IBM created this move to demonstrate the ability to see and to manipulate individual atoms however they wanted to. So, they created this little animation with those abilities. The dots are actual atoms:

It was a breakthrough when IBM created it. Now, it's not as impressive.

I don't think it will ever be finished, though, and it just gets bigger and bigger. Even now, it fills entire libraries and spills out onto the Internet.

Meanwhile, the Bible is still the same old, long-outdated stuff. In the Bible, pi is equal to 3, and giant fish could transport humans without harm and then spit them out on the shore. No revision is in the works.

make it a ride at Disneyworld.

So you just walk into it's mouth and down the esophagus. The stomach will have see-through sides. It swims around a lake where you see at other bioengineered creatures based on fossil reconstructions.

We had an exhibit of the human colon you could walk through here at the Science Museum. It was sort of fun, really, in a shitty sort of way.

I remember taking a course in "The Philosophy of Science", an elective while an undergrad physics major.
We were on the subject of theoretical entities and our perception of their existence. The professor posited "how do we know atoms exist if we can't see them?" I knew where this discussion would lead, naturally. However, I decided to shut down this discussion immediately.

"Um, sir, we have images now of individual atoms. We CAN see them."

"Errrr...really? <long pause> I didn't hear this news."

"You're not a physics major." <smugly>

He smiled embarrassingly, and moved on to another example of theoretical entities.

(Some years later, I invited him to be on my Ph.D. committee. He was a good sport.)

find an electron's location and direction.

< a pun

Generally, though, as long as stuff works when I flip the switch...

Growth can be found in many places, unless one is blind to the opportunities.

fundamentally changed the core beliefs written down 1800 years ago.

Your personal understanding of your faith is irrelevant.

People without faith just have a defect that keeps them from seeing. How ableist.

How can you tell if it's developed toward a more correct version?

What if you've developed in the wrong direction, and have become less compassionate and more judgmental? Would you be able to detect this?

Translation: "I'm making this shit up as I go"

I think that you know the answer.

Now that's interesting.

Also interesting.

But if you actually knew, you wouldn't be behaving the way you are.

The truth is I like watching you dig. It's amusing.

That would be interesting, and I have no idea if any motives are involved or not. So, please hold forth on that. I'll wait right here.

Not at all. It is terminally flawed.

"Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud" by Peter Watson

It is a real slog to get through, but in the end it is roughly one of his conclusions. We've advanced in many ways over the centuries and created alot of ideas that have grown and matured. The one idea that has remained relatively stagnant over that period is that of spirituality in all its forms. We keep re-inventing concepts over and over, regularly changing names, or merging ideas together in new combinations. But fundamentally each generation just co-opts the aspects they need or want and effectively "start over".

It's actually what leads to alot of people moving away from their various organized religions during their lives. At some point they are having the same discussions over and over, reading the same basic texts, and coming to the same conclusions. It is especially true with parents whose involvement is predominately for the purpose of raising children with some sense of a moral set of guidelines. Once the children are gone, the church has diminished purpose for them, and they often find themselves on the "outside" of the community as a new generation joins to raise their children.

Much of this phenomenon is because an awful lot of religion and spirituality is about the unknowable. Many religions and other spiritual concepts rely heavily upon the concept of faith of the unknowable. The nature of God, the after life (if there is such a thing), and other related concepts are often presented as unknowable or undetectable. Feynman would explain that in science, we don't spend alot of time thinking or working on concepts that can't be known. There's really no point. But people are fascinate by these questions, and have been for at least as long as there has been language. But because the answers are "unknowable", there will be this lack of growth because there is no knowledge upon which to build. Thus the static nature of spirituality over the millennia.

For me, once I understood that deities and the supernatural were inventions of the mind, I stopped worrying about them. In my opinion, there are no "unknowable" things. There are things I don't know. There are things nobody knows, but they are not necessarily unknowable. We just don't know them yet.

Typically, those things are something we cannot investigate, really, so some make up stories about them. For me, not knowing is not a troublesome thing. There are more known things that I still have not explored thoroughly. I don't have time for things that are not possible to explore, frankly. Imaginary things are sometimes interesting, but only as entertainment for me.

Religious belief appears to be fading, in terms of the numbers of people who rely on it. We know more about real things over time, and that seems to coincide with less reliance on religious beliefs. Or so it seems to me.

He usually couched it in terms of "if what we think we know is true, certain things will be unknowable.". Of course, we could always be wrong and then things will become knowable.

Religion and spirituality tend to rise and fall based upon numerous factors. Specific religions and deities often come and go, but the underlying concepts tend to endure. It frequently moves away from the "organized" model towards more ego centric versions. But peoples need for community and validation often cause them to get "organized" again. If nothing else, people will always wonder what happens after one dies.

I never have. It ends. My individual persona will no longer exist. For me, that is simply the fact, and I'm fine with that. There is absolutely no evidence to the contrary of that position.

In the meantime, here I am. So, I'm exploring things as best I can. Feynman was a genius, of course. But, he was only a human being. Our knowledge is a collective thing - not the product of any single human being.

One thing's certain, though: We won't know everything while I'm still around, so it doesn't matter to me. We'll know what we know. We appear to know more every generation, so, someone will know things I can't imagine at some point, but I won't care, because there will be no me there.

Very different from faith-based predictions. That had no factual basis, and overwhelmingly did not come true, or "did not come to pass."

Science had predicted an atom that looked like a blue sphere. And after many iterations of atomic theory, it eventually came up with a picture of one.

Something religion has probably never done