Posted by J.H. [JH] on March 29, 1999 at 11:29:28 {HR5JhS9/hchgNrEs1WwwMWsHSG.vl05do}:
In Reply to: End times posted by elan on March 28, 1999 at 22:20:08:
elan,
: I believe that the moment these technologies will start to be implemented they will pose a challange to God's way of dealing with disease and death.
They will certainly pose a massive challenge to people's belief in the idea that God has any way of dealing with disease and death, or -- for that matter -- life.
But religions are robust constructions, basically because they are emotional not rational.
Logically, to give one example,modern neurology should have shot the idea of a transcendent soul dead ten times. After all, it might have made sense to think about a "ghost in the machine" when we were a black box to human knowledge. But we now know that various areas of our brain physically represents all out different psychological traits. If a stroke or an accident takes out a cerain area of the brain, certain memories and abilities may be damaged or destroyed. What room, then, for a belief in the idea that our whole personality that is physically coded into the brain can survive the day when our whole brain dies and rots away?
Still, people who are perfectly aware of such facts continue to believe ideas created when people had a concept of
reality we all would call superstitious.