Recently a Pew Research Center poll was done in the USA showing only 6% of scientists are Republicans, 55% are Democrats. My interpretation is that with fundamental Christians backing the Republican party, the party has taken a stance against science and driven away scientists. The main controversies right now between religion and science are the battle over teaching evolution vs. creation in public schools, and using stem cells for research.My understanding about the struggle between science and religion started in about grade 5 (where I think we started learning science) It seemed the problem was that God, heaven, hell, and other religious miracles such as raising the dead and faith healing, cannot be proven scientifically. I realize now that more liberal religious people don't have any problem with science, and the Catholic church recently pardoned Galileo for saying that the Earth went around the sun. Also, Pope Benedict has said that the theory of Evolution is not in conflict with religion. Earlier, Pope John Paul II made an even more strongly worded statement about the Evolution proving that the Earth was millions of years old.
But with the resurgence of fundamentalist Christianity in the last 40 years, the old conflict is being rekindled. Many people are turning away from science and back to superstition and miracles, particularly among fundamentalist Christians in the Southern U.S.
The Claims of the Religious Extremists and Accusations Against Scientists
The fundamentalist Christians are using an aggressive propaganda campaign to convince people that every word of the Bible is fact, including creation of Adam and the coming end of the world. Their propaganda also blames scientists for most of the evil in the world, like the Jewish holocaust and the Nazi war crimes. And furthermore the fundamentalists claim that it is Christians, not Atheistic scientists who have given us modern medicine and technology.
The fundamentalists, who are mainly of Protestant origin, blame the entire Dark Ages and repression of science and medicine on the Catholic church and claim that only because of the Protestant reformation, has medicine and technology advanced. Although the fundamentalists reject science, they do not officially reject the technology such as television, cars, airplanes and the atomic bomb. They claim that such technology was discovered by Christians, not by Atheistic scientists. And they claim that all useful scientific discoveries, for example, the Jet Stream, actually came from the literal truth of the Bible.
The fundamentalist propaganda finally alleges that it was scientists who stood in the way of modern science. Although this may sound contradictory, there is the story being circulated among fundamentalists, of a religious Hungarian, Dr. Semmelweis, who proved that if doctors washed their hands, that lives could be saved. Other doctors (scientists) poo poo'd the idea, and Semmelweis went mad. Also it is stated that every one of the founders of modern science were Christians, including Charles Darwin himself. The fundamentalists also claim to have proof that Darwin renounced evolution on his death bed.
Now religious fundamentalists are claiming to be shunned by the Darwinian scientific community. Also they claim that Darwinism is just a new pagan religion that will lead us into the next Dark Ages. Which of course will end with the Rapture where Jesus comes at the end of the world to scoop up all the "Saved" and leave everyone else to burn in Hell forever.
Most liberals, if they are even aware of it yet, reject this propaganda. Here are some of the highlights of history showing how much fundamentalist religion has held us back over the last 2000 years.
The Case for Science
We could start with the burning of the library of Alexandria, containing much of the world's knowledge. This has been blamed on Christians, also Christians have blamed it on pagans. I'm inclined to side with the pagans, as the Christians proved later that they were inclined to not only burn books, but also the writers of the books.
In the Dark Ages, the Roman aqueducts and bath houses in Christian areas were left to collapse, and bathing was declared a sin. The Roman sewer systems were neglected. All education was controlled by the Christian church. Except, of course, education outside of Christian Europe, which explains why Muslim learning and technology pulled ahead in Medieval times. Even today we still owe our numbering system to Arabs.
I use the term "Dark Ages" even though scholars avoid the term because it is prejudicial against religion. But I want to use it to help explain the conflict between science and religion. The Dark Ages were not only a period of decline scientifically, but great plagues swept Europe, made worse by the lack of sanitation.
During the Dark Ages, educated debates were not about science, but about theological mysteries for which there was no "proof". However, the winners of these debates always seemed to celebrate their debating skills by burning the losers alive at the stake. No wonder free thinkers (also called heretics) lay low for over a thousand years, and all of them, with just a few crispy exceptions, professed a great love for religion.
Eventually, burning at the stake was halted, and the enlightenment began. Some old Greek and Roman books, preserved by the Arabs re-emerged. Free thinkers, inspired by the old books, began to learn more about the laws of nature rather than Christian theology and superstition.
Galileo is famous for dropping a large and small stone off the leaning tower of Pisa, to see if they fell at the same rate. He may or may not have actually done this, but the importance was not so much proving that heavy and light objects fall at the same rate, but the concept of performing a repeatable experiment. At the time, it was thought that experiments proved nothing, that the debating technique, prayer to God, and clever use of words was the be-all and end-all of arguments. With a repeatable, testable experiment, all you need to do is drop two stones of differing weights from only two meters up to see they hit the ground at the same time, and anyone can do it at any time. The scientific breakthrough is that the experiment can be performed by anyone with the same results. This was quite a revolution in thinking.
Luckily for Galileo, by his time the religious people had stopped burning the losers of debates, because he then lost a debate with the Pope about the sun going around the Earth, and was only given house arrest for the rest of his life. Although he was pardoned with an apology in 1992, it is obvious that religious debates do not really depend on scientific principles such as observation and measurement. It's more about threats of violence, slander and false logic, not to mention outright factual lies. The advantage of science is that if someone wishes, they can perform the experiments and see for themselves how things really work. To some people, including me, this carries more weight than the debating skills and threats of violence.
I don't see much difference between Christian Fundamentalists and the Medieval Catholic Church. Except possibly for the fact that so much science and technology has proved itself, that no-one, no matter how uneducated can deny it. Although the practice of burning non-believers at the stake may have stopped, torture is enjoying a revival of popularity among fundamentalists, so things could still change.
People need to speak out against these violent and superstitious beliefs. The fundamentalists came close to taking over the nuclear arsenal of the USA. Although fundamentalists profess, when convenient, to love peace and forgiveness above all, you can see that their belief in war and the end of the world is compatible with the crazy rhetoric of Muslim extremists. I really don't want either type of irrational religion getting hold of nuclear weapons.
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