The history of religion is one of resistance to scientific knowledge. All great minds must pay a token fee to the narrow-minded gods of narrow-minded men. Galileo Galilei was threatened with death for claiming the earth moved in a heliocentric orbit around the sun and later retracted his theory under duress. Giordano Bruno, the notable mnemonics master, was burnt at the stake for his feats of memory and his denial of certain church doctrines including geocentrism and the holy trinity. It seems as if the Church suffers from all of the characteristic symptoms of a limited knowledge of self, namely an inferiority complex and a tendency to claim an unchallengeable position on truth. Rather than criticizing theories from a scientific standpoint, pompous individuals in funny costumes regurgitate texts that should have been relegated to libraries and archives centuries ago under the heading "Strange Beliefs". Looking back it is easy to believe humanity has evolved beyond the grip of religious dogma into an age of unhindered reason, yet current events demonstrate that our generation has fared no better. President George W. Bush wants intelligent design taught in schools as an option to the theory of evolution. An innocuous suggestion to a layman, but to the committed scientist it is a travesty of the scientific method. Do we teach astrology side by side with astronomy or alchemy astride with chemistry? What kind of evidence will ever prove or disprove the existence of God? How do we even begin to define God? Religion isn't capable of describing how anything happens, which is why it has never produced a single useful invention in its entire history. We can be assured that our progeny will look back on us just as we look back on a society that would impede the discovery of a heliocentric solar system. To even suggest that God created the universe in an environment of unbiased learning is an offense to scholarship. It puts the idea into the minds of young people that there is such a thing as creation science.
