*Science despite its honesty maybe doomed to spend eternity dealing with religions’ Xeno paradoxes. If Science explains 99.99999999999% of everything. Christians et al. shall point to the .000000000001% not explained.*

Oliver. I have enjoyed your state of mind for quite some time, and reality comes to a time, where most reality is needed. The next one hundred years shall test man-kind, but be gentle with those that can not see. The minds for humans, can only tick with the sounds of time its self, to be too hard, could spin in a direction, which most of us would agree.

The new world is the undiscovered, and like the dino,s, only time will tell.
One step at a time is the smartest move the humans can make.

God will always be in our dreams, but not in reality.

You are a man\or woman to be respected, and to doubt your mind, only a fool would do so.

PS! I also have enjoyed your posts. wink.

runner,

Science is honest where its core methodlologies are followed and its findings are held tentatively. Researchers who cook the books are not scientists.

I will pose a question to you, to which, several others have not responded:

Was Zeus Justified in punishing the Titans?

walk with me,

Thanks. Your post had a poetic touch.

It will be interesting the scientitsts at CERN can demonstrate how matter can be created out of nothing. We live in interesting times, so they say.

Hey David, thanks for another educational post; an interesting translation of Cicero. I was under the impression the term 'agnostic' was invented or coined by Thomas Huxley. Clearly the sentiment if not the word goes back a long way, but I wonder if the precise definition was the same? Just being pedantic again.

Grateful, I would suggest incidents of impressions of the Virgin Mary appearing in mold stains on walls, in odd shaped turnips and mass produced pies is far more likely to occur to Catholics, than to Buddhists, for instance.

Peter Hume, the relevance of your post to the topic at hand is questionable, but I guess we've all been there. I would suggest in the absence of an indisputable, totally objective and very final arbiter such as 'God', all we are left with is Democracy; unless you believe any single human is not only completely infallible, but timeless in his ability to accurately appraise events past present and future.
Surely not even you would accord Mises such godlike qualities?
A fundamental base of Democracy I contend is the idea that, if 2 heads are not always better than one, a thousand heads most certainly are -and not just because they control the history books.
Can you really not see a qualitative difference between a so called 'monopoly' of the people, by the people and for the people, compared to a monopoly of one or even a handful of obscenely rich, totally dehumanised individuals who clearly care only for themselves and their immediate family?
In terms of Democracy, Mises fails on several counts; firstly and most obviously in that there doesn't seem to be a rush of endless hordes of economists, governments or individuals charging in to raise the standard of the Austrian School.

Cont.
I agree the Democratic system isn't perfect. Perfect democracy, like perfect socialism or even perfect markets can only exist as a theory, not a practice. Your point about fraud is well taken, and government should emplace strict laws (or 'regulations' as you would more emotively suggest) to enforce honest practice. Also your point about the quality of our representatives is accepted, although I might suggest a politician could conceivably be selfless, non materialist and idealistic; qualities which by definition will not be found in the billionaire investors who effectively control your 'free markets'.
You suggest no government, no group of persons could possibly be clever enough to set prices across an entire economy. This is undoubtedly true, but as far as I am aware, no one around these parts are seriously suggesting they try.
On the other hand, there is clear current evidence that markets, with or without government intervention, have also notably failed to discover 'perfect pricing'.
Of course, you will argue we can't know, because we have never seen truly 'free' markets, in the total absence of govt intervention, but then we've never seen a truly democratic socialist state, either.
What we have seen, time and again, is that when laws are relaxed, assholes use the extra rope to hang themselves, and not care too much about taking the rest of us with them; in fact, now they've finally worked out how to make Main St. pay for the crimes of Wall St.
My apologies for digressing from the topic at hand. Peter, if you really want to continue this debate, I will happily meet at a ground of your choosing, pistols cocked; but I doubt if either of us is ever going to sway the other.

Dear Grim,

More Cicero:

*Why should we worship the gods and reverence their divinity, if we see nothing admirable in it? You boast that you are free from superstition: but it is easy to be so when one has deprived the gods of all their power. How for instance could Diagoras or Theodorus have been superstitious once they had denied the existence of the gods? I do not think Protagoras could have been so either, who would neither assert nor deny their existence. The teachings of all these philosophers do not merely free us from superstition, which is a senseless fear of the gods, but also destroy religion itself, with all reverence and worship. Then there are those who have argued that all our beliefs about the gods have been fabricated by wise men for reasons of state, so that men whom reason could not persuade to be good citizens might be persuaded by religion. Have not these also totally destroyed the foundations of belief? Or Prodicus of Chios, who ascribed divinity to everything which benefits mankind: what room did he leave for religion? There are also those who teach that brave and famous and powerful men have been deified after death and that these are the gods whom we have now become accustomed to worship and reverence and to whom we pray. Are not such men devoid of all religious feeling?

That belief systems of one sort or another are universally prevalent is undeniable.

We, particularly in the West, believe in romantic love. Science can rightly say love's pillars are grounded in excretions but our imagination provides us with the ability to lift the notion to dizzying heights.

When love crumbles the fallout can be terrible. I would venture to say there are far more deaths in this country from broken relationships than any religious reasons.

Should we educate people about the delusion they are living when in love? Do we need to dissect the brain to forensically examine what parts are responsible for instigating this irrational behaviour we see in ourselves and others?

How many of those attacking religion here would be prepared to do away with romantic love?

Both can be regarded as human constructs, both enable us to describe innate forces within us, both can take us from utter tragedy and despair to magnificence and both can reveal the unsavoury depths to which we can all descend, but surely we are poorer or less human without them.