Religion and Science in nutshells

Created 27 Feb 2006
Inspired by Dawkins, Hofstadter, Dennett, etc.

Evangelical faith-based religion in a peanutshell:

Copy this sentence to get a big reward.

Copy this sentence to achieve eternal life.
(True in a Delphic sense! Keep copying it and the sentence will have eternal life.)

Evangelical faith-based religion in a coconutshell:

Copy and obey this sentence to get big reward X and avoid punishment Y, and cooperate with others who are copying this sentence, and teach it to your children, and preach it to non-copiers, and punish those who stop copying it, or who copy different versions of it, and punish people who question this sentence, and also believe Z.

Where Z is the typically non-testable set of beliefs and practices distinguishing one religion from another, e.g. Christianity and Islam, which otherwise share the same X and Y (Heaven, Hell.)

Is science any better? Well, there's no afterlife, or general punishment for non-copiers (though sometimes ridicule), and the copying is not intriniscally beneficial, rather it gives you knowledge which you can put to use, vs. being saved by belief, and above all the attitude to difference is different:

Militant science in a nutshell:

Copy and believe this sentence with content X to get useful knowledge, and ridicule those not copying it, and teach it to your children and non-copiers, but if you find someone who is copying this sentence with a different X then test the two versions with procedure Y and adopt whichever X, or combination of X, best survives testing.

Back to me.