Smelling The Coffee: 2010

Phat,I think many of the problems that await us this century are no longer of just national importance. I think problems like climate change, food production, energy production, water management, worldwide demographics, to name a few, are things that we need to tackle on an international level.O, and I also think we need to get rid of religion, because it raises more problems than it solves. But I guess you would be inclined to disagree on that point.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Consensus, yes, of course. But look at Copenhagen: there another perennial problem of our leaders became embarrassingly clear: their single minded focus on the political and economical effects of whatever they decide on all these important matters. As long as they only have their eyes on their re-election in a few years' time, or on short term economical development, they'll never get even close to solutions that work.And that's just the democratic leaders. What about China, for example? They weren't exactly cooperative.

Hello Buz,Legend has already answered you initial question to me, and said what I would have said. That's sounds a bit paranoid. And I think you've got it the wrong way around: secular education is less restricted, in that it teaches the facts, without pushing one particular interpretation over others. In secular education it's possible - in my country anyway - to learn about different faiths without having one of them forced upon you. As you well know, we've only had a few centuries of what can be called modern science now; before that, everything we really knew about the world could be written down on a single sheet of vellum, and then there'd still be room for the Lord's Prayer. And besides, most people weren't literate enough to be able to read even that. Not the DNA, no. But some memes need to be replaced, is all.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.