by Will M Prise

Created on: July 11, 2008

The battle between religion and science

Religion has acted as a tremendous hindrance to the advancement of scientific thought and intellectual freedom. Scientific thought is dear to modern man, as he has found that invention is a great liberator, which has placed him in the car, the boat, and the plane. Scientific thought speeds man forward, while religion strangles him from behind.

Religion had brutally punished scientific voices of the past; it had a bad habit of torturing to death any scientist that disagreed with it. Religion has not contributed hand notes to scientific thought but rather it has mutilated that hand with a thumb screw.
When science stood up to speak, religion placed it in the guillotine.

In the name of my (God/Gods/Creator/Ethereal Being) I kill thee

Religion also has the nasty habit of killing any group of people nearby that may happen to disagree with it. It is easy to imagine that many knowledge-driven but not military-driven societies have been completely slaughtered, maimed, tortured and/or sexually victimized all in the name of pure, good ole, sweet religion. Should a breed of chronic scientists every have existed near a group of chronic religious fanatics, in only few years or decades, it is easy to imagine the fanatics surprise slaughtering the scientists: religious fanatics dancing in their victim's blood and making jewelry of their science-inclined bones.

Those slaughtered or enslaved by wide-eyed hatched-wielding fanatics don't have much independence left, consequently.

We can't learn that now

Schools that spend one to two hours a day teaching religious information to students often lag far behind schools that teach zero hours of religious information. This is a simple point of economic theory and mathematical principles. Eight hours a day of science, math, and reading leads to academic proficiency faster than only six hours a day of science, math, and reading does. Furthermore, teaching religious principles often distracts from proficiency in other fields, for as the students ruminate, contemplate, and ponder the mysterious workings of the universe, they become less interested in figuring out the proper way to spell 'femur.' However ... purely academic schools often discourage and limit religious rumination. Thus, only academic subjects and their details can fill the students' minds.

Again, religion acts a distraction from potentially more valuable intellectual pursuits and stifles independent (as academic) thinking.

I am so ashamed

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