Dear Religion, While you were debating what chicken sandwiches were okay to eat,...

[marasinghe]

153. otoh, while knowing - in the abstract, if not in actuality - the potential for destruction ....

better than the politicians & the militarists, scientists did develop the Bomb which was dropped; and delivered it to the hands of the politicians & the Generals. all the weapons - atomic, biological, chemical, ballistic - in use today, were created & developed by scientists of one ilk, or another. i personally feel that these guys who - despite their superior reasoning capabilities - were devoid of enough ethical sense to not place weapons of mass destruction at the disposal of political & military imbeciles, were as much, or more culpable for the resultant killing, than those who carried them out.

i don't think scientists, the new sainted priesthood of the 21st century, are any more ethical, or moral - than the priests who unleashed & ran the inquisition, or the varieties of clerics who condemn gays & adulterers & specially adulteresses, to death by stoning. and - to me - the disinterested, 'value-neutral amorality of some scientists, is at least as reprehensible & disgusting, as the religion-driven immorality of the clerics & the faithful.

let's face it: the vast majority of humans are a fucked up, savage breed - at the apex of the cruelty pyramid - whether they are scientists, or religionists.