Admiring

MY RELIGION, to the extent that I have one, is science. I worship nothing, I admire everything, merely because its exists. It is beyond dispute that science is humankind's best, and perhaps only tool for understanding the world. Applied science, which is science translated into practical applications, called technology, has transformed human life for the better, as attested by modern medicine and machinery, provides more than ample proof of this. It will be science, not religion, which will give us the answer to eradicating the current pandemic, and all future pandemics. Ironically, all major religions are actually contributing to the spread of the current virus, by insisting on gathering their votaries together in large numbers for purposes of prayer, creating results contrary to their actual purpose. The sense of comfort and inspiration derived from religion can be much more tangibly delivered by science, without the senseless and misleading dogma and superstition. At universities like Harvard and Princeton, a sizable number of students who enter doctoral programs in religious studies begin as devout, fundamentalist, evangelical Christians, and graduate as agnostics and atheists. At good universities religion, like everything else, is taught from a factual, critical, scientific, historical perspective, rather than a devotional one. There are no presumptions.all religious doctrine, including the bible, is studied without preconception or bias. Each student is free to decide for herself whether biblical scripture is the word of God, or of many different human authors. Graduates complete their doctorates fully aware of the thousands of contradictions and errors of fact in the scriptures. Religion, for the properly educated, is a purely human affair, replete with human limitations and foibles. And this is how it should be. After all, aren't we all better off using our god given abilities to examine, explore, and explain the world for ourselves, rather than settling for and relying on books and explanations written thousands of years ago by people with less knowledge and means of discovery than we?Science does no harm to religion, other than disproving it. People are always free to believe whatever they wish. Religion, however, has done and continues to do inestimable harm to science and truth, if only by encouraging people to reject it.Graduates from the Harvard and Princetono schools of divinity always have good jobs awaiting them at highly prized pulpits. And anyway, they always expediently preach to their new congregations exactly what their parishioners want to hear, with tongue in cheek, and good job security.