Science does not drive anyone to kill anyone else. It merely provides tools. Humans have used those tools to do great good. They have also used those tools to do great harm. That doesn't say anything about those tools. It says a good deal about people.
Well said. Whether science *should* say anything about the uses to which its results are put... well, that's an open question. While there's no consensus among people generally, and scientists - and their backers/funders - in particular, I'd be loath to block any useful or interesting research from dislike of its content or possible conclusion. At the very least, there are the grounds that some other less scrupulous/ethical/blinkered company or country would likely continue, and have unhampered use of whatever it might find: obvious examples include research into bioweapons, or indeed the atomic bomb.
IMO, one main reason more people die in modern wars is that (thanks to scientific/medical advance) there are so many more people... plus, back when people were scarce and land plentiful you didn't want to kill the labour force of the land you wanted - now, you want the land and not the people. The ancients were happy to massacre each other when they had the numbers, and use singularly unpleasant methods of warfare - for example, catapaulting in rotten animal corpses into besieged cities to spread cholera and (they hoped) plague - they just weren't so effective.
BTW, I don't rank the God of the Bible with Odin or Zeus; the latter are far more interesting, and indeed believable (except perhaps for the birthing methods) <g> |
