science ... has taken on some of the roles which religion had in earlier societies.
Yesss, but for different reasons and with different results. Science has no gods, no obeisance, no hierarchy (scientists might - different matter). One aim of a great scientist is either to improve upon or overthrow whatever his (individually far greater) predecessors might have reasoned...
Religion mystifies, it conceals, it relies on individual belief and is unprovable. Science demands proof, repetition, third-party views, and is useless unless explained.
Science may have displaced religion as a way of explaining more and more of what we see and experience... but it is not a belief system. It says what is; not what we 'ought' to do about it. It predicts what is likely to happen if we take such-and-such a course of action... but neither prescribes our actions, nor tries to do so.
Although, on two of your three mysteries, would you wager that by about 2050 (probably earlier) computer or nano-scientists will not have created self-aware machines; they'd preserve self, learn and able to react in circumstances not explicitly depicted by their programmers, as well as passing a Turing test?
How about bio-engineers creating some primitive but viable life - alga-level, perhaps - which has never evolved or been seen on Earth before; maybe some of the genes would have been seen elsewhere, but eventually IMO all would be new - if there was a profit to be made, anyhow...
After death? That could be difficult... hmmm. 2150, maybe. I doubt I'll live to see that. |
