Why Do Christians Hate Science?
When it comes to science, so many Christians are quick to point out how scientists don’t know everything or how science gets it all wrong. They push to put their Creationist beliefs into science classes, argue against scientific research on stem-cells, and on global climate change. They just seem to hate science.
Of course, not all Christians are anti-science and but according to the last Harris Interactive Poll on this issue, over one-third of Americans support Creationism and more than half reject the well established scientific theory of evolution. Those are not small numbers.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really think that this means that Christians hate science, but it does seem only fair to say so since whenever I criticize the doctrines of Christianity I often get asked by Christians, why do I hate Christians or God or something. So I think it is important to draw attention to this type of faulty (and illogical) reasoning.
Obviously, every Christian and every person in the modern world relies on science every day. If you are reading this blog, you are doing so entirely because science has allowed us to harness electricity and to create computers and the internet. When we get sick, the science of medical technology and drugs helps us to get better. The cars we drive, the homes we live in, and even some of the foods we eat are all products of science.
Still, a large number of Christians claim that bronze-aged fiction is a better guide to knowledge than the scientific method. How we know what we know and to what degree we know it is the issue here. Science takes us on a journey which enables us to understand the world we live in step by step. Science doesn’t have all the answers, but it knows that and so it is one step further than faith will ever be.
Yet, seventy-five percent of Americans believe in miracles (which for the record is the suspension of the natural laws of physics by a supernatural deity). Considering that only eighty percent of Americans are Christians, this amounts to almost all Christians in the country. I wonder how many Christians believe we can just know things without science but rather through some divine intuition or through faith alone.
Religions took us into the dark ages and science pulled us out. Science builds buildings and religion flies airplanes into them.
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, culture war, faith, global climate change, miracles, Religion, science