Why? The scientific method did not drop from the skies. It is just a method that some people have devised. It is not infallible. Our senses have evolved for specific purposes and our methods are based on that. Reality does not have to limit itself to our methods. Why is this so difficult to understand?!
It isn't difficult to understand, but you're still making the same mistake of giving equal weight to something that has been validated by repeated iteration of our most successful method of enquiry and investigation as you are to unsubstantiated, unevidenced, entirely baseless hypotheticals.
Enlightenment does not stop with one set of decisions and methods. It is an ongoing process. It evolves like everything else. What you think of as 'enlightenment' today could be seen as the 'dark ages' in the future.
It could. Until then, though, we have an effective method of enquiry which is giving us provisionally validated answers. You are giving us unsubstantiated claims based on 'wouldn't it be nice'. There may be a day in a far flung future when our current concept of scientific enquiry is somehow seen as antiquated, but in order to get there we don't just need unsubstantiated claims, we need a replacement method of enquiry.
Nothing unevidenced at all . There is plenty of evidence . Everything from the origin of Life itself to evolution to emergence to random variations to genetic coding to plasticity to complexity to ecological connections to Consciousness.....everything is evidence of Intelligent intervention and direction. And this is besides subjective experiences and insights.
None of those are shown to be evidence of intelligent intervention and direction. The origin of life simply is, we know virtually nothing about it to suggest that it's evidence for anything. Evolution is very definitely shown not to need any sort of intelligent guidance - it doesn't refute it, but it is not evidence for it in any way.
Genetic coding? Is that a reference to the 'specified complexity' nonsense? That's not even a coherent concept, let alone an interpretation of the evidence that stands up - it's the argument from incredulity dressed up with a thesaurus.
Plasticity of what? Neuroplasticity?
Ecological connections are evidence of time and geography.
Consciousness isn't something that's been defined or demonstrated well enough to be considered evidence for anything - attempting to suggest that conscious demonstrates interventionalist supernatural entity is just a 'god of the gaps' argument.
And subjective experiences and insights are evidence for what people believe about reality without necessarily being good evidence for that reality.
You people just can't see it in spite of repeated clarifications.
No, we can't see it because you aren't showing it, you're just asserting it as a given.
You think outlining 'mechanisms' explains everything.
If you don't have a mechanism, then how can your explanation be reliable?
Its probably all due to neural connectivity as Newberg has said.
Probably.
Try this...
https://tsriramrao.wordpress.com/2019/01/13/beyond-science/
It's not definitive that the rise of science and the decline of religion are consequential, they may be parallel influences on a general devlopment of culture and civilisation. Certainly there are places in the world (the US, for instance) which have bucked the trend and the decline of religion has lagged long and slow behind the rise of science, and other areas where we little decline in religion as science spreads (sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle-East).
I've seen it argued that as people realised the lack of substance in religion they went looking for something else, and found science. I don't know which is the case, I suspect it would be difficult to definitively claim one or the other, there's likely elements of feedback in the change that have altered the balance over time.
As you say, the majority of people are still holding to religion, but the trend is for growth to slow where it is growing, and decline to increase where it already exists. It may be that the timeframe was exaggerated, but it seems on current form that religion is on the wane.
As to your contention that 'most people are disappointed with what science has to offer' - based on what? Are they? I don't think, despite the caricature, that most people are looking for science to replace religion entirely; people are looking to science to explain the 'how' which historically religion has laid claim to. The 'why' elements of religion are being replaced with a range of secular moral, ethical and philosophical outlooks; if people are disappointed with science failing to provide those elements, they've misunderstood what science was for. In my experience, though, the only people who've ever suggested that science was trying to replace religion in those areas were religious people desperately trying to undermine science because they think it's the enemy.
Environmental disasters are not the fault of science, they are the fault of people - they've been accelerated in many instances by people applying (or misapplying) science, but as we clarified above, science doesn't answer anything other than 'how'. If you want to know why you should or shouldn't do something, that's not science's bag.
'For all its flamboyance, Science does not touch the inner core of our being and does not explain our hopes and aspirations or morality or life and death.' Well now, here we go - what 'inner core'? Is there any reason to think there is something 'hidden'? Arguably, science may be able to explain our hopes, aspirations and morality, although the current state of neuroscience isn't up to the task; thankfully, we haven't finished science yet, so fingers crossed. Life and death - as physical states, it seems likely that there's a scientific explanation if learn enough.
'Also, Science has a very fragmented view of the world. Infinite and diverse bits of information about infinite different things get generated through the process of scientific investigation.'
Reality is too big to pretend to explain in one simple, neat answer - it's ironic that we're moving away from religion and towards the complexity of scientific explanations for reality at a time when it seems everything else in our reality is attempting to oversimplify enough to fit into 280 twitter characters. The key point you make, though, is that science IS infinite (ish) diverse bits of information, as opposed to religion which is assertion in the absence of information in an attempt to convince people it explains actual phenomena.
'It is like blind men who have never heard of an elephant, touching an elephant in different spots and putting their individual ideas together to get a picture of the whole. They end up with a picture of a tree with a snake hanging on it and a boulder next to it. Hardly a meaningful picture!' Whereas religion tells you it's a sin to even try to conceive of the elephant, which is really a hippo a rhino and an elephant at the same time, but they're intangible so how could you feel them, and they'll trample you to death if you try because they love you dearly, and you now owe the priest ten entirely voluntary pounds or you'll suffer eternal torment. One of those is an inaccurate answer, one of them is not an answer at all, it's just wrong.
'Science therefore has not been able to replace religion completely.' Science hasn't tried to. That's not what science is for. That's like claiming geometry has failed because no-one's put pictures of circles intersecting flat planes in place of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
O.