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Comment by Solstinox | Hacker News Reader

Ironically simplifying it like you just did is one of the contributors to the diminished reverence for science in that part of the world.

There was a famous and nuanced published discourse between a philosopher named Al Ghazali and Averroes (Ibn Rushd) on the merits and failures of knowledge.

The observers of the discourse basically warped it into science vs. religion battle and as with all things with binary fanbases one school of thought had to prevail over the other. The delicate harmony between religion and knowledge shattered.

As the Middle East has learned and continues to learn the dangers of the spiritual ungrounded by knowledge, the West is now learning the dangers of knowledge unelevated by the spiritual.

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> Ironically simplifying it like you just did is one of the contributors to the diminished reverence for science in that part of the world.

No, that was religion (or one particular religion) and its adherents. Remove the religion and the simplification ceases to be a factor, hence the simplification isn't really a factor, only what is necessary gets to be called a cause.

> the West is now learning the dangers of knowledge unelevated by the spiritual

Such as? Cause from where I stand it seems science is trying to save the world from global warming and spiritual leaders are busy protecting oil money and denying there's any danger :)

All the talk about "spiritual balance" eventually ends with "hate gays, oppress women, endorse slavery, kill nonbelievers". If that's the benefits of spiritual balance then good riddance.

Not that I consider you to be entirely wrong - but I suppose it depends on the definition of the spiritual tradition.

I am a non-expert on the topic, but I think for example Native-American spiritual tradition has always considered industrial scale modification of the natural environment as a bad thing.

If you credit science with "trying to save the world" from climate change, you also need to blame it for causing it in the first place. But it doesn't sound as impressive to solve a problem you caused in the first place, does it?

Science has been aware of the potential of increased CO2 emissions to cause heating of the atmosphere and hence global warming for a century. You can thank capital and politics not heeding this until now when the "risks" are becoming realities.

Special prize for energy companies for funding skepticism towards climate science because it was obvious 40 years ago that most of the oil we've dug out and burned really should have not been.

> you also need to blame it for causing it in the first place

I suppose. But scientific revolution reduced human suffering considerably by doing so, for example starvation in most of the world stopped and vaccination saved millions of lives. Science solves on problem, possibly causes another and then solves it, etc.

The problem with religion is that it only creates problems and invents justifications for why they are natural and good.

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