I don’t know. The squirrels at my place are pretty clever. Definitely a cut above all of the other rodents we have here, and if we’re gonna evolve a new literate species after all the people are dead from wars over religion, I’m betting on the squirrels. Rodents have been waiting in the wings, watching the primates get all the attention, for too long.
But yes, at the moment, they’re not that interested in science. They do draw cause/effect relations from objects and events around them, though, so they’re getting started.
Until squirrels start wearing lab coats, we can safely say science is useful to the extent that people find it useful. And it’s useful for the things that people find it useful for.
The natural laws and mechanisms we have discovered through science will still be around if all people on the planet died. Can we say the same for religion? If you wiped the memory of all people and destroyed every bit of stored information we have ever created we could still rediscover all of science. Can the same be said of religion?
I haven’t missed it… I have answered both parts…
One is irrelevant… and the other is question begging.
As per evolutionary science, modern humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. The scientific methosnis 300 years old.
I hop you understand why your assumption need not be anything more than a possibility.
Religion is the keystone of modern civilization, and it still plays a strong role in society. I’d say it’s not so much if religion has a use, but rather how religion is used.
I’m arguing that science is useful. Do you think science is useful to people?
If I want to understand what causes cancer, is religion useful? If I want to understand why racism is bad, is science useful? For that matter, is religion useful?
Of course science is very useful… didn’t I say that above. I wrote down two of the preeminent uses of science.
It helps create new technology.
It helps gain knowledge about a specific aspect of reality which can be measured and tested for.
It’s not an either/or thing. Here are some other things which are also useful:
Music, humor, opposable thumbs, a degree, etc
There is an endless list of useful thing in the world.
I am asking how useful religion is for constructing moral codes. I would agree that religion can be used as the basis for moral codes, but the next questions is how good are those codes?
An open human society is by far the best institution that provides guidance on moral codes. In the West, a larger and larger portion of the moral debate is being taken over by secular philosophies, and I personally think this is an improvement.