Is religion a computer virus of the brain?

@GlassDog I find the “Big Bang” equivalent to your other fiction. It is just a bunch of scientists hoping to make a story so that no one can prove them wrong at that time.

@Pfuzylogic It's not my fiction. I was talking to an academic who suggested it, without proof, as the potential beginning of a hypothesis. My background is in science and I'm as aware as any scientist that mistakes are made all the time, theories are superceded, and science is really just "the sum of what we know now" rather than any ultimate truth such as the one you may (or may not) believe in. Science is also completely up for criticism and pulling apart because that's the only way it advances. I'd suggest that openness and the desire for truth (even if it goes against what we hold dear) is the difference between science and religion. I definitely prefer to have every thought critically assessed, rather than take something on faith. I accept that other people are different.

I'm also equivocal about the Big Bang, by the way. I can see the evidence strongly indicates it, but I don't have enough proof to be absolutely sure.

@GlassDog
The story didn’t start by Hubble but a Catholic priest Lemaitre who forwarded a Myth of the cosmic egg. Then Penrose/Hawking adopted it with the point of singularity. The evidence doesn’t pan out and “dark energy I.e. neutrinos or other materials “Gimps” are accelerating the expansion. Simply put, man does not have the instruments currently to see all of the universe let alone measure it even though it is claimed to be homogenous and isotropic. .

@Pfuzylogic Absolutely. Both dark matter and dark energy have scientists reevaluating their view of the universe and it absolutely has to cast doubt on what we know. This is exactly what science is. Usually, though, it evolves via refinement, in the same way that Newtonian mechanics isn't entirely dismissed because Einsteinian mechanics proves that it is minutely incorrect for most human-observable examples. That's perhaps a conceit and the cosmological question is more of a shock (or, from the scientific point of view, an opportunity to learn). Scientists love being wrong for that very reason. I don't think anyone has said that the Big Bang theory absolutely must now be incorrect (or that gravity doesn't exist, or any other ripping up of what we've accepted). But it certainly may be incorrect. Anything may.

@GlassDog
Having met midpoint then I would assert that to assume “man” has the ability to know the mechanics of the universe, let alone the start/creation of it tends to be a bit presumptuous and to rule out the presence of a creative God even from a scientific point of view is premature. Unless one has an incredibly narcissistic and nihilistic attitude like Hawking and claim that we MUST leave planet earth in a hundred years or perish. A lot of science likes to promote a spirit of fear.

@Pfuzylogic I'd agree with most of that. I'd certainly agree we can't know everything and the nature of the universe imposes its own limits on what we can ever know. In that sense, we can't rule anything out, only talk about probabilities.

Where I'd disagree is the promotion of fear. Most of the academics I know have found they have to underplay natural and man-made threats because of the way the media works, and perhaps also our collective psychology. In that sense, many are unaware of the scale of some of the threats to our wellbeing and I think will, at some point, blame scientists, asking "Why didn't you warn us?"

@GlassDog
Part of that might be the way that Hawking promoted himself with claims of disproving parallel universes, that there is no god and other narcissistic self promotions. I do find a thread of fear in much of science or at least I see that on the science channel and other science communications promoted to the general public. I don’t trust those who create the stories. There has been known that some will say many things to get funding. I appreciate the discussion. It is getting late here i.e. 5 AM.

@Pfuzylogic I was not much of a fan of Hawking or his self-promotion. The way science works (in academia, at least) is generally better, but all things are susceptible to the worst of human behaviour, especially when a lot of money is involved. Night night. Sleep well!