Time for another post on the battle between science and religion. I found the article below the other day via USA Today online edition and thought that some of the talking points made were pretty telling. America is a very religious country. Fully 95% of Americans believe in some sort of God or supernatural power. This is in contrast to Europe and other countries where that belief structure is not nearly as high. Some facts from the study:
*The survey found 55% say science and religion are often in conflict and 36% say science sometimes conflicts with their own religious beliefs. Among those 36%:
*41% refer specifically to evolution, creationism, Darwinism and debates about the origin of life.
*15% cite differences over the beginning of life, primarily concerns about abortion(12%) but also cloning and birth
More important than the above it appears that the concepts of science and science education and study churn out non-believers at a fairly high rate with 41% of scientists not believing in any sort of supernatural.
While 95% of the public said they believe in God or a higher power, 41% of scientists don’t believe in either. Nearly half of scientists say they’re atheist, agnostic or believe “nothing in particular” but only 17% of the general public is unaffiliated.
As this relates to my own life, I’ve got problems with organized religion in a multitude of ways and it’s not due to any sort of lack of education about religion or the types of religion or about what exactly religious faiths project to believe. My biggest issue is one of proof. Most believers will tell you that you don’t need proof of God to know he exists. I disagree. Saying you don’t need to prove something that might be obvious is a cop out and it’s riddled with what I hate the most: A failure to think for one’s self. Science has always played an important role in my life. Not because nature in general is fascinating but because it was the study of science in school that taught me how to think. Science taught me to look for answers in places you might not expect to find them, it taught me to think critically about the physical world, where we came from, how we got to where we are now, and how we might proceed in the future. Science shapes public policy, it defines medicine, without Science, we might all still believe the Earth is at the center of the Universe.
I view religion as a “gimmie”. Religion promotes a lack of critical thinking that I believe is necessary to survive. It inhibits greatly a thoughtful understanding of the planet we live on, and it creates a culture that survives based only on assumptions which in my mind is extremely fragile. It’s easy for me in this blog to point out the fundamental flaw promoted by evangelicals (most of my disagreements with organized religion are from the fruits of the evangelical or hard core believer set) that the Earth is just 6000 years old when solid scientific evidence states it is significantly older. Certainly not all believers fall into the evangelical trap…there are plenty of people who can indeed marry religion and science and that’s fine. I prefer knowing the difference between fact and fiction and I don’t care to take life for granted. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
