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Originally Posted by Sammi79
Skybird, the reason people want to believe in a purpose for themselves and/or humanity in general is because it was taught to us by religion directly. Particularly the monotheistic religions all echo the same 'Humans are special, humans are the best, humans are gods chosen rulers of earth' It just doesn't sit well with many peoples conceit that in reality it is likely that there is no grand purpose beyond continuing to reproduce, which we share with every other living thing. This is not to say human lives can not have meaning - its what you make it. Many lives are certainly less than grand, and have little more meaning than my cats. Occasionally exceptional individuals have lives full of meaning, creation and change that effect many others lives continuing through the ages long after their life has ended. Most of us are somewhere in between.
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Sammi, the argument risen by science is that there is a neurological basis for the desire of people to believe in relgious claims, namely theistic concepts. I just tried to combine that with the psychological insight that man seems to depend on living in the belief that he is safe and lives in a secure, ordered world where the future is not uncertain. Lack of that belief can lead to very seriopus psychological breakdowns, it really can effect psychological health and sanity. There is a reason why some therapy schools even talk of spiritual crisis and spiritual syndroms.
The argument also is that there are strong indices that whether or not we more easily sympathise with believing or becoming "secular", has a genetical basis and a condensate in brain hardwiring. The degrees of freedom we have to chose for the one or the other, may be decided by our genes. Consider it to be an equivalent to "genetic vulnerability theories" that are popular in biology, medicine and psychology.
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Well I'm afraid I have to point out that claims that are closer to the truth are more valid than claims that are further from it. The only fully honest and scientific viewpoint is agnosticism, but this does not give equal weight to both sides. Just because I can't prove fairies don't exist, doesn't mean there is a 50/50 chance that they do. Using our scientific method we can state with confidence 'I am 99.9% sure that god in any religious sense does not exist, though I must admit there is a 0.1% chance that this is not the case'
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"Truth"?
Science thinks in hypothesis that have to be tested, theories, and paradigms. Hypothesis are being shown right or wrong. Theories stay for some time, until a better emerges from theoretical work, observation, experiment, trial-and-error. Paradigms change the slowest - but they do, every couple of decades or centuries. In the end, our idea of "working with and on reality" is feeding-back into itself to such a degree that we cannot claim to be fully objective and independent in our perceptions and conclusions on what we call the reality out there. The eye never can look at itself - even when looking into a mirror, it just is a reflexion.
My point was, if you read again, that science tries to refine its theories constantly, and should do so - while religions claim there is no need at all to test themselves because they surely own the ultimate "truth" anyway.