Today in class, we were assigned this New York Times article to read that basically brings to question what roll science plays in our modern society. There were two main themes that stood out for me: How is religion affecting science as a whole, and how do scientists view the world compared to the average person? It was disturbing to read the statistic on people’s willingness to believe in ghosts, miracles, and astrology, but this shock is probably due to the fact that I consider myself to be a logically mined atheist, or at least an agnostic. The fact is, though, that if this many people truly believe in these concepts, with no scientific proof, it is going to be difficult to make people understand why science is so important. Take a look at this Gallup poll, for example, which suggests that even in the modern year of 2012, 46% of Americans still believe in the idea of Creationism opposed to evolution.
It is totally fine for people to believe whatever they want about how humans came to be or how the universe was created, but this just goes to show that religion is definitely not beneficial in regard to science.
On the other hand, this article reminds me of the stereotypical, uncaring scientist, such as the ones portrayed by Rebecca Skloot in her book about HeLa cells. Maybe scientists are being too logical and thus they cannot relate to the average person whose ideas are more emotionally driven. Because of this gap between the average populace and those conducting scientific research, science will never be thought of as importantly as scientists want it to be, at least in the mind of the average person.
This is unfortunate because science is such a crucial part of our everyday lives and many people are oblivious of that fact. In the ideal world, I think the way to solve this issue would be through better education. Maybe, just maybe, we can devise a way to have scientists better comprehend how the average person reasons, and vice versa, so that we can use each other’s views to strengthen science, not disregard it.
