AxisofLogic/ Featured: "Fundamentalist Christianity, a dangerous force when it denies rational, scientific thinking | By Lee Salisbury | Aug 11, 2005, 19:58
Religious leaders hate rival sources of authority. 18th Century European Enlightenment thinking with its concepts of rationalism and science provided religious authoritarianism with that rival. America’s founding fathers, products of the Enlightenment, had the audacity to effectively say to Christianity, "worship all you want, but our Constitution does not need your influence!" Roman Catholic traditionalists and Protestant Christian bible-based fundamentalists still seethe over this rejection.
Then as now, zealous Catholics and Protestants claim to speak for God versus Enlightenment thinkers who boldly experiment with new ideas independent of Christian dogma. Today's clergy shudder if their members hear the Thomas Edison's of this world, whose invention catapulted America to prosperity, exclaim as he did that, "religion is all bunk!"
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Religious fundamentalism in Israel, the Roman Empire, China, and the Islamic world had very destructive results. Israel BCE was consumed with religious zealotry and alienated itself from its surrounding Greek and Roman civilizations. Israel's zeal for God got its reward in 70 CE. The Romans annihilated Israel.
The Roman Empire's unlikely demise came three centuries later. Edward Gibbon, author of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", blames Rome's fall in part on the ascendancy of Christianity.
Buddhist fundamentalism in China resulted in centuries of chaos until the 9th Century when the Song renaissance restored the Chinese civilization.
Islam's early success was spectacular. It produced many intellectuals and scientists until fundamentalism gained the upper hand in the late 11th Century leading to a millennium of backwardness, which still afflicts the Islamic world.
Christian fundamentalism has gained political ascendancy in America. Under President George Bush, science takes a back seat to his right wing religious ideologues. In August 2003, the Government Reform Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives assessed the treatment of science and scientists by the Bush Administration. The report, "Politics and Science in the Bush Administration" found many instances where the Administration manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings.
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Fundamentalism's anti-science attitude pervades society. The science journal Physical Review reported in May 2004, that scientific papers published by west European authors exceeded those by U.S. authors in 2003. In 1983, there were three American authors for every one west European.
The percentage of patents granted to American scientists has been falling since 1980, from 60.2 percent of the world's total to 51.8 percent.
In 1989, America trained the same number of science and engineering PhDs as Britain, Germany and France combined. In 2004, the United States is 5 percent behind. European scientists now outnumber American scientists in citations awarded.
America is behind in cloning and stem cell research, now led by South Korean, Italian and British scientists. American fundamentalists seek to outlaw stem cell research on the arbitrary and totally unproven premise that "life begins at conception," a recent concept contrary to the teaching of St. Augustine and the allegedly infallible Roman papacy for some 1,500 years.
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President Bush's recent endorsement of teaching "Intelligent Design" perpetuates this same denial of science. ID proponents have never had an article on ID published in any peer-reviewed scientific journal. They do not conduct experiments that would prove or falsify their hypothesis.
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... Religious fundamentalist's objectives have never changed; they seek vindication for their rejection and want America's obeisance. Under George Bush, it looks like history is repeating itself. They will gladly lead our nation down fundamentalism's proven path of destruction, all in the name of their God
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