My contribution to a family e-mail discussion:
I
would like to get back to the question of how to prevent Religion
from bugging Science. These disciplines have different ground rules:
*
The Constitution guarantees Freedom of Religion; it does not
guarantee Freedom of Science.
*
Religion is funded by its adherents; Science is funded by the public,
either through taxes or through the profits on the goods and services
that they buy.
The
relation between the two is asymmetric. Religion can claim an
influence on Science while Science has no offsetting claim.
Compounded
on this is the fact that people believe what they want to believe,
regardless of the facts – psychologists call this phenomenon
cognitive dissonance (think of the Birthers, who believe that Pres.
Obama was born in Kenya).
In
sum, Religion can claim a right, as well as a duty, to root out evil
(as they see it) in the practice and teaching of Science. For
example, the campaign against stem-cell research.
One
final point: almost all of the areas of Science that religion objects
to have public policy implications, such as climate change, fetal
development, homosexuality. Evolution is, I think, unique in that the
only argument is on its teaching. Here a compromise could be reached.
Just as astronomy could not be taught without Copernicus (which the
Church once forbid), biology cannot be taught without Darwin.
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