There definitely is a conflict between science and religion

In polite society, where we try to put our best face on, and often talk around issues by doing it nicely and politely, it's often customary to adopt positions of neutrality to prevent our discussion partners whom we occaisionally disagree with, from being insulted or to establish that you are approaching a topic from a neutral position out of respect.

In the past, one such "neutral position" has been the one that goes "Science and religion are two different topics, and need not neccesarily be in conflict with one another." Sometimes, we like to add to that that because science deals with the natural world, and is merely a methodology for finding out how things works, and because religion deals with morality and philosophy, that they can't really be in conflict, because they are two entirely different topics. The statement that science and religion do not conflict is sort of a polite man's way of establishing space between religion and science, to assert that there are no conflicts, and that we either are talking science or we are talking religion, but we can't mix them.

Well, after much thought, and a newsgroup discussion, I came to the conclusion that this idea that there is no conflict between religion and science is simply not true. It may be polite to use the statement, but ultimately, it's just not true. There is plenty of conflict between religion and science.

First off, the methodology of science is specifically designed to get to the truth of the matter by seriously probing a topic, testing the results, and going where those facts take you. Religion, by contrast, dictates truth, and nothing can oppose the official dogma, not even science. In fact, the history of science and religion has shown us that religion, when it's got political power in a society, as it did during the Renaissance, often opressed science brutally. Whether we're talking Giordano Bruno, Galileo, or others, the fact is that when scientific truths are discovered which conflict with religious dogma, religion's response is to deny it, and try to supress or subvert science to silence it from contradicting faith and dogma.

Religions are made of dogmas that constantly overlap with science. The virgin Birth concept, for example, clearly says something about biology. The idea that the Soul enters the body at conception clearly has legal and biological implications. The problem is that these topics have a complete lack of scientific backing to them, and they are actually harmful when enough people who believe in them have the power, for example, to deny funding to medical research on embryonic stem cells, which could save lives and cure diseases.

It's not just science, either, it's history, too. History, though having a slightly different methodology, is nonetheless a methodology, which, like science, is designed to extract truth from fiction, and find the facts in a sea of conjecture. Religions often make historical claims, and often, these claims are directly in opposition to recorded history. Archaeology was once dominated by a pro-Christian bias, and to a degree, certain topics in history still are. But over the last century, many interesting facts concerning the ancient world have been discovered that conflict with long held religious dogmas, and have become accepted fact.

The progression of Pharoahs in Egyptian history is one of the more notable ones. In the Old Testament, the lineage of Pharoahs is listed, and for years, archaeologists associated various dates to various Pharoahs, based on the Bible, because the paradigm was that the Bible was always correct. But more recently, lineages written in the stone of ancient tombs and on buildings revealed a whole bunch of Pharoahs that the Bible skipped over, and we even found the mummies of the those individuals.

Even medicine and public health issues are not safe from Religious dogma. Remember the fury over the first birth control pills? Religious groups, particularly Catholics, protested and continue to this day to try to either outlaw contraceptives, and Evangelical Protestants have had a serious effect on US foreign aid to Africa, effectively preventing condoms from being sent to Africa to prevent AIDS. Sex education in the USA is forbidden in many places from even mentioning anything about contraception, which had led to a lot of patently false misinformation on sex being spread in some schools. One texas school taught kids that kids could get pregnant from oral sex, refering to the mythical infants conceived via filatio as Spit Babies".

So the idea that religion doesn't conflict with science really is not true. It does. It has profound effects on public life, and can even lead to dangerous outcomes. We should not discount the attempts of evangelicals to push creationism on our public schools as futile attempts. We should oppose it with the same determination that African Americans opposed Jim Crowe laws. Religions do not merely infringe on scientific facts, they infringe on historical facts, politics, education, public health, and society in general. We should stop using the notion that science and religion aren't really in conflict, and admit the truth. They clearly are, and the more people there are who accept religious dogma over scientific truth, the more opression, misinformation, and ignorance there will be.