This is NOT Your Mom's Blog

According to a recent, article in Scientific American Magazine “U.S. adults are less willing to accept evolution and the big bang as factual than adults in other industrial countries.”  The article goes on to say that ‘In short, religious beliefs require respondents to discard scientific facts”

The Church has a long standing issue with science.  To wit in 1633, Galileo Galilei, an Italian scientist, was delivered before the dreaded Roman Inquisition to be tried on charges of heresy. He was denounced, according to a formal statement, “for holding as true the false doctrine . . . that the sun is the center of the world, and immovable, and that the earth moves!” The statement went on to read that “the proposition that the sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and… heretical, because it is expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture!” Galileo was found guilty and forced to renounce his views. Ill and broken in spirit, he was sentenced to a life of perpetual imprisonment and penance.

Almost 400 years later, When presented with the statement “human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,” just 45 percent of US respondents indicated “true.” Compare this figure with the affirmative percentages in Japan (78), Europe (70), China (69) and South Korea (64). Only 33 percent of Americans agreed that “the universe began with a big explosion.”

A graduate student in Georgia is suing Augusta State University after she was told she must undergo a remediation program due to her beliefs on homosexuality and transgendered persons. According to the school, “The Counselor Education Program is grounded in the core principles of the American Counseling Association and the American School Counselor Association, which defines the roles and responsibilities of professional counselors in its code of ethics,” the statement read. “The code is included in the curriculum of the counseling education program, which states that counselors in training have the same responsibility as professional counselors to understand and follow the ACA Code of Ethics.’ The Code of Ethics prohibits counselors from discriminating based on a number of factors, including gender identity and sexual orientation. “Counselors do not discriminate against clients, students, employees, supervisees, or research participants in a manner that has a negative impact on these persons,” the code says.

However, the student insists that her religious beliefs trump the science and the accepted code of ethics.

Quoting the Scientific American article, “I don’t know which is more dangerous, that religious beliefs force some people to choose between knowledge and myth or that pointing out how religion can purvey ignorance is taboo. “

What do you think?