of their nipples to keep as trophies and then throwing gas and burning them alive while making their parents watch... for anybody's supposed salvation?
If mankind can see and learn from what happened to others, then he will see that the monotheism-presented Creator, namely the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob is either a myth, or does not interfere in this world, "lovingly" leaving us to the merci of the "free will" of the other, or does not care about all his followers.
We did not test Him, but something happened to His devout first (non-"His people") followers, and He was nowhere to be found... so conclusions can be drawn... We did not put ourselves in a position to be exterminated just to test Him. His official definition or presentation (by "revelation") as being the only creator/administrator of existence dictates that it was all His doing... but no matter, when it happened, His non-interference supplied the answers sought without being asked.
Maybe He really exists but did not care about His first followers, but maybe He cares about you...
Very much...
You being so different...
Maybe He cares for His second followers, or the third...
Maybe He only cares for people not following Him untill they become His followers and only then He won't care... maybe it's a good sign that He does not care... who knows?
He even made the parents watch, hear and smell their babies being group raped, tortured, mutilated and burned alive... If I was God, I would have saved even the devil himself from this worst nightmare possible... in hell.
I suppose the babies and their parents are with God now, who surely is unable to heal their souls... or ours.
We can only suppose that what happened to us, the Armenians, was the "blessing" that we were promised by the Genesis-Exodus for blessing "His people"...
Even if we suppose there exists a creator presented by the Genesis-Exodus who wanted to make an example for all the "non-chosen" who forgot their place and dared to think that they could "parasite" His "grace" intended for "His people" only,
- Who "changed" the supposed conditions of the "covenant" by attributing His grace to any human willing to acknowledge Him as the one and only?
- Who should bear the responsibility of this supposed "lie" claiming that the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob is interested in sharing His grace with any people other than "His own"? In which "righteous" mind can the responsibility of the "lie" leave the "liar" and fall upon the person who was lied to?
Whatever came to us concerning Him by "His people" as being the one and only, was accepted, adopted, and followed by all.
If He exists, He never made the non-effort to come to us to clarify. We adopted Him as He was transmitted to us, spontaneously and without condition.
If He exists, whose fault was it that we adopted Him?
If He exists, where is our fault or crime?
If He exists, didn't He witness our unconditional devotion to Him? Even after building one thousand churches in a single city, Ani?
Ani still fell, all devout inhabitants massacred, and all the city was razed to the ground, including the thousand churches, and the "holy" books had a fate similar to our teenaged babies...
If He exists, was it better if we had rejected Him?
If He exists, why does He hate us this much?
Yes, hate us this much.
Millions of His first non-"His people" followers, after having "blessed" "His people" for so long, were calling out for Him with all their faith, with all their being...
I guess they died knowing the truth.
Now we do too.
Feel free to reach your own conclusions, because ultimately everybody will believe what pleases or comforts him.
For me, the existence or non-existence of this monotheism-presented "universal" God who is affirmed to be the creator of the universe and insists on being called LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob is of no consequence anymore.
Sorry.
I hope the Armenian experience with this monotheism-presented creator serves some purpose for mankind, sparing us further pain and disillusion.
There is no monotheism-presented creator watching over us.
We don't need to be watched over once we start living in abundance produced by natural cooperation and not treat "the other" as we do.
But we cannot cooperate for abundance if we trust anything other than man to watch man's back.
Any irresponsible trust in fatality will incinerate man, and in the last second when he realizes that the end of everything is upon him, he will look at the sky with wide open eyes of stupid surprise, ask with trembling lips his hypothetical clan God supposedly watching over him...
WWWHY ?
Too late.
As it was with us, the Armenians.
Learn from it.
Please learn from it.
It was this irresponsibility in scientists that produced the nuclear bomb.
I understand the Manhattan project was born because a "diabolic tyrant" was forcing the German scientists to produce an "atomic explosive device".
But when the diabolic tyrant was no more, who made the scientists continue to work hard to create the means to wipe humanity? Many scientists refused to participate in the creation of this doomsday device.
Everybody knew what they were dealing with, what they were going for.
Did they think they would be the only ones having the device? Couldn't they think a few years ahead?
How old were they anyway? Five?
They put all the "others" in the imperative of creating the same.
What were they thinking?
The scientific director who I will not name, knew exactly what was being done by all the scientists and engineers, and reciting scriptures like "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" as some kind of an attempt to claim scraps of morality/humanity by "feeling" a sort of "regret" for what he was supposedly forced to do, is out of place and certainly non-convincing; he approved the two detonations... on cities...
They had tested it in the desert. They saw firsthand what it would do...
"Approving" to unleash that kind of incineration?
On civilians?
On women and children?
He can keep his cheap "humanity", cheaper "morality" and inexistent "regret" for the gullible.
I know who he is.
I think an eternal "curse" would fit well with the recited "scripture" as an appropriate "dark side" sort of a Nobel "prize"... don't you think?
It is as if they built all the nuclear bombs and programmed the timers to an unknown date.
Their actions reveal what is wrong with us.
As for nuclear power for electricity, how can we use a source of energy without being able to "deal with" its wastes? Anyway, the bomb came first, and will go the last.
Science supplied the choice, "scarcity administrators" decided to take it.
Everybody is trusting that their respective supernatural guardians will protect them from each other ... even save them from themselves and from their own actions in this world.
How stupid can someone get?
Can't we see that the only beings watching over ourselves are ourselves?
We can watch over each other infinite times better than some religion's clan Gods who have already taken such good care of humanity as a whole till now...
In the absence of any kind of proof of the existence of a monotheism presented benevolent God watching over mankind, it is pathetically infantile to suppose that HE exists and charge HIM with our protection... On the contrary, we have to assume that we are alone, and take things into our own hands.
If later, science proves the existence of a benevolent God, then all is well, because then we can finally know for sure what is expected of us, if anything, and not submit our fate to a one-man-"revelation", which is actually the case.
If the existence of a creator can be proven, science is the only tool for the job.
But till then, it is lunacy to suppose we are being watched over.
Until proof of the existence of a benevolent monotheism-presented God or any creator, it is man that will watch over man.
We have nobody else.
Just us.
Just each other.
We should be; it is the most powerful tool in the universe.
Wielding the most powerful tool in the universe demands an extreme sense of responsibility.
Even if I admit that our fear is justified, it should be pointed out that by doing nothing about it, this justified fear will simply exist as a sterile sentiment, because the dangerous domains of science are already being practiced in secrecy, without our knowledge or control.
Instead of sitting in a corner trembling with fear of science, we better think of ways to overlook and control the scientific inquiry.
Direct Democracy allows us to do just that.
Our fear of science is justified for two major reasons:
First,
People who hire scientists naturally use them to serve their interests.
When we realize that the militaries of our nations hire armies of scientists, then every human should feel a shiver up his spine, not only the "other" humans directly threatened by our militaries.
Even if a clan or an alliance is a leader in the matter, it really does not matter.
The "others" are following.
What does it matter if five grams of a poison kills ten thousand people or five kilograms kills ten thousand people?
What does it matter if you have a thousand nuclear warheads twenty megaton each or "only" a hundred nuclear warheads twenty kiloton each?
What does it matter if you have more efficient technological delivery systems or more efficient intelligence delivery services?
What does it matter if you can over-incinerate your "enemies" five hundred times over or just once?
IT DOES NOT MATTER...
Leader or not, there are many opposing clans that are as lethal as the leaders, because they can never afford to fall too much behind, hence the arms race.
Just because some clan discovered a new or a more efficient weapon does not mean that the same clan will not fall victim to the same weapon after some time when the "other" clans find the way to have it or to have its equivalent.
On the long run it does not matter who has anything first.
It never does. Eventually the opposing clan will be forced to have it.
What difference does it make for any of us which clan has the more lethal weapon first, when all it matters is that all of us and/or our children will eventually be subjected to "better" ways of being mass murdered or mass diminished for identities we feel comfortable in keeping, but we never chose.
What difference does any pretext make to keep the ongoing arms race?
The only "sold" pretext was: "We have to be the stronger to dissuade" ...
This chestnut got a little stale with the fall of communism, but a fresh, perfect walnut appeared, much more dangerous... the invisible enemy amongst us, protected by our civic rights ... terrorism.
Our civic rights serve terrorists ...
Any pretext, and our military budgets get multiplied ...
All this quantity can never be used only as dissuasion.
All it takes is only one error of any kind.
Since "risk assessment" is inescapably subject to human error, or manipulation...
Things don't look good ...
I am also disturbed to find among the private companies that hire huge numbers of scientists, the ones engaged in vital sectors like food and pharmaceuticals.
Unlimited profit, characteristic to private companies, integrates the inescapable mechanism of creating the need for their products.
The impossible reconciliation of unlimited profit with any vital sector for mankind is disturbing.
I lack the information and the desire to accuse anybody of foul play, but I think that competition, unlimited profit and vital human sectors with scientists helping you to make more profit is a bad mix.
We should be terrified of the direction that science is forced to take, but it is never the fault of science.
The only alternative to render science safe and useful is the planetary scientific endeavor, with direct democracy being its companion and the first prerequisite to make it serve its objectives.
In direct democracy nothing can be hidden. We can multiply the quantity and quality of the scientists along with the budgets, and still maintain the tightest control over the domains of research, insuring that every drop of effort is directed to the domains defined by our consensus, with long, healthy life and abundance being probably the first on the list.
If there exists a sure way to control scientific inquiry, then direct democracy is our best bet.
Second,
A religion related issue with scientists.
The "religious" or "hoping" scientists.
As long as man wants to be comforted to know something is watching out for him, he will be extremely dangerous for himself and all life on the planet, because:
Somewhere in his being he will rely on something other than himself to be responsible for his destiny/fate, even responsible for what he does...
All scientists need not be that irresponsible. Just a fraction being irresponsible is enough to justify our fear of science, and for good reason.
Man (the irresponsible scientists included) will be like a child juggling with live nuclear bombs for fun, thinking that whatever he does, the entity watching over him will never let something happen if it should not happen, or thinking that if people decide to use the dangerous thing he discovered, then the entity "watching" must be fine with it, or else He would have stopped it.
Man (yes, always including the "religious" scientists) is acting as if the creator promised him in writing (which He supposedly did... three times...), in their own language (that too...), to make things happen in the way that they should, in this world first, and maybe in the hypothetical next, even if supposedly He has granted us free will.
Man has found a way to reconcile mutually exclusive conditions of life; being watched over, being taken care of by the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob, and having "free will", meaning being inescapably subjected to the "free will" of others...
Are we taken care of by the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob, or by each other's "free will"?
How can both be simultaneously true?
Hope concerning issues in this world is wishing that the way God makes the thing happen, will coincide with the positive outcome of our expectations.
Everybody (the scientist included) is doing that from his corner of existence.
But both butcher and butchered indulge in contradictory hopes.
Of course only one of them will have a positive confirmation of his expectation/hope.
The positive confirmation of one's hope will become the inescapable fate of the other.
Here is an example of the most "reliable" category of hopes, the absence of which is synonymous to cardinal sin; religious hope.
I, being Armenian, the people who adopted the second monotheistic religion, Christianity, as the only religion of our nation in the year 301AD and by doing that became the first Christian nation on the planet, the nation that spared no sacrifice to follow its teachings, the nation that believing the Genesis-Exodus, blessed "His people" as the "holy", even was the first to name its sons and daughters after "His people" which transgresses the "blessing" that was demanded to become total adoption of "His people", the nation that defended Jesus and died for Him (and His father who was also supposed to be ours) for more than 1700 years, can claim to have a small idea about the real benefits of hoping, and about how monotheisms affirm knowing the creator, the project of the Creator, and the plan for the project of the creator...
Monotheisms know everything important about creation, just because every time a single man claims knowing (by revelation)... or knowing better (by a better "revelation")...
Difficult to further discredit and minimize a creator...
Maybe the monotheism-presented God, namely the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob loved the Armenians so much that He called us to Him prematurely to save us from temptation or something...
But,
What can be the necessity of the group rape of early teenaged babies, the cutting of their nipples to keep as trophies and then throwing gas and burning them alive while making their parents watch... for anybody's supposed salvation?
If mankind can see and learn from what happened to others, then he will see that the monotheism-presented Creator, namely the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob is either a myth, or does not interfere in this world, "lovingly" leaving us to the merci of the "free will" of the other, or does not care about all his followers.
We did not test Him, but something happened to His devout first (non-"His people") followers, and He was nowhere to be found... so conclusions can be drawn... We did not put ourselves in a position to be exterminated just to test Him. His official definition or presentation (by "revelation") as being the only creator/administrator of existence dictates that it was all His doing... but no matter, when it happened, His non-interference supplied the answers sought without being asked.
Maybe He really exists but did not care about His first followers, but maybe He cares about you...
Very much...
You being so different...
Maybe He cares for His second followers, or the third...
Maybe He only cares for people not following Him untill they become His followers and only then He won't care... maybe it's a good sign that He does not care... who knows?
He even made the parents watch, hear and smell their babies being group raped, tortured, mutilated and burned alive... If I was God, I would have saved even the devil himself from this worst nightmare possible... in hell.
I suppose the babies and their parents are with God now, who surely is unable to heal their souls... or ours.
We can only suppose that what happened to us, the Armenians, was the "blessing" that we were promised by the Genesis-Exodus for blessing "His people"...
Even if we suppose there exists a creator presented by the Genesis-Exodus who wanted to make an example for all the "non-chosen" who forgot their place and dared to think that they could "parasite" His "grace" intended for "His people" only,
- Who "changed" the supposed conditions of the "covenant" by attributing His grace to any human willing to acknowledge Him as the one and only?
- Who should bear the responsibility of this supposed "lie" claiming that the LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob is interested in sharing His grace with any people other than "His own"? In which "righteous" mind can the responsibility of the "lie" leave the "liar" and fall upon the person who was lied to?
Whatever came to us concerning Him by "His people" as being the one and only, was accepted, adopted, and followed by all.
If He exists, He never made the non-effort to come to us to clarify. We adopted Him as He was transmitted to us, spontaneously and without condition.
If He exists, whose fault was it that we adopted Him?
If He exists, where is our fault or crime?
If He exists, didn't He witness our unconditional devotion to Him? Even after building one thousand churches in a single city, Ani?
Ani still fell, all devout inhabitants massacred, and all the city was razed to the ground, including the thousand churches, and the "holy" books had a fate similar to our teenaged babies...
If He exists, was it better if we had rejected Him?
If He exists, why does He hate us this much?
Yes, hate us this much.
Millions of His first non-"His people" followers, after having "blessed" "His people" for so long, were calling out for Him with all their faith, with all their being...
I guess they died knowing the truth.
Now we do too.
Feel free to reach your own conclusions, because ultimately everybody will believe what pleases or comforts him.
For me, the existence or non-existence of this monotheism-presented "universal" God who is affirmed to be the creator of the universe and insists on being called LORD God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob is of no consequence anymore.
Sorry.
I hope the Armenian experience with this monotheism-presented creator serves some purpose for mankind, sparing us further pain and disillusion.
There is no monotheism-presented creator watching over us.
We don't need to be watched over once we start living in abundance produced by natural cooperation and not treat "the other" as we do.
But we cannot cooperate for abundance if we trust anything other than man to watch man's back.
Any irresponsible trust in fatality will incinerate man, and in the last second when he realizes that the end of everything is upon him, he will look at the sky with wide open eyes of stupid surprise, ask with trembling lips his hypothetical clan God supposedly watching over him...
WWWHY ?
Too late.
As it was with us, the Armenians.
Learn from it.
Please learn from it.
It was this irresponsibility in scientists that produced the nuclear bomb.
I understand the Manhattan project was born because a "diabolic tyrant" was forcing the German scientists to produce an "atomic explosive device".
But when the diabolic tyrant was no more, who made the scientists continue to work hard to create the means to wipe humanity? Many scientists refused to participate in the creation of this doomsday device.
Everybody knew what they were dealing with, what they were going for.
Did they think they would be the only ones having the device? Couldn't they think a few years ahead?
How old were they anyway? Five?
They put all the "others" in the imperative of creating the same.
What were they thinking?
The scientific director who I will not name, knew exactly what was being done by all the scientists and engineers, and reciting scriptures like "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" as some kind of an attempt to claim scraps of morality/humanity by "feeling" a sort of "regret" for what he was supposedly forced to do, is out of place and certainly non-convincing; he approved the two detonations... on cities...
They had tested it in the desert. They saw firsthand what it would do...
"Approving" to unleash that kind of incineration?
On civilians?
On women and children?
He can keep his cheap "humanity", cheaper "morality" and inexistent "regret" for the gullible.
I know who he is.
I think an eternal "curse" would fit well with the recited "scripture" as an appropriate "dark side" sort of a Nobel "prize"... don't you think?
It is as if they built all the nuclear bombs and programmed the timers to an unknown date.
Their actions reveal what is wrong with us.
As for nuclear power for electricity, how can we use a source of energy without being able to "deal with" its wastes? Anyway, the bomb came first, and will go the last.
Science supplied the choice, "scarcity administrators" decided to take it.
Everybody is trusting that their respective supernatural guardians will protect them from each other ... even save them from themselves and from their own actions in this world.
How stupid can someone get?
Can't we see that the only beings watching over ourselves are ourselves?
We can watch over each other infinite times better than some religion's clan Gods who have already taken such good care of humanity as a whole till now...
In the absence of any kind of proof of the existence of a monotheism presented benevolent God watching over mankind, it is pathetically infantile to suppose that HE exists and charge HIM with our protection... On the contrary, we have to assume that we are alone, and take things into our own hands.
If later, science proves the existence of a benevolent God, then all is well, because then we can finally know for sure what is expected of us, if anything, and not submit our fate to a one-man-"revelation", which is actually the case.
If the existence of a creator can be proven, science is the only tool for the job.
But till then, it is lunacy to suppose we are being watched over.
Until proof of the existence of a benevolent monotheism-presented God or any creator, it is man that will watch over man.
We have nobody else.
Just us.
Just each other.