In his second State of the Union address, President Barack Obama called on Americans to reclaim our identity as a people who "do big things" and pledged new federal investment, particularly for scientific research.
We'll invest in biomedical research, information technology and especially clean energy technology. ... We're telling America's scientists and engineers that if they assemble the teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we'll fund the Apollo Projects of our time.
But will Obama's call to renewed public investment in scientific research and technology run aground in the choppy seas of religion and science conflicts? Historically, religious and scientific leaders alike have seen these realms in conflict, particularly in modern times. Many observers have thought the rise of science presents religious believers an unavoidable, stark choice: intellectual integrity or intellectual sacrifice. So can America, exceptional still among industrialized nations for its high levels of religiosity, also remain exceptional in the sphere of science?
A Pew Research Center poll on science offers some complex answers to these questions. On the one hand, scientists topped the list of professions who contribute to the well being of society (70 percent "a lot"), handily trumping clergy (40 percent "a lot"). More than eight-in-10 (84 percent) said science has had a mostly positive effect on society and has made life easier for people (83 percent). Moreover, six-in-10 Americans, including majorities of all major religious groups, believe government investment in research is essential for scientific progress.
Yet this same poll found that a majority (55 percent) of Americans say science and religion are often in conflict, and 36 percent say science sometimes conflicts with their own religious beliefs. A majority of white evangelicals (52 percent) and more than four-in-10 (44 percent) Catholics agree that science sometimes conflict with their religious beliefs.
But looking below the surface, it turns out that the conflicts are limited to specific terrain. Among Americans who acknowledge a conflict between their religious beliefs and science, one area of conflict stands out: evolution (41 percent). Americans' views on this subject are telling. Roughly one-third (32 percent) believe living beings have evolved due to natural selection, 22 percent believe a supreme being guided the evolutionary process and about one-third (31 percent) they have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.
The data suggests that the new science initiatives should find strong general support among religious Americans as long as they steer clear of the issue of evolution. But even on this issue, a majority of Americans seem to have avoided the "intellectual sacrifice" allegedly demanded of them by incorporating divine participation in the evolutionary process. That move may be yet another expression of American ingenuity at work.
This article was originally posted by Dr. Jones at the Washington Post's On Faith section. To read more from Dr. Jones, find his blog, "Faith in the Numbers," here.
Follow Robert P. Jones, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/publicreligion
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36% is a high percentage of citizens committed to scientific illiteracy; that is bad for America, but it will be good for India and China. I'd say that's evolution too.
Thanks to the toxic influence of Fundamentalist religion, America's future is looking worse and worse.
Only a conflict between science and religious literalism/fundamentalism.
Of course Science is literal! Publish or Perish!
Literal Truth then means, Truth, as written. And it ain't neccesarally so that what is written is always true! Look at Wiccepedia!
I think that the concept you might be groping to reach for is "absolute Truth". And If you want the absolute truth about anything you have to look at it through the lens of more than one discipline in order to know it.
So Literal truth is easy enough to find and not finality or closure in itself. Only those who aren't interested in having their paradigms challenged will be content only with literal truth. Don't knock "experiential Truth" either, you can't learn everything from books.
Get your facts straight.
Today Creationists keep "scientists" in check.
How old is the Earth?
You cannot use design as evidence of no design.
You cannot have function in the universe without having a Maker and you cannot have a preexistingwritten word in the elements without ordering the elements.
Charles Darwin destroyed the foundation of orthodox Christianity. There is nothing left but faith in what we know could not and did not happen. Religion and science are enemies. One is a superstition; the other is a fact. One rests upon the false, the other upon the true. One is the result of fear and faith, the other of investigation and reason.
--Robert Green Ingersollm Republican Orator 1884
End of discussion right there.
This is just another meaningless poll! Hard to stop laughing! The relevant question here is - What percentage of Americans have a clue what science is??? Huge percentage of high schoolers drop out, huge percentage of those who graduate do not have passing reading and writing skills - not to mention math skills! LOL!!
If this poll matters, then the whole curriculum for every grade ought to be created by polling.
Science is our barometer and mechanism to adapt and change for the preservation not only of a culture or belief system, but for civilization itself this time around -- interconnected and overcrowded and resource intensive as it is. How sad that approximately 50 percent of us will doom the other 50 percent for a belief system built entirely on best guesses, simplistic maxims and, often, complete fraud.
Stem cell research is also hobbled because of religious views of when life begins. So instead of putting embryonic tissue into research it must be destroyed. What information we do have coming from such research is promising, but disallowed over some groups' belief and perpetrated for the donors of particular campaigns because of political agendas that somehow a lump of cells is too precious.
Zola: 'Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.'
Religion is mankind's worst plague
As I understand it, a random mutation in the adenine-guanine, cytosine, Thymine or uracil sequences can only occur in the gametes- sex cells of an organism. Massive amounts of codon sequences must be assembled and inserted into an existing genetic code for a viable random mutation to take place. Proteins take thousands of triplicate codons and so a mutation is the alteration or insertion of a set of DNA codon sequences. So an evolutionist must believe this complex new assembly of a specific protein instruction happened in the sex cells of a parent. A paradox is How could an essential protein, necessary for life suddenly come from a parent who did not have this essentiial protein? The chaperone molevcules evolving at the same time is mathematically infentessimal. Binary systems, like feed back hormones also would have to co evolve simultaneously or the creature would die. Example if adrenaline symapthetic nerves evolved independeny of parasympathetic acetyl choline nerves we could not exist. The statistical improbaility of binary feedback mechanisms evolving simulataneously from parents who lacked them is unbelievable The government should not fund theories, just science.
That is 100% FALSE....While I'm not going to waste my time attempting to educated a faith-head who copy and pasted a bunch of intelligent design talking points, I will point you in the right direction - Look up Epigenetics.
This is, of course, wrong. There are plenty of point mutations that are viable. You also aren't taking into account things like gene copies which can mutate without affecting the function of the original, viral insertion of DNA into the genome, or many other well established mechanisms for the creation of new genes.
As with every anti-evolution argument I've seen, you have to ignore a lot of current scientific knowledge in order for your argument to appear feasible.