The much-overblown conflict between science and religion is a propagandistic myth of nineteenth-century historiography. Galileo's case, a much more complex event than you let on here, happened four centuries ago. It's as about as relevant to modern religion as witchburnings.
Then why are the religious so afraid of science and why do they choose to ridicule it at every turn?
It doesn't mean personal immortality for us. It means a computer simulation of us will keep running until the power runs out. It's the Nerd Rapture, a poor shadow of the hope for the real thing.
I don't think you understand the thought experiment quite right. Go back and do it again until you do. The point is the line gets blurred. And your use of the derogatory term "Nerd" says to me that you just don't understand what is being proposed here. Which is fine. But at least admit it. Like I've stated above, when people's beliefs are challenged they become very defensive about their belief (right or wrong).
Your concept of religion, like your concept of man, is adolescent and reductionist.
Again, your belief system has been challenged. You choose to fight rather than discuss...that's fine, I realize why.
"History does not record anywhere a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help."
*Puts on asbestos suit.*
"Religion" is of course a weasely word, though I sometimes use it myself. It includes everyone from backwater fundies to urbane professors, Buddhists, Muslims, pagans, and Christians. Name the specific denomination of a specific religion. Name the specific people you are talking about.
Go back and do it again until you do. The point is the line gets blurred.
Until such a time as there is evidence human personality and high-level thought can be mediated in electronic implants, the question is purely hypothetical, and interesting only for speculative purposes.
Again, your belief system has been challenged.
Trust me, your weak-kneed agnosticism isn't much of a challenge.
. You choose to fight rather than discuss...that's fine, I realize why.
To discuss is to fight. You throw out caricatures and well-worn insults like religion being driven by "fear of death"(why not love of life, among many other things?) and then pretend you're above the rough-and-tumble of polemic. Don't start arguments you don't care to follow through.
"History does not record anywhere a religion that has any rational basis.
Feh. Reason itself doesn't have a rational basis. But this statement is a falsehood. Christian theology, in its better moments, holds that reason is a participation in the Divine, indeed that Reason and Intelligence were in existence before any matter. Agnosticism and atheism generally suppose that reason and personality are epiphenomenal effects of impersonal forces of no inherent benevolence or accuracy. That is, when atheism isn't piggy-backing upon Christian presuppositions about rationality.
Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help."
Heck, all of us cannot even stand up to the known without help. We're dependent rational animals, worthy of more acceptance than egoistic pop-psychology can handle.
Your beloved transhumanists think mankind wasting their lives in infinitely-malleable VR simulations will be the best thing ever. Such men should not have the gall and hypocrisy to blame religion for building comfortable illusions for the weak-minded, when they themselves think there is nothing wrong about comfortable illusions.