Do you think things like religion and politics retard biological and scientific advancements?

Question

The question pretty much sums it up, but just to clarify.

For example (please don't limit your response to just this example), the tendancy for people to disregard the advancments science is making because it interferes or disagrees with their belief in maybe God or something more specific in their religion.

This is not a question for any type of essay or school work because it is summer break and that would be to risky of a question for a teacher to ask in a public school anyways. The reason I am asking the question is because...Yes I do feel this way about certain things and I wanted other people's opinions.

I was in no way degrading anyone's beliefs or the way they view the advancement of science as an advantage or disadvantage. I was simply looking for opinions.

Answer 1

Actually, if you study the history of scientific development, it's been the periods of history with the most intensely religious population that have been the ones with the most profound advances in the arts and sciences both; and specifically, those focused on the Judeo-Christian ethic.

On top of that, it's been in eras that combine that with strong centralized powerbases that have really blossomed: the kings or merchant princes or central governing body have (for whatever reason) been patrons of the arts and sciences, funding them out of their resources.

There are solid reasons why this should be what you expect, if you think about it. A religion that teaches that the universe is created by a God that is perfectly reasonable, and created the universe to run by reasonable, predictable rules is a religion that gives you a basis to hope that there are discoverable rules that can approximate the activities of the universe to arbitrarily close precision, even if never perfectly so. A religion that expects its adherents to think and study encourages (duh!) thought and study, and thus the development of science. There's more that could be said, but that's a good start...

Conversely, most political structures have needs that must be met to stay in power: the people must be convinced that they are adequately fed, housed, clothed, etc, or they'll be easily moved to rebellion. Thus, a political structure run by individuals whose IQ is higher than their shoe size will be busy funding R&D to find newer, more effective ways of providing for the population, and will be funding the arts & such to keep the population feeling that they are indeed blessed with reasons to continue to grow and develop.

Sigh... You might look at the technical advances of the so called "Dark Ages" or the era of Medieval Europe. You might be surprized how much scientific and artistic advancement went on during that period... I know I was, when I really did my homework...

Answer 2

Stop with the religious fools stuff. It doesn't help.

Yes, religion and poitics is affecting science.

Stem cell research is the current example. No funding to anyone using new cell lines. It really slows the rate of research.

Same thing has happened several times in history (Galileo, eg).

But advancelment can;t be stopped, becasue there is always someone willing to take the risk.

Answer 3

YES, but we have to let the religious fools do what they like so we can also do what we want... its called mutial respect... the only way to solve this problem is to get everyone to feel the same way about a given thing, mass genoside or somthing like that, and we can see clearly that this is a bad idea... so for now we should deal with it and try to get our piont across and change these peoples minds in a peaceful way, and besides part of the fun and challenge is to be able to do great things in spite of the oppositions...

Answer 4

All the time, even today there are some that want to take us back to the dark ages.

Answer 5

No