Science Versus Religion: They are not Opposites

I am a scientist.  Well I am actually an engineer, but I follow the scientific principles when I observe the world around me.  Science is the logical processing and study of the universe. Science is the development theories and hypotheses based on empirical, observed, data.  It is merely a way to collect everything we hear, see, smell, taste, touch, or otherwise observe, and create models of the world that fit that data.  Science is not a religion.  It is not a belief system of any kind.  If your religion says Jesus walked on water, or all humans descend from Adam and Eve and not primates, or Muhammad is the last prophet of God, or Zeus lived on Mount Olympus and controlled thunder and lightning, that's fine.  Science is not out to say whether religious scripture is true or false, or determine which religion, if any, is the correct religion.

Science and Religion are Apples and Oranges

This concept is lost on many people.  They see science as an attack on their religion.  The Bible says all humans descended from Adam and Eve, not primates, so the theory of evolution must be false.  This is improper thinking.  Regardless of what the Bible says, the observable data - fossil records, genetic analysis, etc. - points to man descending from apes, and apes from other mammals, and all animals, insects, and plant life from single-celled organisms.  That cannot be argued.  The data is the data.  If you believe that man still descended from Adam and Eve, and the Earth is only a few thousand years old, then keep believing that.  I am not saying that is false, I am saying the observable world does not provide us any evidence of this.  This may seem like I am playing semantics, but there is a clear boundary between what really happened in the past, and what the data tells us happened in the past.  As hard as we try to understand the universe, the past, present, and future, the nature of the world is that we can never be 100% certain any theories we come up with are correct.  All scientific theories are always one dissenting data point away from being disproven.

If people thought of science in this way, there would be far less anger and resentment towards it from certain religious groups.  I find it remarkable that in the age of global communication, space travel, atomic power, and machines designed to probe particles smaller than a single electron, that there is still such a strong resentment to science and the education system.  Mankind is, by a wide margin, the most successful and adaptable animal to ever exist on the face of the Earth due to scientific advancement, yet we still argue whether evolution is right.  It is maddening.

Science is Misunderstood by the Public

I decided to write this after coming across a disturbing article regarding teaching children about evolution and climate change in Kentucky.  The Kentucky Department of Education has developed a new set of teaching guidelines called the Next Generation Science Standards, an attempt to modernize the scientific information being presented to students, including teaching about evolution and climate change.  The government is fearful of being left passed over by tech companies and industry in favor of neighboring states who have more progressive policies in place for teaching science to students.  Here is what the Next Generation Science Standards aims to accomplish:




Sounds like a win-win to me.  The state gets more investment and money, and the children get a better education.  You would think everyone would be on-board with this initiative.  Instead, this program is being attacked by some Christians in the state such as Baptist minister Mike Singleton, calling evolution "a lie that has led to drug abuse, suicide and other social afflictions."  Singleton goes on to say,

“Outsiders are telling public school families that we must follow the rich man’s elitist religion of evolution, that we no longer have what the Kentucky Constitution says is the right to worship almighty God.  Instead, this fascist method teaches that our children are the property of the state.”

The sheer ignorance of this argument is so glaring that it is hard to not just laugh it off as the ramblings of the insane.  the Next Generation Science Standards have nothing to do with the teachings of the church, they are only in regards to what students learn in public school.  Mr. Singleton is saying that the state should have no authority over his religion, yet in the same sentence demands that the church have total authority over the education system of the state.  His argument is xenophobic, and frankly, against one of the core principles on which this country was founded.  It is also blatantly false, and shows he has no understanding of the concept of fascism.  Here is the actual definition of fascism from merriam-webster.com:

"a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition"

This plan to teach children about science, to teach them not just what has been learned by others, but how to learn, is the opposite of fascism.  What Singleton is advocating, an education system dictated by the church, his church, is far closer to fascism than teaching science is.

If it ended with this one man, I would not be concerned.  There will always be ignorant people in the world.  But other people continued the attack on science.  Science critic Dena Stewart-Gore also provided this gem, saying these new policies will marginalize religious students and lead to other students bullying them:

"The way socialism works is it takes anybody that doesn't fit the mold and discards them... we are even talking genocide and murder here, folks."

I just love when I hear arguments like this, because it illuminates their true ignorance.  The words 'fascism' and 'socialism' get thrown around together all the time whenever the government is involved, yet they are not the same thing, not even close.  For one thing, socialism is an economic system, not a political one, and secondly, the goal of fascism is the opposite of socialism.  Fascism wants to consolidate power to a dictator, while socialism wants to distribute the power to everyone equally.  They could not be further from each other.  This policy is neither socialist or fascist, and it is most certainly not both.

Religion is Misused Regularly

So after getting infuriated by this article, I was debating whether or not to write about it.  A few days passed, and then I was treated to this video on YouTube:



Look, I am in no way trying to ridicule anyone's religious beliefs.  But we cannot apply that thought process to education.  It is not scientific.  It is the opposite of scientific.  There is literally no physical evidence that dragons ever existed.  Science is the study of the observable, so seeing as there is no physical evidence of dragons, science says that as far as we can understand at this point, there never were dragons.  This doesn't stop this author from insisting dragons existed, and provides his own version of proof:

God is infallible.  The Bible is the word of God.  Dragons are mentioned in the Bible.  Therefore, dragons must have existed, despite the lack of any physical evidence.

This thought process is neither logical nor scientific.  You are free to preach about dragons and demons and Satan in church, but this way of thinking has no place in a classroom.  Trying to force religion into a science class is no different than demanding physical evidence of God in a church.  There is a reason the First Amendment to the US Constitution was written, to make sure neither of these scenarios come to pass.  Let's all try to be civil and keep the church out of public schools and the state out of the church.