I agree. They are the same coin, different sides.
I grew up in a devout Xtian household, as did most middle class kids back then. Mom was a Sunday school teacher, Dad was a deacon guy. Dad was also a scientist (chemist with a masters who worked for Monsanto), as were a good lot of our neighbors, all transferred to the STL area from Ohio, Michigan, and other places when Monsanto opened its world HQ in 1961. In WWII my dad worked in a small group for the Manhattan Project. At any rate, I don't recall any conflicts with religion vs science. It was the height of the Cold War, and both (D)s and (R)s were happy to okay vast expenditures on space, weaponry, science, and so on to win over the USSR. Science then was considered almost like a god. I had to do a report on evolution when I was in 5th grade and 10 years old. I got an A on it, and no one screamed that evolution was just some made-up political/liberal bullshit.
But then came the 60s, and protesters of the VN War saw science as the enemy. Remember the hatred aimed at Dow Chemical? People got crazy about vaccines as poison, natural foods without pesticides, and a revolution against science began. It was adopted by lower-level thinkers and carried on into the 21st Century. Both sides share the blame in our idiotic fear and hate of science.
If you want your civilization to devolve, just let the religionists have control. Don't believe that? Ask the Arabs what happened to their supremacy in astronomy, science, and math.
"Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals." -- Mark Twain
Doc Dutch (10-19-2020)
Lot of fancy words there chap, but not much in the way of clarity or understanding.
The red shift of photons from distant galaxies is observable and measurable.
The cosmic microwave background is observable in the radio wave electromagnetic spectrum.
Big bang nucleosynthesis of light elements probably started out as a mathematical prediction, but it has been confirmed by spectral analysis of the cosmos.
Those are all predictions resulting from big bang theory which have been repeatedly tested.
I do not rank the big bang theory up there with evolution by natural selection or quantuum mechanics in terms of degree of scientific confidence. We are still clueless about dark energy. But big bang theory makes predictions which can be tested to support or refute the theory. That is well within the realm of a good, conventional, testable scientific theory
Isaiah 6:5
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
Into the Night (10-20-2020)
True, but religion is just a tool. The main reason societies devolve is because one side drowns out the other creating single-party authoritarian state be it LW or RW.
Failure to respect different points of view is bad, but seeking to assert a single dominant view always leads to excesses and eventual implosion. After two world wars in one century the US used it's considerable influence to spread democracy to both Europe and Asian. Most wars stopped once countries realized they'd be better off talking to each other and making a shitload of money. The areas of the world where war still exists is due to a huge disparity in access to this trade network. Shinto businessmen don't give a shit about Mormon or Catholic businessmen because they know it doesn't matter as long as it doesn't adversely affect profit.
"Hatred is a failure of imagination" - Graham Greene, "The Power and the Glory"
ThatOwlWoman (10-20-2020)
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