Religion: Killing Science With Science

Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. The people who dropped the atomic bombs murdered over 200,000 people; Einstein’s science did not. In the same way Einstein can be linked to the atomic bomb, evolution, rather than personal hatred, was linked as the cause of the Holocaust by those against evolution. It is these evolution-deniers who are tarnishing and attempting to discredit science. It is also these people that, saying Hitler’s reasons were based in evolutionary science, have overlooked Hitler’s true motivations in his quote: “I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.”

So strongly are some to preserve their metaphysical beliefs that they are willing to defy rationality and falsify science to conform to their own misconceptions. The world is really 6,000 years old to some people and science lies vehemently in opposition. Creationists dispatch such theories such as scientists manufacturing fake dinosaur bones, ignoring carbon-dating by adding a few extra zeros to what was originally only a few thousand years old (creationists claim), or altering other methods and toss out the undesirable results. In actuality, carbon dating done to fossils completely replaced by rock will yield inaccurate results because there is no carbon left to date. The other issue was with argon-potassium dating which lead to immensely diverse results when starting out which were probably triggered by contamination known as the Suess effect.

Kent Hovind’s theory is an example of scientific ignorance that explains young Earth Creationism with pseudoscience. He claims that Noah's family and the animals (including dinosaurs) boarded the ark before a -300° F ice meteor broke up near Earth; meteor fragments became either rings, impact craters, or formed the earth’s poles. The ice of the poles cracked the earth’s crust and released “fountains of the deep,” initiating the flood (fossils are the result of the mass destruction from the flood). The wobbling earth collapsed the vapor canopy, tectonic plates shifted, and rapid erosion formed all modern geology. The oceans absorbed CO₂ from earth’s atmosphere, allowing greater amounts of radiation to reach the earth’s surface, causing human lifespans to be shortened in comparison to the 950 year old Noah. Absolutely none of this is scientifically founded nor explains how Noah survived the freezing temperatures or toxicity of the air caused by the altitude and atmospheric pressure from mountain top-surpassing water levels. How did aquatic life survive the fresh water dilution or plants survive at all? There are just so many contradictions that all rely on God’s omnipotence to pull humanity through; if this really were the case, why try to mutilate science with such theories when it would be infinitely more dignified to just say, “God did it”?

Some religions oppose merely the teaching of evolution, taking advantage of the fact we are still just studying abiogenesis,; they criticize public schools for not filling in that gap by teaching the alternative (typically just the one alternative that makes up the opposition). Alternatives should be taught, but it should be done in a philosophy course, not a science one. Another religion against psychiatry forces its patrons to deny psychiatrical treatment and medicine, instead leaving them to be coerced into psychologically distressing audits and regress to spiritual healing and herbal remedies as prescribed by someone within the cult. There are also those that enthusiastically degrade their own or a loved one’s health, relying on prayer rather than proper medical treatment.

Yet it seems hypocritical that nobody seems to oppose such basic sciences as electricity, anatomy, and astronomy, and the even more complex sciences that lie in computers, physics, and nuclear energy; nevertheless, certain people deny only the personally conflicting sciences. Science does make mistakes. It is from these mistakes that we learn our error and correct and improve upon it. This is not the case for the religious literals that steadfastly cling to ignorance. Perhaps it is because people with little comprehension of the world fall back onto religion to “fill the gaps” with supernatural explanations from what they do not understand. Certain science is discredited while another form fills its spot to conform to the words of faith. If it is faith, why must it be proven? Why corrupt the scientific art for a selfish and indoctrinating reason? A person with religion tends to look at the world through the book and doctrines they are told to, while a scientist looks at the world tabula rasa to be filled in by new observations and logic upon a foundation of other sciences; I certainly do not look at the world through my copy of the “Origin of Species” or find biblical recluse in it.

Religion: Sneaking in the Bureaucratic Back Door

People are using religion as a scapegoat to perform what would normally be illegal activities in the eyes of the law by saying that it should be protected by the First Amendment. Religious tradition is also harnessed in attempt alter laws to conform to conflicting personal beliefs. Logic and reason should be the conventions that dictate our human rules. Neither religion nor tradition should ever guide our science of law, and it is this ignorance that is muddling up the separation between church and state.

The Temple of Advanced Enlightenment is advocating for their religious belief to smoke marijuana. Many others around the nation are defending their incrimination for illicit drug use to this or even their own religious belief by citing the First Amendment. Potentially, a person might get off the hook for getting caught exercising his constitutional rights, while Alzheimer’s, cancer, and HIV patients are denied a scientifically backed medicine because it is illegal. (In the UK, Morphine is considered a Class-A drug—the same category as cocaine and ecstasy—but also a Schedule II Controlled Substance in both the UK and the United States, meaning that it is a currently accepted medical use in treatment, has the high potential for abuse, and that the abuse of the drug may lead to physical dependence.)

Science and law should never cripple when confronted with religion. The religious should be able to hold and express their beliefs but still conform to legal conflicts in the land they reside in. If legal progression impedes a denomination’s beliefs, doctrines are pushed forward to try and mandate their intolerance to everybody, because pushing away from tradition might force them to be tolerant against their will. It is because of religion that people are intolerant of equal human rights if their religion censures it. It is because of religion that eight-year-olds can be served booze without parental supervision just because of the tradition of communion in their church. It is because of religion that others are allowed to threaten us with torture and damnation, because it is an indirect supposition. There is even such vague wording in the Internal Revenue code that allow churches and private schools to be tax exempt, when some examples of both seem to be exercising blatant capitalism.

Religion is trying to murder science and rationality by sneaking in the bureaucratic back door. Fanatics are trying to “protect us” for this “greater good” that is retrograding and harming our advancement not just in technology, but in ethics. The people outside of this cause are being affected and forced into indoctrination. The people that lack religion and those of different sects would be imbrued by the will of a single group’s theology and ethics. Nobody should be able to slip around the law just for reasons of faith alone; otherwise we are enabling church and state to fuse.

Religion is not fact; it is belief and it is faith. The tradition that drives it should never be the foundation for something scientific. Science is falsifiable, religion is not. Traditionalists deny the science that disproves their notions, yet utilize science if it confirms their faith. This is a tragic method of denial that is hypocritical and deceptive. This shouldn’t be a place where the pseudoscience of religion has precedence within the law. This presence affects not just religious denominations, but burdens the remainder of the populace by forcing them into a will that is not their own.