LT,
I'm glad any misunderstanding in my post is out of the way. It is nice when misunderstandings can be dispatched quickly. If only the rest of our species with their big governement, could do so!
Which branch of science are you talking about, though? Archaeology, for example, is very traditionalist and doesn't tolerate new ideas very well. It only begrudgingly cedes to them when the evidence becomes overwhelming, and/or they have a notable sponsor.
Basically all branches in my comments. But where I talk about our survival as a species, it would have to be a bit more narrowed down to technology, social, enviromental, nuclear, and perhaps(I'm sure many will disagree and say it is not science)psychology(because it is thoughts and consciousness and how our psyhie operate and can't really be measured like material things).
Some religions are more or less tolerant, as you express. But I would like to again throw into the pot the role that religion has had in keeping society together. I'd stand corrected, but as far as I'm aware science doesn't really attempt to support this area of human living, aside from examining it in the social sciences.
I guess that this view depends on if you view "keeping society" together is really a good thing? I'm more along the line of an anarchist, I really think that our changing from nomadic hunter/gatheres living where ever we found food(untill about 10,000 yrs ago), and then when we learned how to plant seeds and grow our own food, and thus settle down into villiages, set the scene for the eventually terrible military exploits of unspeakable cruelty, as the more power hungry of our species started empire building,, back in what we call the cradle of civilization Mesapitamia(?). IN all honesty I look at this as a mixed bag of good and bad, but the bad tipping the scales and out wieghing the good(personal opinion to be sure). I see the so called " socialization" of the world population of humans by the force of human government, to be something that the goverrnment has indoctrinated into us to viewing as good, You know the patriotic BS, like, God&Country, be a good citizen pay your taxes, and things like "ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country" similar rhetoric.
And so I can agree,, that with the help of religion these government have been able to subjegate the human species with both good and bad results. And in all fairness I must admit too that governments are using science(militarily, and other ways) too for the same ends but hopefully, this is just a temperarry blip in the evolution of man, and not the cause for his extinction.
I should also like to add that we are not unique in this kind of attitude, as exJWs. There are plenty of ne'er-been-a-JWs who are just as simplistic in their outlook.
I think among scientist population, there is a better chance to override the brainwashing, we get from what ever type of governmental indoctrination we are subject to, I think the free thinkers of this world are growing in number (still too few but growing). I have to admitt that the internet is help, for I have been able to get lots of fresh ideas to ponder, debate, and discuss. I've even been able to put thread topics on this site, and watched them get shot down or supported,,usually both and learned something. I think a sign of old age is when your mind won't adapt to new ideas and it gets its thinking in the rut of :
"Nobody can teach me anything, if they diagree with me, they are wrong I'm right end of discussion", and/or, "been there done that, I've seen it all". This is the view that really makes one old in there thinking (and harden of the arteries don't help either) and stops one from having the childlike creative mind filled with wonder, soaking in thier surrounding to a person that hardly notices anything because he seen it all already.
