To be sure, there have always been religious backlashes against science, all throughout history and in virtually every faith.
And in the West, from the start, many religious authorities were hostile to science in too many cases to count (down to the present day).
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But Prof Reiss argues that there is an educational value in comparing creationist ideas with scientific theories like Darwin's theory of evolution because they demonstrate how science, unlike religious beliefs, can be tested.
BBC: NEWS | UK | Education | Teachers 'fear evolution lessons'
Following up on my earlier post about the (urgent) need of religious leaders and theologians to study science.
Understanding it is in the domain of the humanities, particularly the sociology of science and the genesis of religious belief.
And this includes the need for Islamic philosophers and religious scholars to study how the Christian churches in the West have (largely though by no means completely) adapted to the findings of science and its implications for religious beliefs.
He has sparred frequently with many outspoken atheists who argue that science is inherently corrosive of all religious belief.
For many of the scientists who discovered natural laws, the pursuit of science was part and parcel of their religious beliefs.
Their work is influenced by politics and patrons, regional assumptions and religious beliefs, all of which jostles with the science in determining what a map looks like and what it is used for.
Focusing on early 20th-century Britain, he describes in scholarly detail different strategies for harmonising faith and knowledge: the sought-after alliance between liberal theologians in the Church of England and religious-minded scientists, and the rather different efforts of science-minded writers such as Julian Huxley and George Bernard Shaw to foster a modern, non-Christian religion.
Has science saved us from wars, from age-old religious conflicts, from diseases and disasters?
FORBES: Why We Need Pragmatic Science, and Why the Alternatives are Dead-Ends
Because science (including the science of gender change) remains incompatible with most fundamentalist religious points of view.
To many of us, the Druids sound as if they have walked straight out of a science fiction novel, or perhaps even suggest something sinister akin to a strange cult or weird religious sect.
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