I'm a scientist (coincidentally, an empirical one) but I still don't believe that all truth can be discovered scientifically -- that is, through repeatable data collection and experimentation. You can't prove or disprove the existence of God by doing experiments.
Sure, the problem of evil is an objection to religion, but follow your premise to its logical conclusion and good/evil doesn't exist at all. There is really no reason to want the world to be a better place, preserve the planet, and so on. Is that really a world you want to live in?
> Religion is an artifact of one of the most ancient forms of control. Today, it is an institution used to espouse the morals of the elite.
Do you think so? At least in the United States, religion is generally seen as the domain of the less educated and impoverished, not the elite. Today, you and I are free to determine our own definitions of morality.
> There is no evidence that bad people will be punished when they die. There is no evidence that the good will be rewarded.
Sure there is evidence. It's just historical and relational. It's not something that can be tested through the scientific method.
> I still don't believe that all truth can be discovered scientifically -- that is, through repeatable data collection and experimentation. You can't prove or disprove the existence of God by doing experiments.
You can't disprove or prove god because it is a non-falsifiable concept. There are an infinite number of things that will never be able to be proven by Science because by nature of concept, they are immune to experiment.
What are we to believe of something that cannot be disproved? I think groups of people have leveraged this inability to know the truth as a cure for the universal anxiety of permanent death, and as a vector of population-scale control. When you take into account the bias humanity has over its own death, you have to scrutinize worldviews that aggrandize consciousness as a permanent, if not ethereal entity. The evidence before us shows consciousness being entirely contained in the life and death of the body. When evidence presents itself otherwise... then can we start to muse about an afterlife.
Your worldview seems to be pretty close to Scientism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism), which I think some would consider a religion in itself.
Sure, the problem of evil is an objection to religion, but follow your premise to its logical conclusion and good/evil doesn't exist at all. There is really no reason to want the world to be a better place, preserve the planet, and so on. Is that really a world you want to live in?
> Religion is an artifact of one of the most ancient forms of control. Today, it is an institution used to espouse the morals of the elite.
Do you think so? At least in the United States, religion is generally seen as the domain of the less educated and impoverished, not the elite. Today, you and I are free to determine our own definitions of morality.
> There is no evidence that bad people will be punished when they die. There is no evidence that the good will be rewarded.
Sure there is evidence. It's just historical and relational. It's not something that can be tested through the scientific method.
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