Truly mind boggling

Subject: Truly mind boggling.

Is science the new religion, a religion or belief system based on empirical facts and not superstition. Can science have an opinion on morals, purpose and meaning or is it merely a method of separating fact from fiction.

The conviction that facts, revealed by science, would make religion superfluous, since its raison d'etre, an untestable belief in the presence of god, has been under pressure from science, particularly since carbon dating peeled back the biblical story. From a historical point of view the bible became a series of fables, but science still didn't answer those metaphorical and philosophical questions bound up in the bible such as why we trouble ourselves with moral and ethical questions since, if they are a creation of the mind and not of this world, only 'thoughts' about this world can qualify for scientific analysis. But can we say our thoughts about things are any the less important than scientific facts.  Do our thoughts posses the substance of facts or are they so dependent on the individual that, whilst interesting they have no collective value.

The importance of morality and ethical values vary in different parts of the world, can we say this is or that is a moral standard when for a host of reasons, mainly religious interpretation, the actions of one group and their mental stand point differ one from another.

In science we can claim the composite has identification because it can be reduced to a collection of molecules which then synthesise  into a recognisable entity but no such claim can be made for ethics which whilst important as a collective thought to guide humanity has no sustainable substance other than we feel better for having thought it better.

So where does consciousness come from if it's not open to scientific analysis. Does it exist or are our thoughts ephemeral and transitory. I'm not thinking of thoughts which are part of some process to reach a conclusion but more the dreams and stuff which just pop into our head and then is gone. Is this simply a chemical reaction triggered by tiny electrical currents in the brain which causes synaptic plasticity. Memories are the re-ennaction  of existing neurone  pathways which reinforced by an event which was meaningful and re-stimulated by something which re-engaged that dormant pathway. The fact that trillions of events which happen every nano second around us but are not clocked by our brains and don’t impinge on us in the form of memory is truly mind boggling.

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