Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
A topic that probably causes among the most heated discussions on this blog is the attempt to either displace evolution from Public School Curriculum, or to at least give “intelligent design” equal footing to evolution. My own opinion is that “intelligent design”, or “Creationism” as some call it, has no place in our public school system. Those who would force it on our schools would be destroying the Constitutional separation of Church and State. We saw a blog post by Professor Turley a week ago discussing some crazy State Legislator in Missouri introducing a bill to teach “Creationism” as a scientific theory and to teach “Evolution” as a philosophy, almost all who commented were not only outraged, but some disparaged Missouri as a backward state. A few of the comments belittled religion in general. http://jonathanturley.org/2013/02/15/missouri-legislator-introduces-bill-to-teach-creationism-as-a-scientific-theory-and-to-teach-evolution-as-a-philosophy/ . Another blog post by Professor Turley in October 2012, about Missouri Senate Candidate Todd Akin brought a firestorm of angry comments, also disparaging Missouri. http://jonathanturley.org/2012/10/15/akin-disproves-evolution/#comments Interestingly this Conservative State voted for Todd Akin’s opponent when Election Day came around.
Earlier on April 1st, 2012 David Drumm (Nal) did a guest blog titled “The Evolutionary Gorilla in the Room” http://jonathanturley.org/2012/04/01/the-evolutionary-gorilla-in-the-room/ and received almost 240 comments. Now in truth this was an excellent guest blog and certainly drew a lot of discussion. But as I perused the comments, all 238 of them, I noticed something that I think is worth discussing. More than half of the comments were between Gene Howington and Dredd as a continuance of their ongoing argument about Dredd’s microbial theories. I must admit that when it comes to the scientific aspects of biology, I tune out as quickly as Lawrence Rafferty does when Calculus is raised. Another long time regular Bron did have more than a few comments as he tried to insinuate Ayn Rand into the discussion as usual. J Now here is the interesting part, on all three of those blogs there was nary a voice raised in defending “intelligent design.” While here at the blog many of the usual suspects are hostile to organized religion, we do have more than a few “religious” people who drop by and comment. Given the tradition of contentious, yet “civil” discussion here how can that be? I think I have a possible answer to that coming from a study done at MIT, by a renowned Physicist and I must admit I found his answer surprising.
In a Huffington Post article dated 2/12/13 (Darwin’s birthday), Mark Tegmark, MIT Physicist, wrote this to begin his article titled: “Celebrating Darwin: Religion and Science Are closer Than You Think”:
“He looked really uneasy. I’d just finished giving my first lecture of 8.282, MIT’s freshman astronomy course, but this one student stayed behind in my classroom. He nervously explained that although he liked the subject, he worried that my teaching conflicted with his religion. I asked him what his religion was, and when I told him that it had officially declared there to be no conflict with Big Bang cosmology, something amazing happened: his anxiety just melted away right in front of my eyes! Poof!
This gave me the idea to start the MIT Survey on Science, Religion and Origins, which we’re officially publishing today in honor of Charles Darwin’s 204th birthday. We found that only 11 percent of Americans belong to religions openly rejecting evolution or our Big Bang. So if someone you know has the same stressful predicament as my student, chances are that they can relax as well. To find out for sure, check out the infographic below.”
I frankly don’t know how I could present the “infographic” chart from the article because the technology is beyond me so I suggest you follow this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-tegmark/religion-and-science-distance-between-not-as-far-as-you-think_b_2664657.html and see it for yourself because I think it is of great interest to those, who like myself are nonplussed by the resurgence of religious Fundamentalism, The “infographic” is done as a circular chart that lists all the religions practiced in this country, their percentage of the population and each religious belief’s official view of Evolution. Only about 11% percent of the religious population of this country belong to faiths that are opposed to Evolution, For instance:
Catholics are 23.9% of the population and their official teachings see no conflict with Doctrine.
Methodists represent 6.1% of the population and feel evolution is “not inconsistent with religious doctrine.
Lutherans represent 4.6% of the population and of them only 1.4% (The Missouri Synod) are opposed to the theory of Evolution.
People with no Church affiliation represent 16.4% of the population and see no conflict.
Jews represent merely 1.7% of the population and 1.3% see no conflict with Evolution, while the other .4% have no official position on it.
There are conflicts between the various Baptist and Presbyterian Denominations, with some accepting Evolution and some rejecting it. Again please look at the chart at the link because I guarantee you will find it as absorbing as I did.
What are we to make of this data which demonstrates that of the various religious beliefs that make up our country, 89% seemingly have no religious conflict with Evolution? Yet Evolution has become a major issue. Professor Tegmark comments:
“So why is this small fundamentalist minority so influential? How can some politicians and school-board members get reelected even after claiming that our 14 billion-year-old universe might be only about 6,000 years old? “That’s like claiming that my 90-year-old aunt is only 20 minutes old. It’s tantamount to claiming that if you watch this video of a supernova explosion in the Centaurus A Galaxy about 10 million light-years away, you’re seeing something that never happened, because light from the explosion needs 10 million years to reach Earth. Why isn’t making such claims political suicide?
Part of the explanation may be a striking gap between Americans’ personal beliefs and the official views of the faiths to which they belong. Whereas only 11 percent belong to religions openly rejecting evolution, Gallup reports that 46 percent believe that God created humans in their present form less than 10,000 years ago. Why is this “belief gap” so large? Interestingly, this isn’t the only belief gap surrounding a science-religion controversy: whereas 0 percent of Americans belong to religions arguing that the Sun revolves around Earth, Gallup reports that as many as 18 percent nonetheless believe in this theory that used to be popular during the Middle Ages. This suggests that the belief gaps may have less to do with intellectual disputes and more to do with an epic failure of science education.”
Professor Tegmark’s is of the opinion that scientific education in America has been a failure and thus we have the gap between religious belief and science. I think his explanation is a rather middle of the road one and to that extent I disagree with him. The science education I received in elementary and high school was excellent, even if I was too lazy a student to study much. How much I do know scientifically and how much those peers of my age know is quite adequate. There has been a two pronged attack on our educational system that began in the late 60’s. A conscious effort to “dumb down” the people of America has been in effect since then to make them more pliable and easier to fool. The first part has been cutting funding and the second part has been attacking the curriculum. If you add to it the evolving of the Internet and the changes that has wrought, we see that it is not that the scientific education has failed, but the political support for it.
Most of us assume when we are told by someone that they are deeply religious and know their “bible” front to back, that they are truthful. I believe that in their hearts most feel they are being truthful, but their truth falls far short of reality. Many people don’t read their entire holy documents, but instead rely on their religious leaders to guide them as to what is “true” and what is important. We know that some religious leaders focus on what THEY think is important like The Book of Revelations and they don’t “preach” the Jesus who gave The Sermon on the Mount” I think there are many, like Professor Tegmark’s first year student who didn’t know just what his denomination believed about the Cosmos. This is not just true for Christians, but I believe it is true for Jews, Muslims, Hindu’s and Buddhists.
Another problem is our mainstream media plays a role in religious ignorance. I addressed this in July 2011. I was writing about the many TV documentaries being produced on networks like The History Channel and even ABC’s Primetime-Nightline which ran a series titled “Battle With the Devil”, a show that “investigates the belief in satanic will or possession by a demon”. Because the Religious Right in this country is so well funded, they speak with a loud voice. Our media, corporate controlled, fears anything that might hurt the bottom line, so they cater to those with the loud voices and the money behind them. http://jonathanturley.org/2011/07/23/fundamentalist-religion-and-tv-documentaries-a-problem/ What we see then is that a population if 11% in our country, that is working to force their silly, medieval beliefs onto all of us.
Two days ago Professor Tegmark followed up with a second Huffington Post article relating his experiences after he posted his first article. Here are some snippets from it:
“I’d been warned. A friend cautioned me that if we went ahead and posted our MIT Survey on Science, Religion and Origins, I’d get inundated with hate-mail from religious fundamentalists who believe our universe to be less than 10,000 years old. We posted it anyway, and the vitriolic responses poured in as predicted. But to my amazement, most of them didn’t come from religious people, but from angry atheists! I found this particularly remarkable since I’m not religious myself. I have three criticisms of these angry atheists:
1)They help religious fundamentalists:
A key point I wanted to make with our survey is that there are two interesting science-religion controversies: a) Between religion & atheism b) Between religious groups who do & don’t attack science
2)They could use more modesty:
If I’ve learned anything as a physicist, it’s how little we know with certainty. In terms of the ultimate nature of reality, we scientists are ontologically ignorant. For example, many respected physicists believe in the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, according to which a fundamentally random process called “wavefunction collapse” occurs whenever you observe something. This interpretation has been criticized both for being anthropocentric (quantum godfather Niels Bohr famously argued that there’s no reality without observation) and for being vague (there’s no equation specifying when the purported collapse is supposed to happen, and there’s arguably no experimental evidence for it).
3)They should practice what they preach:
Most atheists advocate for replacing fundamentalism, superstition and intolerance by careful and thoughtful scientific discourse. Yet after we posted our survey report, ad hominem attacks abounded, and most of the caustic comments I got (including one from a fellow physics professor) revealed that their authors hadn’t even bothered reading the report they were criticizing. Just as it would be unfair to blame all religious people for what some fundamentalists do, I’m obviously not implying that all anti-religious people are mean-spirited or intolerant. However, I can’t help being struck by how some people on both the religious and anti-religious extremes of the spectrum share disturbing similarities in debating style.
Having watched the religious debates that go on here continually, I do think that Professor Tegmark has a valid point. Although I am a Deist, I have no affection for either organized religion, or for the “holy books” that make up their various canons. However, I have in my life experienced what I would call the ineffable, so I personally won’t preclude the fact that there is a “Creative Force” of some kind that drives this Universe. Please understand me in this, because as Tegmark saw even his peers criticized him far too quickly: Because I don’t preclude doesn’t mean I think there is one, I just won’t rule it out. From what I know of modern physics in its current fashion there is the belief that the Universe is a lot “weirder” than science at the beginning of the 20th Century imagined it to be.
While I understand that most of us are angry and fed up with those 11% who believe in something like Genesis, perhaps we should aim our fire directly at that group of benighted fools and accept that others might be more approachable. What do you think? As I finish this I have a vision in my head of having to duck, where do you think that comes from?
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
`
“Excuse me please, if this post was supposed to be about circumcision.” (Dredd to Mike S)
lol … now that was funny
“Add the factor that microbe viruses provide the genes to humans with which to do the switching, and you can throw away grandpa’s biology book.”
“microbe viruses “? Making shit up again I see. There is no such thing as “microbe viruses”. There are microbes and there are viruses and they aren’t even close to the same thing. Also, you apparently you can’t distinguish between natural and engineered systems. Your assertion that viruses “provide the genes to humans with which to do the switching” shows a complete and utter lack of understanding of how homologous recombination works both in nature and as a process harnessed in the lab for gene splicing. The “viral genes” don’t determine how homologous recombination works in the sense you seem to think. That is determined by various enzymes and how they repair gene breaks and how the gene broke in the first place (a single strand versus a double strand break) combined with the how the enzyme in question resects the damaged/cut gene. How these cut ends are resected by said enzymes determines whether there is genetic crossover or not. If the enzyme creates the right kind of structure for bonding? Crossover. If not? None. It is the enzymes that provide the mechanism for switching. In the lab, it’s human selected genes that make the cells back into totipotent cells. In nature, it’s random chance depending upon which enzymes and genes happen to lurking about the gene break.
It’s not the “viral genes”.
You just don’t get the basics.
That’s why you keep quoting stuff you don’t understand, conflate it into something it isn’t, and I hang you with it. It really is a shame you read so much biology and have garnered such a poor grasp of the subject. But suppose this just proves that even the autodidactic can have bad teachers.
Mike S,
A couple of new myths have been exposed at Think Progress:
(Apocalypse Not: The Oscars, The Media And The Myth of ‘Constant Repetition of Doomsday Messages’ on Climate). I think the issue of human civilization rendering itself extinct would be an issue Origin of Species thumpers and Bible thumpers would both be zealously involved in.
Did God make mass murders, or did natural selection do it?
Excuse me please, if this post was supposed to be about circumcision.
Mike,
Divine guidance … said the spider to the fly 😉
Mike S,
I was about to make a follow up comment to your reply; However, after reading IDEALIST707’s mini-documentary of you, I decided to take a different approach:
I give up Mike S, you win.
Bob Kauten,
You were right: Mike S had other plans for this thread.
It is interesting that Dr. Roger Penrose believes that human consciousness is governed by quantum mechanics, that Dr. Ernst Mayr believes human consciousness is a fatal mutation, and that Dr. Per-Olov Löwdin explained how quantum mechanics are “unstable” or contrary to our understanding of non-quantum objects, and therefore make human DNA functions somewhat unstable.
Especially in the sense that stem cells go into and out of a “magic state” more regularly than previously thought … while morphing into human brain cells (Stem Cell Malfunction A Quantum Toxin Source?). Add the factor that microbe viruses provide the genes to humans with which to do the switching, and you can throw away grandpa’s biology book.
ID, I recall 5 years and a scosh ago first coming to this site and finding threads that were a mini-education in some aspect of the law with citations and argument worthy of any courtroom or brief. There were also a lot of recipes and more discussion about food and vacations than one might imagine. I think the technical arguments have lessened somewhat but so have the recipes. There’s more politics/economics now and there seems to be a wider base of specialized knowledge present to draw upon. Many posters have also moved on. The number of posting (declared) females is up by a good 250-300% off and on.
Things change. An open-door policy invites change, the blawg is a dynamic system due to that. I wonder now and then if some of the long-time posters think the difference is positive or negative. I’ve always found the blawg and the commenters interesting so while I may lurk for various personal reasons I tend to return when I am able. If you stick around you will see more change than you might imagine.
Regarding your specific comment about my posting, I post what I like and most of it is personal opinion or ad hominem over time. I have very little in the way of professional training to bring to bear.
“Thus, in the end, I remain the only one responsible for the belief system I have chosen and have no one to blame or thank but myself.”
Blouise,
This is as it should be, but so few want to take responsibility for themselves. Hence the two seemingly dichotomous pharases:
“The Devil made me do it.”
“God commanded me to do it.”
All variations on the same theme.
BTW: You are one hell of a tough Scrabble player.
“You were singing another tune further up thread complaing about something which no one had understood, and also deploring the many kidnapping of your threads meaning and its purpose.”
“You then retired, claiming that a blogger had no special rights to steer the comments made (even if they appear to be a kidnapping of it?), and that it was only for the blogger to watch passively.”
“Shall we go back to worshipping MikeS? He is a treasure of great value, but no ambitions to be a politician and certainly not God. He has feet of clay, just as we do, admits to crying easily (wish I could, but I would never stop if I did), and has his life to cherish. So do we our own rightfully so.”
ID707,
All of your statements about me above are true, save for the idolatry part, because I certainly have feet of clay. Now what do you, who knows Gestalt Philosophy and Berne’s Transactional analysis so well (factual statement, not snark) make of those seeming inconsistencies? Let me add that my therapist and the people who trained me, felt I was the best patient to work in Gestalt that they had ever seen. Further that Gestalt Philosophy informs my life. So how come my actions seems so inconsistent? Think about it before shooting from the hip as is your wont.
Let me further add that none of the comments I’ve made on this thread were directed at you negatively, since I feel affection for the you that presents himself on this blog. In a real gunfight those that shoot from the hip usually got shot.
MikeS,
Provocative. Kidding, The real purpose of showing the importance of separation of Church and State……..
You were singing another tune further up thread complaing about something which no one had understood, and also deploring the many kidnapping of your threads meaning and its purpose.
I remained silent, but you received considerable number of comments, to put it politely, which disagreed as to the purpose of the thread. Basis for their claim was the title as one piece supporting their views.
You then retired, claiming that a blogger had no special rights to steer the comments made (even if they appear to be a kidnapping of it?), and that it was only for the blogger to watch passively.
(Some mention of correcting misinterpretations was I believe not included) Remarkably few opportunities were offered to meet such incorrect ideas/interpretations etc.. I believe.
Could this be due to that few even discussed your blog per se, but had instead had established their own thread?
Now for a final diss. Not snarks, but facts.
In discussions you have been philosophical about your low number of commenters generally. 10, 15, 20, 35?
Now you have hit the jackpot and have been perhaps uneasy as to this event happening. I would in all likelihood have done the same or worse.
But I am not a GB and don’t want to be anything here except myself. Glad in my commonality and my uniqueness, Even my bacterial, viruses etc are different from Dredd’s. I am I, and that is sufficient. I have nothing to prove here anymore, as I did before. I enjoy the illusion that my words are sometimes read, but that is a common trait. Notice how many people talk IRL.
They stop listening when they start talking. That is akin to many other practices, but your impatience limits my exemplification (your being all here, not MikeS).
Perfect, I don’t aspire to the impossible. So I expect and can forgive myself for my mistakes. Can all say that here?
It ends here. Whew, I say.
My potatoes are long over-cooked by now.
Just to show that my comment sentence was truncated and soundbited, I will re-post it in its entirety. The sentence in question reads:
“Where have the old days gone when “serious” blogs were devoted to judicial matters (possible, but there has always been MikeS).”
Now I by adding MikeS as a serious producer of primarily social articles of serious value, then I assumed that the sarcasm was understood.
Particularly when the preceding sentences by me are read first.
My memory says that beside an occasional MikeS blog, the most was posted for laughs to use as a dart target, or cats who must be found, etc.
But the primary meat was meant for lawyers and the other judicial followers in different capacities (both in work life and here at JT’s)
I wonder what else seems foolish standing on its own. Kicks are oftest returned by kicks. Is that too cryptic?
===============================
idealist7071, February 25, 2013 at 10:19 am
What comments, what a blog this has become, where to begin?
I’ll take in brief separate posts.
Where have the old days gone when “serious” blogs were devoted to judicial matters (possible, but there has always been MikeS). The comments generated were, if not citing arcania, were cryptic, expressed in code only known the longtimers here, and seldom more than two lines long.
Compare these old days, with today’s blog, although this one is by MikeS, who as usual brings up deep subjects. MikeS may notice the number of comments generated. I would suggest that the numbers in great part are due to the import of the words in his title: Religion, Evolution, and Science.
Those simple, almost all encompassing words is open sesame to almost all commenters here. Only bots excepted. (Snark?)
At any rate, the numbers increase (generally over all blogs?).
The true from the heart content has increased. Comments are more personal.
Fewer commenters shout for “proof”, evidence, etc. in challenging these personal excerpts from the lives of others. Self-referential posts were as a rule condemned as unworthy of posting when I arrived. I have as you noticed have self-referencïal parts in most of my posts. Many if not most follow suit today.
Are most of you glad that you are now free to be humans in the first hand, and secondarily debaters dedicated to the “logical”?
Even “numinance” may be expounded upon in the blog NOW. So far have we come.
It pleases me. And that is sufficient reason to post this.
ÉND OF REPOSTED COMMENT
Again, you get kicked when someone feels pain at your words. But of course where it hurts is never revealed in the kickbacker’s comment.
And that is chicken, speaking colloqually from 1950 or thereabouts.
As for kidding, the double meaning escapes me, and I am not ashamed to admit it.
If I have to elucidate by expanding my comments above I will do so, but out of consideration of other sinners here, and of course in service of civility and the Professor, I won’t for now.
I prefer to refrain from naming names, practices and weaknesses. Not that that consideration has often been offered to me. And I do feel the blog has become better, for my “contribution” of self-referential personal comments related to the subject. Etc etc as said in previous comment to the herein cited.
Shall we go back to worshipping MikeS? He is a treasure of great value, but no ambitions to be a politician and certainly not God. He has feet of clay, just as we do, admits to crying easily (wish I could, but I would never stop if I did), and has his life to cherish. So do we our own rightfully so.
His esteem is for other things than we esteem occasionally, (but in all, I think we should keep him—-said in jest of course).
I
Mike,
That which I love about separation of Church and State is that the State cannot tell me what to believe nor can it interfere with others trying to convince me what to believe. Thus, in the end, I remain the only one responsible for the belief system I have chosen and have no one to blame or thank but myself.
Gene,
“If you buy the idea that we are not so much in the universe as the universe is in us – that sapient life is the universe trying to understand itself, the sense of the numinous is a driver behind our desire to understand. It’s mystery.”
Now that I can buy if it is framed in some of what lotta wrote.
I am not the least bit uncomfortable with the mystical even though I have no idea how it works. Perhaps it is the profession I was in for so many years. Ask any musician who works in the classics, my favorites were Vivaldi, Verdi, and good ol’ Wolfgangus, about floating away into the unknown … trusting it and taking your audience with you. There is no truthful way I can deny its existence nor its impact.
A belief in a deity is not necessary, in my opinion, though it is often the initial approach experienced by many. Thus was the truth I “sensed” in Bron’s statement.
Was it part and parcel of the Big Bang? Testify!
MikeS,
Did you read the rest of my comment.? Cherry picking my bit of sarcasm meant as a teaser, and displaying it in your manner as a lonesome sound bite, leaves me pissed. Sound bites and cherry picking is bad.
Foul!!! Or was it intentionally meant to make an ass of me with my own words OK, admit it and we are quits.
Now I get it MikeS. You were just showing me what my sniping on bits of others cómments has fór effect. Yeah, agreed. No apologies needed. Except from me to you and others. Hard heads (or dumb ones) need hard knocks to understand.
“Now I get it MikeS. You were just showing me what my sniping on bits of others cómments has fór effect.”
ID707,
If you were a gunfighter you’d be too quick on the draw. Accuracy trumps speed every time. 🙂
LK,
For you . . .
“You haven’t let me down and as you well know I predicted this comment in my blog.”
And that is why I did it. 🙂
“My belief is that the connectivity you speak of is absolutely real, functional and comes to us over the entire length and breath of our evolutionary history.”
LK,
I agree with you and with the rest of your comment. My wife and I watched the entire “Through the Wormhole” series and it spun my thoughts in a similar direction. Also no need to apologize to me because this thread went off my conception of the tracks long ago and right now I’m just going with the flow. 🙂
The best laid plan………………etc.
“Where have the old days gone when “serious” blogs were devoted to judicial matters”
ID707,
From the beginning of my time here years ago, Professor Turley both produced blogs of legal import, as well as social commentary and humor. Now underlying this particular guest blog, though unstated, is the very important legal matter in the US of separation of Church and State.
As for the intention of my title being provocative……..no kidding. 🙂 “No kidding of course meant in the colloquial sense.
“I hope I havent let you down, Mike. But as I said, the post is germane to religion. 🙂 ”
Bron,
You haven’t let me down and as you well know I predicted this comment in my blog. That doesn’t mean I’ll respond to the erzatz wisdom of a terrible novelist, who had pretension of being a philosopher, but lacked the intellect. 🙂
RWL,
I read your comment late last night, but four hours of Academy Award watching wore me out and so I’m replying today.
“As long as Harvard University, Washington University in St. Louis, and John Hopkins University maintain their billion dollar endowments, then the ‘specific subset of religion’ will not hinder the advancement of science”
I don’t agree. These “estimable” institutions are just as subject to intimidation and manipulation as any other. I graduated with a Masters Degree from Columbia University School of Social Work (CUSSW). Columbia is an Ivy League School with a very rich edowment. I regularly get the Social Work School’s magazine. When religous based funding became available via government programs CUSSW the magazine began to include articles extolling religious based programs, since that was a new area for Social Work to find funding. At the time of my graduation, two decades before this would have been considered an anathema. All these institutions are subject to wealth and power.
“With this being said, the title of this article or subject matter would have been more informative (and less demeaning to our religious followers) if it went along as follows: By introducing Creationism and/or Evolution in Missouri’s K-12’s Public Education System, will this improve it’s overall quality?”
If that was the case then it would be someone other than me writing this article. Is it not clear by my words that I consider what is euphemisticly called “intelligent design” (Creationism) ridiculous, even if one does’t think Evolutionary Theory is the be all and end all. The Earth is ot 10,000 years old and that has been proven. The creation story in Genesis is a metaphor and that can’t be denied, except by closing one’s mind. Where did the other humans mentioned in Genesis come from? Where were the wives for the sons of Adam come from? This teaching has no place in a public school system and indeed as Professor Tegmark’s study shows only religions making up but 11% of this country’s population don’t accept the evidence of science.
“Although we have historically modeled our public educational system after the private religious educational system, why are the private, religious students outperforming the students in most public education schools? Is it as one pastor stated: ‘historically, the more we take God out of the classroom, the worst our public school system has become?”
I’m not sure what metric you use to compare religious education to public education, but accepting that for the sake of argument i think it proves nothing. The overwhelmig majority of children going to religious schools have more income, in comparison to those going to public schools. Most of these parent could afford to pay the tuition for a private school. Since the 70’s the public school system in America has been consistently short-changed and those successful schools within it are skewed to wealthy neighborhoods. Your comparison, if the metrics are valid, is an apples to oranges situation.
“But I also want to add that Religion (i.e. Christianity, for sake of discussion) does this country a great service: It provides another means of socially controlling the ‘bewildered masses.” We need Religion in America (since you can do almost anything, and only get a slap on the wrist for it: speaking about America’s criminal justice system). Think about how many potential murders, serial rapists or god knows what other crimes some people may do or continue to do if Religion wasn’t controlling them”
Your premise is entirely untrue and unprovable. The only people who get a “slap on the wrist from the criminal justice system” are the rich and powerful. The proof of this is that the Uited States has by far the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Yes let us think about the “serial rapist” pedophiles within the Catholic Church worldwide. The religion of many ordained priests did not prevent them from committing heinous crimes. You are making a statement in talking about crime prevention that has no basis in fact.
“Yes, I do believe in the overarching theme of Joseph Conrad’s novel “Heart of Darkness” about people: ‘darkness potentially inherent in all human hearts”
I’m not sure I accept that either, but even if true, that doesn’t prove your case. If there is the potential for darkness in every human heart doesn’t mean religion holds people back from the “darkness. In world history religion has more frequently played a destructive role, than a healing one.
Just a short look explains that:
The spread of Islam “by the sword”.
The Crusades
The Albigensian Heresy
The Inquisition
The Protestant Reformation and its attacks on heresy.
The frequent Pogroms that Jews experienced all over Europe.
The sanctification of slavery by Southern Baptists
The war in Bosnia
That is only a “sampler” of the evil done in the name of God. Now in truth I do believe that the evil done in Jesus name had nothing to do with Jesus teachings and everything to do with people who perverted his teachings for their own will to power. However, that is the difference between prophets wanting to bring healing to humans ad those who use the prophet’s teachings to their ow advantage. Even The Buddha, whose message was meant to alleviate human suffering had followers centuries later who slaughtered eachother over points of doctrine. To bring it to current times perhaps you can explain to me how the message of Jesus in the Gospels has tranferred him into being a warlike, intolerant Conservative in America, who takes the side of wealth?