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The comparison is very bad: something like burning wood gives you small psychological comfort but no benefit, while something like religion brings quite a lot o
by nnq 14y ago
The comparison is very bad: something like burning wood gives you small psychological comfort but no benefit, while something like religion brings quite a lot of benefits for a large segment of scientifically illiterate or psychologically "unstable" people (and besides basic school knowledge of science, most people are quite "illiterate" unfortunately, they lack the most important parts of experiment based reasoning, the skills to build clear and falsifiable hypotheses, a "true" understanding of evolution and why it works and so on...).
Also, to make wood burning unnecessary, you only have to give people access to electric or gas heating, and after this only a few nostalgics will occasionally burn wood for "recreation". To make religion unnecessary, you'd need to educate people to quite a high level (scientific knowledge and reason can only replace religion once somebody gains quite a deep and intuitive understanding of both) and you'd also need to have a "socially healthy" society that promotes "healthy" relations among people (a completely unsolved problem imho, although we like to think otherwise!), replacing part of the socio-moral function of religion (basing morality on religion, you get an ugly but working system of "no-think ethics" that has a lot of bugs but works on "all platforms", not matter how irrational they may be). It's much harder to bring people to a high enough level of education, psychological health and "social health" than to just give them central heating. Religion is quite an ugly hack, but it solves quite a bunch of problems for quite a lot of people, although these are mostly "hard to measure" problems.
- Tichy 14y ago"after this only a few nostalgics will occasionally burn wood for "recreation"" Not true unfortunately - here in Germany wood burning has been trending in recent years, even though alternative means of heating are readily available. In fact most house owners probably equip both - gas/oil heating for the baseline comfort and wood for the coziness.
- BudVVeezer 14y agoSame is true in parts of the US as well. Here in Maine, it costs 3.80$/gal for heating oil, but you can get wood for 100$/cord. This means I can heat my house with oil to the tune of about 3k/year, or wood for 400/year.
- Tichy 14y agoI can only hope that this trend will go hand in hand with development of better wood burning stoves that pollute less.
- BudVVeezer 14y agoI'm a bit amazed by how efficient my wood boiler is -- I can run it for several hours off a few logs, while maintaining about 175 degrees in the boiler. On a good day, I end up burning less than a log an hour to heat my entire house, including the water heater.
- Centigonal 14y agoYou might be interested in this wood heater design: http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp
- acqq 14y agore your "religion brings quite a lot of benefits for a large segment of scientifically illiterate or psychologically "unstable" people": http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/03/08/faith_based_prison_programs_new_study_suggests_religion_may_help_criminals.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/03/08/faith_based_pris... New Study Suggests Religion May Help Criminals Justify Their Crimes
- duck 14y agoAlso, to make wood burning unnecessary, you only have to give people access to electric or gas heating You missed a key word, cheaper alternatives. I live in Maine and put in a pellet stove (which is way more efficient than a fireplace) and it saves me about $2500 each year over oil heating.