Time to Separate Zealotry and Science

Let's Get Out of the Dark Ages, Guys!

I’ve got a bone to pick.

Look, there’s nothing wrong with being dumb.
There’s nothing wrong with being a religious zealot.
And there’s nothing wrong with being a Bush supporter.
But there is something wrong with being all three…



Amazing! The numbers correlate. Fifty percent of the population literally believes in biblical interpretation of the world and blocks out any notion of science’s credibility. Okay, that’s your choice. Just don’t impose your will on those who do believe.

Fifty percent of the population believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. And fifty percent of the population believe that Bush policies on terrorism are right on!...This is the same population that believes it was right to wait fourteen months before conducting an investigation of the worst disaster to hit American shores ever!....

I’m not kidding!...

These must be the same people who accept the fact that Captain America is dead!... These are the people you shouldn’t entrust with their own shoelaces.


Imagine. 50% of this country’s population believes that the world was created 6,000 years ago…and at that time, God created man and all the animals and the dinosaurs…and they all co-existed in the Garden of Eden until Original Sin.

I am convinced that are the same folk that used to stand outside the Horn & Hordarts with the signs saying that “The World is Coming to An End,” but in an ironic switch, if it comes to an end it will be due to these sign carriers who can’t wait for Armageddon.

So much for the impact of science in the second Millennium, Christian Era.

Good-bye Newton, Descartes, Darwin, Alfred Whitehead, Rousseau, and all the rest who tried to drum some smarts into our heads….

Science has been “dissed” in the Century of Science…a century where virtually all of the comforts we enjoy are the results of good science…and there are more scientists alive today than ever lived!...

The fact that in this day and age that half of the population finds nothing wrong with the prevailing mantra of the deists who see everything in terms of religious experience or belief, seems to put into question those verities that the rest of us have accepted predicated on our own acceptance of what we know is provable and good science.

Now, we don’t mind you holding to your own views; we just can’t countenance your influence on policy and direction for this country.

So, listen up!....

We know that the Universe is approximately fourteen billion years old!

We know that Evolutionary theory holds up and we know that the dinosaurs saw their end 50 million years ago!...

What science cannot explain is why nearly 50% of the population have no trouble believing that their faith supersedes scientific wisdom and proof and proven facts.

It is as if we have not moved beyond the Scopes Monkey Trials in the 1920’s when fundamentalist thought hewed to the idea that man and monkey are not related; and that both were created by God at the same time.

But while that is one dimension, we are faced at the same time with advances in our technology that allow us to possess the means to literally wipe the earth clean and start over—something that fits into the Messianic view of religious zealots.

The fact that science has given us this weapon of mass destruction does not seem to trouble those who accept prophecy regardless of the seeming contradictions….

In their purview, almost all the pieces are in play…

In this context, faith trumps logic, facts and analysis making it very convenient to provide biblical solutions to real world problems that plague this country today.

On contemplating this anti-intellectual view of the world,
It tends to suggest that the world may be divided into those “who do,” and “those who don’t” accept hypotheses, testing, and proof as a sound foundation for formulating scientific fact; instead, they simply dump it all on God to come up with the appropriate solution.

But is that good? Is it good for mankind? Or the future of this country?

Shouldn’t religion and science each have their own province and not interact or conflict with each other. If you want to believe, that’s fine. Believe what you want. But don’t use biblical theory to discount what we know is scientific proof. The fundamental difference between faith and science is that you accept faith without requiring proof; with science, you need hypothesis, testing, analysis, and theory and repeatability of results. Faith deals with what you believe; science, what you can prove… They don’t overlap.

Remember what happened to the Greeks when Pythagoras called the shots: It was the end of the age of scientific thought and the end of Greek ascendancy.

This willingness to accept the clash between science and religion is no minor thing; it has vast implications for the betterment of our planet. Farsighted framers of our constitution understood that religion had no place in the running of the country; that religion could be used to manipulate and control and counter what we know to be true based on sustainable proof.

What is particularly deplorable to any rational mind is the fact that this amoral government stands to benefit by exacerbating this expanding clash between faith and science. And its implications are long term and dour.

Consider that jobs in science at State and many of the agencies go wanting because there has been no push to fill these slots. (Who needs the benefits of science?)

There has been a lagging effort to underwrite science at the highest levels.

And an unwillingness to explore the evidence made possible by good science; and, perhaps most distressing of all, a tendency to even denigrate scientific findings if they conflict with their own long held religious principles or convictions…

To acknowledge that this is distressing is an understatement.

If science is denigrated by the people at the very pinnacle of government, what will trickle down? What will happen is that the majority will accept the theological arguments proffered by those who support Creationist theory at the expense of science and technology. Clearly, not only will the population suffer, America will lose its technological edge.

The world will as a result America’s leadership role probably condemning us to obloquy in a fast paced dynamically shifting world. At that precise time, Japan or China will supplant America in leadership and we will have forfeited, a situation that will leave us vulnerable to competition and military challenge.



But we will be concerned with more important things.

Like how will we recognize the End Times? When will people rise up to Heaven? What will happen to the Jews and the Muslims? What about the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse and when will they appear? And when should we pencil into our calendars Armageddon?

The other fifty percent of us must prevail or else….

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon