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?
My belief is, the more we find out about the beautiful and complex operation of our Universe the easier it becomes to believe in an all powerful ONE, a CREATOR, if you will. And for the sake of progress HE keeps letting us peek under the veiled curtain of existence but without fail always with the proviso that things as we understand them will become more beautiful along with the increased complexity. I submit the double helix as a trivial example.
Our understanding of Science, particularly Physics has always been limited at any given point in history by our mathematical prowess as human beings . Some scarce few humans are blessed with the necessary extraordinary gray matter and thereby they have the advantage over us. They have the vision and the capability to imagine alternative ways of looking at things, Their abilities include creating theories of their own or in cooperation with other smart people that corresponds to their concepts for predicting the performance of natural phenomena supported by a consistent set of mathematics that unequivocally support them in all testable areas. The development of modern computers has been an accelerating factor in the expansion of our knowledge.
Educated people can understand at some level what they are talking about, others just accept popular opinion as “truth” along with advances and changes as they occur, so long as they are generally approved by most of the science community. Still others don’t have the foggiest idea what is being explained to them and still others haven’t the slightest interest in Physics and know and care next to nothing about it. I would be very careful about equally weighting the opinions of all the people responding to a poll on the subject of GOD/Faith vs Science. Besides, opinions don’t create truth.
Thomas Carlyle once said
“I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance”
If you are even slightly knowledgeable about measurements in Physics you know that just the attempt to discern a physical fact can change the results. Well give us credit for at least being aware of our influence on our own experiments. The new CERN Collider is our latest attempt by man to probe GOD’S plan. It is so large it crosses international borders all in an effort to find a particle type that was theorized back in 1964 called the “Higgs boson” It cost a fortune to build this thing and I hope it works because it will, as has each surprising experimental result in the past added to our knowledge. I am sure the Collider will raise more questions than it answers. And so we continue on our journey of evolution and understanding.
From Einstein’s original four dimensional model (3 space + time., back in 1907) we are now at ten dimensions plus time which makes it 11 total dimensions. Even The Big Bang is now in question by the Membrane and string theorists.
So I ask the simple question, are scientists starting to become convinced that they will never find all the answerers and will finally be forced in the end to rely at some point, can I use the word, on FAITH. I submit they will have to, the Universe is too big and we can no longer afford their new toys.