Well by all means don't use money. Its just symbols printed on paper.
All human social constructs exist because people believe in them.
That's not "blind faith." I have very strong evidence that giving that paper to someone else will encourage them to give me something in return. It's "faith" in a system that's been proven to work rather well. The "faith in the system" is more a matter of trust.
Faith in the context of religion is believing something for which there is no evidence. Faith in the context of money or government is based on evidence from history, which says that the system has been working in the past, and that people are working to ensure that it stays that way into the future.
Even if you want to look back to gold, that's still faith in the system. It's just a shiny metal that's good at resisting the corrosive forces commonly found in our environment. I still can't use it as a food source; I'd need to trade it with someone else, and they'd only accept the trade if they had evidence that it would in turn retain value to someone
else.
Just as you may "reel" at the thought of saying that Jesus has 30 arms and spews chocolate from his mouth, which is made of clouds. It's not necessarily because the idea is offensive, it's because it's simply absurd.
A lot of religions believe that some space genie will use his awesome magic help us out.
This "science super jesus" is
us saying, "We want to make things more awesome here. How can we accomplish that?" Note the difference: There is no magic space genie involved. It's the big-brained primates here on Earth trying to find better solutions to problems that face us, rather than thinking really hard at the sky, and hoping that the sky solves our problems for us.
I can paraphrase.
The forum is biased toward science solving all our energy problems, they believe some huge advancement will be made to keep the way we live going.
The forum is biased toward terraforming, as if we would actually be able to live on other planets and other such foolishness.
The forum is biased toward endless scientific progress, as if given enough time we could solve any problem. We however don't have endless resources for such experiments.
Alot of people see the future as some type of super scientific civilization where we rely more and more on technology, but I don't think that will turn out to be true.
Think of how many things we have now which would have been seen as nothing less than pure magic or absurdity 1000 years ago. Torches with no fire. Heat with no flame. Handheld lightning (welding gun). Sunlight, on demand, from a box. Flying machines. Flying machines with no pilots. Small boxes that can both listen and speak (Hello, Siri.) Paintings that move (TV). Cold
and hot water, available in an instant, and completely drinkable. The ability to communicate with someone on the other side of the world in mere seconds, rather than months or years - without needing to risk death during a long journey to do it.
We're already there. And we're still heading there at the same time.
And no, we don't have endless resources. Thanks to scientific advancements (there's that darn pesky thing again), we're learning how to conserve resources, and do things with greater efficacy.
There really is the general belief here that science will solve all our problems, given enough time. Everyone can just sit on their ass and the scientists will handle it. It is no different than 500 years ago when people thought Jesus would solve all our problems when people got sick.
Science is just exploration and study of the Universe. It provides the tools by which people may be able to do useful things. Scientists provide the knowledge, engineers figure out practical applications of that knowledge, technicians configure, install, and maintain it, workers manufacture the products, and retailers sell it. Everyone
else still has to have jobs so that they can get some of that faithy money to buy the technology, and
then they can sit on their asses and enjoy it.
And thus far, this trend is supported by evidence. Our history, both recorded and biological, shows that we've got a knack for finding our way out of difficult situations, though it's not necessarily always going to be pretty. In modern times, we usually try to avoid using basic attrition as a means of solving problems; nature typically has no problem using that method though.