The reason religion is becoming less popular is because people have been misled throughout history to look at god as an explanation of physical phenomena. It follows that when physical phenomena become understood through science, people begin to lose faith, and what has become mainstream is the idea that *all* physical phenomena will be explained through science with a few tweaks here and there in what we already know. This makes most current religions seem nearly obsolete.
However, once we remove all the baggage of the physical universe, we're left with something that not even the majority of scientists will accept as mechanistic. That would be consciousness, of course. Many philosophers (and scientists) would argue that consciousness is beyond the scope of science and the more the physical universe gets explained, the more interesting it becomes how little we actually know about the mind.
The problem with consciousness is the overwhelming amount of factors that it involves. I do not belive that it is outside the scope of science, but definitely outside the scope of science as it stands today.
It also depends on what exactly you are taking into consideration, because human behaviour is fairly predictable. True, there are a large amount of exceptions, but there remains too much of human behaviour that is predictable to be ignored.
There may come a time when human behaviour and consciousness can be modeled on both a macro and microscopic level (Nueral synapses, biological computing, blah blah). Or, maybe there truly is a factor that cannot be modeled, emulated, or thereby predicted. This is that fuzzy line between science and philosophy. Only time will sort out this debate. The rest is left to speculation.
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However, once we remove all the baggage of the physical universe, we're left with something that not even the majority of scientists will accept as mechanistic. That would be consciousness, of course. Many philosophers (and scientists) would argue that consciousness is beyond the scope of science and the more the physical universe gets explained, the more interesting it becomes how little we actually know about the mind.
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It also depends on what exactly you are taking into consideration, because human behaviour is fairly predictable. True, there are a large amount of exceptions, but there remains too much of human behaviour that is predictable to be ignored.
There may come a time when human behaviour and consciousness can be modeled on both a macro and microscopic level (Nueral synapses, biological computing, blah blah). Or, maybe there truly is a factor that cannot be modeled, emulated, or thereby predicted. This is that fuzzy line between science and philosophy. Only time will sort out this debate. The rest is left to speculation.
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