Is 'Progress' Good for Humanity?

I find it amusing that one does not need science as a source to debunk scripture.
All you need is Scripture. It debunks itself.

And that would be good progress for humanity.
 
Write4U said:
As evidenced by the different scriptures that tell me if I don't believe in your exclusive god fairy tale, I'll go to hell?
Read your religious books and history of holy wars before you accuse others of not reading.

You see, I have tested your proposition and asked people if they believed their God was the same God in all other religions.
And instead of hearing that it is the same god, explained differently, the answer always is that "my God is the true God and all other Gods are false. The good book tells me that".

And it does; "Exodus 20:3 You shall have no other gods (plural) before Me."

Contrary to your false claim, I do not say that at all.
I say all scriptural gods (plural) are false, by definition.
The religious folk are the ones being selective about it...o_O....duh.

Next time you lie, I'll pull your nose. Just to show you how much of a Pinocchio you have become.
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Your lack of familiarity with religion, philosophy and history (and we are just talking modern history here) is well documented on this site.

All these tired themes you repeatedly spin have been done and dusted (by atheists and theists alike, I might add) in the first instances when you thought to introduce them.

Pull my finger.
 
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Musika said:
Your lack of familiarity with religion, philosophy and history (and we are just talking modern history here) is well documented on this site.

All these tired themes you repeatedly spin have been done and dusted (by atheists and theists alike, I might add) in the first instances when you thought to introduce them.

Pull my finger.
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Pulling your nose.......o_O
 
Musika said:
On the contrary, without a sense of higher purpose or culture, advancement of technology is simply a tool for pursuing animalistic propensities and a catalyst for destroying the world.
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The path to any goal is through the use of technology. Science , religion, and philosophy are all technologies that are employed with the intention of gaining a better understanding of reality in order to achieve specific ideals. While religion may have a goal of gaining a better understanding of reality, it does nothing in actuality to achieve it.
A dog does its business on four legs, and we do our business on four wheels .... but at least the dog doesn't terror-form the planet with industry and pollution just to facilitate it's convenience for life on four legs.
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Give a four legged mammal the opportunity to terraform an environment and they will gladly oblige.

Everyone knows of goats’ mythical appetites — that’s why they’re killer for clearing brush and invasive weeds. But set them loose on an island, mating and eating everything in sight, and goats can become a high-level nuisance.

https://modernfarmer.com/2013/09/killing-goats-galapagos/

Unfortunately our two legged appetites for planetary resources are not just the stuff of myth.
 
Capracus said:
Unfortunately our two legged appetites for planetary resources are not just the stuff of myth.
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It is on Easter Island. Several exponential growth factors in a limited space. Trouble is sure to follow.

btw. over-consumption of natural resources is becoming a global issue.
Releasing billions of years of sequestered oil and coal back into the atmosphere is beginning to make a dent in global climate regulation.

If we have not solved the energy problem in 50 years we will experience a terrible shortage and competition for energy resources. In 50 years we'll be out of oil!

No reduction, no saving, no recycling. We'll be out of oil, gone, empty tanks.
1,549,357,763,444 Oil left (barrels)
16,158 Days to the end of oil (~44 years)
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http://www.worldometers.info/

A gasoline car bought today will become useless before its expiration date.
 
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iceaura said:
Insects get sick, suffer parasites, etc, routinely.
The honeybee is a domesticated animal, not native to most continents. Feral honeybees act more or less as feral dogs or cats or horses act - they displace the locals.
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That is a result of human pesticides, no?
 
It just struck me that zero growth of the human race is emotionally possible by employing the services of domestic and sexual AI female companions which guarantee no procreation and leave family planning truly a choice between human spouses.

Moreover, the AI come in kits which can be assembled and any interested Adam can create his own artificial Eve.

 
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billvon said:
1) Almost no one does that. Many people attribute technology to ALLOWING moral advancement (which is true) but very few people would claim that atomic weapons, Agent Orange, the machine gun or eugenics represented moral advancement.

2) Technology is not moral or evil; it is orthogonal to morality.

3) This section:

"What if we believe that the inventions in and after the Industrial Revolution have made some things better and some things worse? What if we adopt a more critical and skeptical attitude toward the values we’ve inherited from the past? Moreover, what if we write environmental factors back in to the story of progress?"

People have been taking that approach since at least the 1960's.
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That's right. Well put!
EB
 
Musika said:
Does attributing technological advancement to automatic moral advancement sew the seeds to return humanity to the stone age?


https://www.theatlantic.com/busines...strial-revolution-and-its-discontents/379781/


(Excerpt)

The idea that the Industrial Revolution has made us not only more technologically advanced and materially furnished but also better for it is a powerful narrative and one that’s hard to shake. It makes it difficult to dissent from the idea that new technologies, economic growth, and a consumer society are absolutely necessary. To criticize industrial modernity is somehow to criticize the moral advancement of humankind, since a central theme in this narrative is the idea that industrialization revolutionized our humanity, too. Those who criticize industrial society are often met with defensive snarkiness: “So you’d like us to go back to living in caves, would ya?” or “you can’t stop progress!”

Narratives are inevitably moralistic; they are never created spontaneously from “the facts” but are rather stories imposed upon a range of phenomena that always include implicit ideas about what’s right and what’s wrong. The proponents of the Industrial Revolution inherited from the philosophers of the Enlightenment the narrative of human (read: European) progress over time but placed technological advancement and economic liberalization at the center of their conception of progress. This narrative remains today an ingrained operating principle that propels us in a seemingly unstoppable way toward more growth and more technology, because the assumption is that these things are ultimately beneficial for humanity.

Advocates of sustainability are not opposed to industrialization per se, and don’t seek a return to the Stone Age. But what they do oppose is the dubious narrative of progress caricatured above. Along with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, they acknowledge the objective advancement of technology, but they don’t necessarily think that it has made us more virtuous, and they don’t assume that the key values of the Industrial Revolution are beyond reproach: social inequality for the sake of private wealth; economic growth at the expense of everything, including the integrity of the environment; and the assumption that mechanized newness is always a positive thing. Above all, sustainability-minded thinkers question whether the Industrial Revolution has jeopardized humankind’s ability to live happily and sustainably upon the Earth. Have the fossil-fueled good times put future generations at risk of returning to the same misery that industrialists were in such a rush to leave behind?

But what if we rethink the narrative of progress? What if we believe that the inventions in and after the Industrial Revolution have made some things better and some things worse? What if we adopt a more critical and skeptical attitude toward the values we’ve inherited from the past? Moreover, what if we write environmental factors back in to the story of progress? Suddenly, things begin to seem less rosy. Indeed, in many ways, the ecological crisis of the present day has roots in the Industrial Revolution.
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Actually, most people take a pragmatic approach because their lives depend on the system as it is. There's no moral narrative. People just support what seems the best route for themselves.
The moral narrative you're talking about is either the self-congratulating conversation of the privileged class or worse, straightforward propaganda from big business or it political personnel.
EB
 
iceaura said:
As far as I know, and I've looked around a bit, actual slavemasters have never, as a class, abandoned slavery or freed their slaves as a matter of principled choice.
Their slaves were taken from them by force (including by law), lost to rebellions and escape, coercively taxed or pressured until they could not afford their keep, etc. Often, their slaveholding (and the market for slaves in general) was restricted in tenure in the first place, by hard custom and formal law (such as the Jubilee Year of the Bible).

Slaves are freed at swordpoint, gunpoint, etc - same way they are made. And that is progress - we have made that much progress - good for humanity. We have entire empires, continental ones, in which slavery is so little a structural aspect that some people can honestly claim they don't think it exists.
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Some slave owners freed a few slaves. Famous example, George Washington, in his will.
Yet, it seems that the move in such not very many cases was usually motivated not on any moral principle but on the personal relationship with the salves freed.
So, not necessarily always at gunpoint, but also probably not as a matter of principle either.
And the then U.S. president, Lincoln, did it, definitely not with the individual slave masters' agreement, but the U.S. as a whole was itself, in effect, for all political and practical purposes, a slave master or the ultimate protector of the slave masters, and yet it did free all slaves of its own will.
Or at least one Lincoln did it. Maybe it was only a matter a luck that he should become the president at this particular time.
EB
 
kx000 said:
Progress in time must go on forever, while cultural progress can only go so far.
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What's "cultural progress" outside human rights and democratic rights?
Because if something else, then who is not biased to judge that it's at all progress?
EB
 
I think modern societies are headed into becoming dystopias instead of the utopias that many people have dreamed about.

And you can't deny that Capitalism is inherently authoritarian.

A perfect society will have no money relations, no exploitation, no police and no prisons and jails.
 
Musika said:
Does attributing technological advancement to automatic moral advancement sew the seeds to return humanity to the stone age?
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coming technological advancement might gut the human spirit. the advances in AI and robotics will most certainly usher in a new economy and replace the need to work.

pluto2 said:
A perfect society will have no money relations, no exploitation, no police and no prisons and jails.
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such a perfect society would require perfect citizens
 
Speakpigeon said:
And the then U.S. president, Lincoln, did it, definitely not with the individual slave masters' agreement, but the U.S. as a whole was itself, in effect, for all political and practical purposes, a slave master or the ultimate protector of the slave masters, and yet it did free all slaves of its own will.
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The US was not a whole, at the time.
The US as a whole did not hold slaves, and did not free them.
The slaves held by some were freed by others at gunpoint, and the slaveowners who refused to free their slaves were shot, their houses burned, their wealth destroyed.
Slavery has been abolished in no other way.
Write4U said:
That is a result of human pesticides, no?
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No.
 
I would say that technological advancement is a good thing overall. I mean, fossil fuels shouldn't be used but there are plenty of alternatives to them now like solar power and windmills and water mills and probably other things I don't know about. It seems to me that most technology is just about comfort and convenience, and those are definitely things to strive for. For instance, houses are very comfortable indeed. Far more so than caves or the street or the forest. For instance again, cushions are very comfy too. For instance yet a third time, food tastes really nice these days, and they can even make healthy food taste nice. Far nicer than what nature produces.
 
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