Science claims nobilities it does not deserve. And so, too, religions. In fact, science is extremely useful, but also far deadlier to mankind, in its outcomes, even than religion. Science, however, is unaware of this; for its practitioners, adherents and champions remain, in general, as oblivious to their own participation in atrocity as those entranced in religions which attack our world and our own children.

Unlike religion, science can distance itself from its actual effects, by demonstrating that science is a way of knowing that is ‘pure’, whereas what humans -do- with science (technology, etc.) is not precisely science. It is, instead, the -enaction- of science as culture. This is not science, and science should, perhaps, not be tarred with its offenses. Something vaguely similar can be said of religion, but it is not as true or as distancing as this argument. And this argument is powerful.

But that philosophical force will be moot on a dead world, or a world too damaged or toxic to allow or support our humanity. So, in the end, science must take responsibility not only for itself as a way of knowing, but also for what humans -do- with it. And once it -does that-… the atrocities we have experience from religions actually pale in comparison to those actively (and presently) delivered not only to us, but to every living thing in the biosphere. Is this science’s ‘fault’? No. It is ours. But it is a part of our relationship with science that we can no longer pretend science is not answerable for.

The problem is this: if we do the -actual- accounting: science -as enacted by human cultures- is tearing humanity and our planet apart at the seams. And this isn’t going to stop, in fact, it is increasing geometrically with ever-more frequent iterations. What this means is simple: we need forms of ecological, social, and relational intelligence that -neither science nor religion- is delivering. And, strangely, both would be -actively threatened- by the establishment of such intelligence, for both would needs be reborn in the image of a humanity free of their dominance, and intelligent enough to employ such assets with care, instead of being enslaved by their dangers.