Science vs. Religion: Solved? (hardly. my comments below)
Despite their inevitable conflicts--science, religion and New Age spirituality are essentially compatible and complementary activities.
"Until recently it seemed that the continued expansion of scientific ways of thinking was destined to render religion extinct and spirituality unfeasible. But the example of the United States disproves this, since America is the most successful scientific nation of this era, church-going remains strong and New Age spiritualities are thriving. Therefore, despite the obvious conflicts; science, religion and spirituality are essentially compatible.”
First of all, I have a problem with the statement "America is the most" anything when the era is not over and we are already losing ground significantly to much of the world.
"Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development finds that Americans are below average in science competency. Among OECD countries, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and Mexico have lower mean scores than the US; Sweden, Hungary, Ireland, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Germany, Korea, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada and Finland, as well as students in the combined area of the European Union, have higher mean scores than the US. Denmark, France, Iceland, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Norway and Luxembourg cannot be distinguished from US performance with statistical significance." (1)
Second, you can't use a backwards looking statement as a forward looking argument. To paraphrase: "America WAS a scientific force so science and religion ARE compatible and will continue to become more so in the future?" Third, what about all of those "death of religion" articles I keep reading? Ok, this is a morass so let's stick to America as a leader in science.
America is NOT the most successful scientific nation of this era...especially when it comes to stem cell treatments.
“…since few people can afford to travel outside the country for adult stem cell treatments, ESC-crazed America, the Bangladesh of stem cells, with its focus on “treatment useless” research, and 4-8 years behind the rest of the world on available adult stem cell treatments, has become exactly that, a death row prison cell for those suffering from so-called untreatable diseases.”
From http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/screw-the-embryos-they%e2%80%99re-irrelevant/
While many nations have taken the innovation challenge to heart and put in place a host of policies to spur innovation, the United States has done little, consequently falling behind in innovation policies and risking falling behind in innovation performance as well.
via NCBI ROFL: Science vs. Religion: Solved..