In 18th century Europe, Enlightenment was a time when intelligent people recognized that god was just an idea. God was an idea designed to plug our grand ignorance of life in the universe. New scientific discovery were challenging the religious dogmatic view of the world. Philosophy bloomed, especially in Germany. Germany is still a vibrant hub for fierce philosophical discourse. 

Recently, an article of The American Conservative studied “The Vice president’s Intelligent Stand on Evolution” in order to tell us that “There need be no battle between faith and science.”

This statement is appalling and dangerous. 

Mind you, the major problem is that in the US, more than 80 per cent of people believe in god. 

The American Conservative is run by god-believer “paleoconservatives”, people often in opposition to the “left” and also opposed to the “neocons”. It is a middle of the road outfit with Christian values and “God Bless America” tattooed on its forehead, though the paleoconservatives want peace. The “left” and the “neocons” want war, under different justifications, in which justice and freedom hypocritically feature as well as "control" of the world resources --especially OIL.

But whenever an article is trying to expose the divergence of science and religion, The paleoconservatives of The American Conservatives get their knickers into a knot and follow the line that religion and sciences are not mutually exclusive. It is understandable. Science exposes the con that religion is. Thus should one adopt the idea that "science does not expose the ridiculousness of religion but reinforce our belief in god", one can fiddle with the harsh complex reality of the universe and still pray to god. It's utter compromised rubbish.

Because more or less everyone in the US believe in god, the Vice-President cannot do anything that will rock the boat in which he is in himself.  

Even Obama submitted to the trick by appointing Dr Collins as the director of the US premier medical organization, the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The president said that “Dr. Collins is one of the top scientists in the world, and his groundbreaking work has changed the very ways we consider our health and examine disease.” Indeed, Collins is one of this generation’s most accomplished scientists, having made key discoveries in the field of human genome. He is also a strong and vocal Christian, believing that God is the author of all life.

In his book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, Dr. Collins estimates the earth is billions of years old and notes how “overwhelming the scientific evidence for evolution is.” He writes that in his view, “evolution might have been God’s elegant plan for creating humankind. … From a biologist’s perspective, the evidence in favor of evolution is utterly compelling. Darwin’s theory of natural selection provides a fundamental framework for understanding the relationship of all living things.” 

Sorry. I disagree with the utmost possible protest: there is no elegance in the process. God under such conditions would be a full blown sadist -- a sad experimenter of Frankenstein ill-repute, a gutter creator of mostly rubbish. God would be someone who had no idea of what He (god is a male) was doing. I often refer to god as a male because this human invented notion was designed to make sure "women knew their station"..

Collins is unapologetic, however, in diverging from Darwin when it comes to the power behind natural selection. In a 2006 interview he said that “science will tell me a lot about how things work. It will not tell me why we are all here, what the purpose is in life or what happens after we die.” Those questions, he said, are provided by the God of creation. He finds no contradiction in the nexus of science and faith; he is “able to draw upon both of those ways of knowing in order to have a full appreciation of the wonderful gift of life that we’ve been given.”

Sorry folks. God is not — and there is no meaning to life, not even in its own existence, nor death. Evolution is not a pathway to the creation of humans. There has been events and extinctions in which some random events could have wiped up the whole process --- and I am not talking of Noah's ark. No intent. Just a process in which survival of specific interacting molecules became the driver. Death is part of the molecular structure of DNA... which under certain conditions can become nearly "eternal", such as in some forms of cancer, with the problem that the process kills the host and cancers are only blobs with no consciousness. Ha, I see consciousness is a mystery... God must be there because we have not found the scientific key to consciousness... And only humans are worthy of god's mercy... No animals... No carrots... Though human's pets are now officially recognised as worthy of paradise... More silly rubbish.

This is why Writing for the Daily Beast earlier this month, Clive Irving excoriated Vice President Mike Pence for his beliefs about evolution. “With Pence in the White House,” Irving warned, “it could be that control of the most scientifically advanced country in the world has now fallen into the hands of people to whom science is an enemy.

And Clive Irving is correct. A lot of the purpose of this dynamic is to do with cash. The “idea of god” finances a lot of stuff. It would take a long time to turn this juggernaut around. No-one in their right mind would try to interfere, except Gus -- who obviously is not in his right mind, and a few other people like Clive Irving. 

Darwin, Einstein and many other scientists were ambivalent about the idea of god, mostly because their cash for their work came from rich believers. One could not rock the boat without loosing out. Neils Bohr did not hold out. He was a committed atheist.

Evolutionary science and religion don’t mix. Sciences and religions don’t mix though the Christians are trying hard to appropriate sciences to prevent a collapse of their beliefs. This has led to a lot of crap in the catholic religion as well as the invention of “Scientologists” and the “Happy Science” deceit. It is deceit. Deception.

The Muslims don’t even consider the conflict. They use some sciences without understanding what they mean and pray to god, whatever god is. 

The Christian religion is based on “Genesis” and the flow on from this start is a grand fairy story with some "historical" hysterical rehash of "real" events, to make the silly narrative stick in a dogmatic style.

Pence’s views on creation and science are similar to those of Dr. Collins, though different in one respect. The vice president believes in “intelligent design.” Dr. Collins notes in his book that while some aspects of intelligent design “appear compelling,” it leaves too many questions unanswered and lacks sufficient scientific rigor. Dr. Collins’s book contains a chapter called “BioLogos” (the synthesis of life and the Word) that answers both scientific and faith questions.

This blancmange of ideas whether from the VP or Dr Collins is crook and does not answer anything. It is make believe and fake fudge from the squarepeggers trying to fit a round hole, all for cash, while trying not to disturb their beliefs acquired when their were kids...

And science is under siege from many sides...

The question by a “The Australian” journalist today at the press Club was loaded (at 41:52). See http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/national-press-club-address/NC1706C006S00

Thought it was not as direct, the question implied that a lot of scientific research is bumpkin. Here the question focused more on the very few bad apples in sciences rather than the very large majority of scientists who actually work their butts off with rigour, despite the paucity of grants. The answer by the Vice-Chancellor of Western Sydney University, Barney Glover, indulged the question and thus was not satisfying. The VC forgot to mention the good scientists and concentrated on “the bad ones” only. This of course was in reply to the loaded question which more or less implied that all the scientists were fudging their research.

The summit of imbecility of this Press Club (March 1 2017) address came from Chris Uhlmann, the chair or the master of "ceremony", a former seminarian and now an ABC “journalist” of right-wing ideology with anti-“windmills” convictions, who praised “The Australian” for having so many “scientific journalists” and the room applauded. 

“The Australian” is a loaded artifice against global warming and 99 per cent (it could be 95 per cent at the last count) of their “investigation” and commentary is designed to hurt the science of global warming. Here I could see where John (I did not catch The Australian journalist family name) came from. The Vice-Chancellor indulged him and suddenly the whole process was loaded by crap including the applaud. 

Here we need to revisit my article about the relationship between Rupert Murdoch, owner of “The Australian” with the creationists and intelligent design adherents.

In conclusion, Sciences cannot let itself be absorbed by religious beliefs, not even in a half-way manner. Never. 

The problem of funding sciences interferes with this notion, but sciences need to be firm on its fierce secularity and having nothing to do with dogma. NOTHING.