chavos

Whoa...i think we may be missing something here.

I understand that hellfire and damnation is one way of looking at religion...but i think you overlook the way that many people view the divine. First, there are many non-theistic faiths that would eschew the idea of hell. Not all religion is carrot and stick. I don't know how to explain that more, but i think its very important to this discussion.

Certainly, Carrot/Stick models represent some religious activity...but not all. and it is not a fair representation to state that religion is about a divine "No!" It's not all about that... Frankly, i think it's about the divine "yes," but that's another thread.

As for science....I don't buy it becase there is something else going on than the surface mechanisms of control....they're doing what they do out of an impulse to know more, to explain things etc...and the social control is just the thin icing on that process. Much like i think about religion, at least personally. I don't go on sunday to be told how to behave. I go because i want to know more, to explore this part of life that is so powerful to me. Simplfying down to say that religion's purpose is social control is to ignore it's intrinsic value....which i suppose you can assume for the purpose of discussion. in which case, i suggest you try to analyze the value of science in society, assuming that all the work it produces is based on a falsehood/delusion.

Point being, you're first assuming that there is no function related to faciliating human conversations with the divine...and focusing only on the byproducts of that process. If you only looked at what science did assuming there is no real conversation with the physical universe and it's complexity, you might deduce that science's role is to provide a social setting for nerds, and to consume paper, and make lots of books with weird symbols in them.