(April 8, 2014 at 9:40 am)Confused Ape Wrote: Secularism is simply a framework for ensuring equality throughout society – in politics, education, the law and elsewhere, for believers and non-believers alike.
People can still be religious while living in a secular society.
Did I say otherwise?
My point is that secularism and good education will naturally encourage critical thinking and rational thought. I'll go out on a limb here and say that anyone who is religious clearly doesn't use their critical thinking skills well enough. That or they simply don't care about the validity of their chosen fairy tale. Yeah I'll probably get some religious person attack me and they'll believe they're doing critical thinking right, but they're just not.
Ofcourse people can still be religious in a secular society, but that's completely missing the point.
Quote:How well educated? There are a lot of religious scientists around and not just in the US. For example, all but one of the Vatican Observatory staff are Jesuits and the one who isn't a Jesuit is still a Roman Catholic priest.
Vatican Observatory Personnel
I think most scientists would identify themselves as 'agnostic'. I don't have any data for that and I can't be arsed looking up any studies on the matter but that's what I genuinely think. I'm pretty sure I've read articles and even from my own experience, the more well educated someone is, especially in terms of critical thinking, the more likely they are to be atheist or 'agnostic' (a term which in my opinion is just a pussy way of not committing to the other term). I'm open to seeing some evidence to the contrary though.
Even still, there are undoubtedly going to be exceptions. Just like your Vatican observatory. Is it really a surprise that Vatican observatory staff describe themselves as religious, when they work at the fucking Vatican?
