Curiosity Show.

[zapta]

There's something I didn't want to know. Couldn't bring myself to watch the video either.

He he, bigotry got a reality check

[N2IXK]

Speaking about bigotry and scientists who somehow hold onto irrational ideas, what about William Shockley (semiconductor pioneer, Nobel laureate, and co-inventor of the transistor)? His theories about race and eugenics were "interesting" to say the least...

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/William-Shockley

[GK]

I might agree if there was any sign of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. But there has been absolutely no evidence of anything. SETI has been running since 1961. On the law of averages, there would be at least one signal from extraterrestrial intelligence. Nothing. Dead silence. So maybe we are special. I cannot answer that yet and neither can you. So the question remains.

You're missing the point here. However you are entitled to believe that the entire observable universe was created for the express purpose of incubator for man. I am not going to argue with you.

Part of growing up is having the maturity to eventually realize and become comfortable with the fact that there are things that one will never know, and that some questions as a consequence are simply devoid of meaning.

How do you know what you will never know if you don't seek knowledge. I have heard a religious person say to me "who cares?" when I mentioned to her about a new discovery about the plant Mars. That is an insult. The Higgs Boson particle discovery could have easily be left as "something that one will never know" unless the question did not demand an answer. Accepting that something we will never know is an insult. All question have an answer. The pursuit of knowledge is noble. 

There is an enormous gulf between your cited example of the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle and definitive answers to the sorts of religious questions that you posed, so I don't really see your point. The Seeking of knowledge is fine so long as one has a rational grasp of his limitations. I'd like to know what my great great great great great great great grandfathers mother was thinking while eating breakfast on the 13th day before her 23rd birthday.  How do you know what you will never know if you don't seek knowledge?

And a number of those you list did squander a great deal of resources on utterly stupid, non scientific and spirituality-bent ideas, particularly Newton.

Newton lost almost all his fortune on the Tulip bubble... nothing spiritual about it except greed. And that is what drives most bubbles. We have one here called the housing bubble. About to burst (I hope) and it will be entertaining to watch the foreigners and investors lose their money.

Oh, c'mon. Amongst many other wasteful endeavors (some arguably silly even for his time) Newton spent a lot of time seeking scientific truths in the tracts of the bible and even wrote a paper roughly predicting the year of the end of the world (some time before 2060). While you couldn't get away with saying that there was nothing spiritual about that I concede that you are free to claim that he is yet to be proven wrong.

[zapta]

Speaking about bigotry and scientists who somehow hold onto irrational ideas, ...

From Wikipedia:

"According to 100 Years of Nobel Prizes a review of Nobel prizes award between 1901 and 2000 reveals that (65.4%) of Nobel Prizes Laureates, have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference"

Bigotry is bad, even if it is anti Christian.