Meme [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins], making him doubly pertinent to this thread.
Science as a dangerous entity harkens back to Mary Shelley's era, when it was regarded as a direct challenge to God to seek to comprehend the workings of nature. We still see science gone wrong in fiction all the time, from the classic strangelets [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetic_revolt] caused by a supercollider. Indeed, the LHC is running without any indications of a stabilized danger.
It is curious that the dangers of science that seem to be stereotypical are really dangers of engineering. A nuclear weapon utilizes the chain-reaction high-energy output of uranium and/or plutonium, but (unlike the imagined antimatter bombs of the future) is a sophisticated device created to do so, and not necessarily that much more sophisticated than that of a breeder reactor, which utilizes the same scientific knowledge, but to produce power in a much more controlled and generally utilizable form.
Indeed, when we imagine the products of science, it is easier to focus on those things that are destructive or weaponized such as weaponized radioactive, biological or chemical agents, and not the vast improvements to life that this knowledge has offered, from transistor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug#Dwarfing]. More interestingly, we have often had dangerous technologies lead us to ones that we enjoy and take for granted. Without the Manhattan Project, the digital revolution would not have taken place. And we wouldn't be having this conversation, at least not on The Escapist.
(But this can also be said about Islam. Without the strange text-verification problems that came with Mohammed's teachings, we wouldn't have developed Babbage [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_analysis]'s engines would have had their turn.)
Generally, though, scientific knowledge is not a challenge to God as a philosophical concept, though it is often regarded as a challenge to specific popular gods, since these deities usually come with scripture that contradicts observations in nature. In this case, followers of scientific principle (such as rejecting hypotheses that fail to match observable fact) are in many communities considered defiant to authority, specifically those that use religious doctrine as the source of their power. Galileo's challenge to geocentricism is a historic example, and the conflicts between evolutionists and young-Earth creationists are a contemporary one.
Science as a dangerous entity harkens back to Mary Shelley's era, when it was regarded as a direct challenge to God to seek to comprehend the workings of nature. We still see science gone wrong in fiction all the time, from the classic strangelets [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetic_revolt] caused by a supercollider. Indeed, the LHC is running without any indications of a stabilized danger.
It is curious that the dangers of science that seem to be stereotypical are really dangers of engineering. A nuclear weapon utilizes the chain-reaction high-energy output of uranium and/or plutonium, but (unlike the imagined antimatter bombs of the future) is a sophisticated device created to do so, and not necessarily that much more sophisticated than that of a breeder reactor, which utilizes the same scientific knowledge, but to produce power in a much more controlled and generally utilizable form.
Indeed, when we imagine the products of science, it is easier to focus on those things that are destructive or weaponized such as weaponized radioactive, biological or chemical agents, and not the vast improvements to life that this knowledge has offered, from transistor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug#Dwarfing]. More interestingly, we have often had dangerous technologies lead us to ones that we enjoy and take for granted. Without the Manhattan Project, the digital revolution would not have taken place. And we wouldn't be having this conversation, at least not on The Escapist.
(But this can also be said about Islam. Without the strange text-verification problems that came with Mohammed's teachings, we wouldn't have developed Babbage [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_analysis]'s engines would have had their turn.)
Generally, though, scientific knowledge is not a challenge to God as a philosophical concept, though it is often regarded as a challenge to specific popular gods, since these deities usually come with scripture that contradicts observations in nature. In this case, followers of scientific principle (such as rejecting hypotheses that fail to match observable fact) are in many communities considered defiant to authority, specifically those that use religious doctrine as the source of their power. Galileo's challenge to geocentricism is a historic example, and the conflicts between evolutionists and young-Earth creationists are a contemporary one.
