Jefferson's Scissors: Solving the Conflicts of Religion with Science and Democracy

By Louis W. Perry

Many books have appeared that argue at the ends of the Christian spectrum on the reality of God. On the left there are such books as, God Is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens) arguing that a god and religion are not needed in todays world, and at the far right Fundamentalists push books which speak of near term disasters to non-believers of God, The Rapture and The Second Coming of Jesus (Finis Dake). Compounding the agitation on sides has been the religious bias of the Bush Administration which has push religious ideology into positions in the government at the federal level with power to diminish sciences contribution to our country and at the state level to lower the standards for science education of students. Outraged scientists fear the future of a country where of the population believe in angels and only one-quarter believe that our ancestors were ape-like. Darwin is now both a science hero and an enemy to the religious. Embattled religious fundamentalists fear that modernity is changing the country into a secular materialistic nation and push to convert the country into a Christian nation.
Heightened activity from both sides to attract converts has only increase the conflicts. Neither of these extremes addresses the question of how to bring all three parties, all needed in the future, together to reduce conflicts. Understanding the profound and interlinked changes to religion, science and governance forged by modernity is necessary to support a solution to the conflicts of religion with science and democracy today.
Jeffersons Scissors presents a path to a solution to the conflicts by defining acceptable roles for religion and science in our secular democracy by employing a common link between religion, science and democracy that can bring citizens together even with a wide diversity of beliefs. The insight into a solution to the conflicts was first evolved by Thomas Jefferson during his personal search for his own philosophy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 12, 2009
• ISBN: 9781469116013

Louis W. Perry

Growing up in the South Lou Perry was immersed in many religious and democratic conflicts. With an education in physics (B.S. physics, University of Alabama and M.S. physics, Texas Christian University) he was an Air Force officer and worked on nuclear weapon development at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. Later in industry he worked on nuclear reactor development and nuclear energy research projects. Attacks on science education by states (Alabama’s infamous insert into biology textbooks) and the government (Bush Administration rejection of Darwinian evolution) led to a series of lectures on the conflicts of religion, science and government delivered at the University of California San Diego. These lectures were collected into a textbook, Jefferson’s Scissors, Solving the Conflicts of Religion with Science and Democracy. His latest book, Thank Evolution for God, Nature and God’s Creations and Designs, addresses the Christian dilemma how to accept Darwinian evolution and retain their religion. Lou Perry is presently an Emeritus at the University of California San Diego where he continues to lecture. He lives in La Jolla, California where he enjoys tennis and traveling with his family.

Book preview

JEFFERSON’S SCISSORS

Revised

Solving the Conflicts of Religion with Science and Democracy

Louis W. Perry

Copyright © 2009 by Louis W. Perry.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009901176

ISBN:                     Hardcover                     978-1-4415-0983-3

ISBN:                     Softcover                        978-1-4415-0982-6

ISBN:                     Ebook                              978-1-4691-1601-3

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

1

Introduction

2

Theories/Laws/Dictates

3

Church

4

Science

5

Democracy

6

Modernity and Jefferson

Epilogue

Appendix A

Notes on the Christian Spectrum

and Democracy

Appendix B

God and Morality: Is There Any Relation Between God and Morality?

Appendix C

Notes on Biblical Commandments/Laws

Appendix D

Notes on Separationist Presidents

Appendix E

Notes on Religion/Science/Government

Court Cases

Appendix F

Notes on Education and Fundamentalism

Appendix G

Notes on a Neo-Christian Nation?

References

END NOTES

To my wife, Peg, and my daughters, Lynn and Leslie, who encourage me to put my thoughts on paper, and to my grandson, Robert Perry, who I hope will f ind the thoughts useful in his studies

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Provost Daniel Wulbert, Provost Tom Bond, acting Provost Barbara Sawrey, and Vice Chancellor Joseph Watson of the University of California San Diego for the encouragement to assemble the Conf licts of Religion with Science and Democracy material and to conduct the seminars at the university. My thanks also go to the students who energetically participated in the seminars and contributed many intuitive comments and penetrating questions from their diverse religious viewpoints.

My special thanks go to Professor Scott Hestevold of the University of Alabama for allowing me to include his paper God and Morality (appendix B) and for his most helpful comments. Thanks also go to Professors Norvin Richards and Richard Richards of the University of Alabama for their many insightful comments on the philosophy of truths, morals, and laws. Professor David Noel Freedman, University of California San Diego, has been most helpful through many discussions on religion. Additionally, Dr. Alfred Zettner’s critique of the text has been most helpful. Finally, thanks to Dr. Joe Turnage for discussions on the Jefferson Bible many years ago.

The opinions expressed are not those of the University of California San Diego or the University of Alabama, and the errors are mine alone.

Conf lict with Science Lightning

He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth; he sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouse.

Psalm 135:7

Lightning sent by supernatural God. Benjamin Franklin experiments support natural science theory of lightning

Conf lict with Science

Image14199.JPG

Age of Earth

Biblical age—6009 BCE

Science age of the Bristlecone pine—data back to 8500 BCE

Conf lict with Constitution

Image14206.JPG

Ten Commandments

in State Court Building

State judge places Christian icon in public courthouse

Federal court orders removal of religious icon from public building

Conf lict with Constitution

Slavery

If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.

Exodus 21:20-21

Bible support for slavery—from 426 CE to today.

U.S. Constitution support for slavery—ended 1863

Prologue

The genesis of this book goes back to one morning in 1996 when I happened upon an article in the New York Times about a new law that had been passed by the Alabama state legislature. The new law required that an insert be placed in all public school biology textbooks, declaring that Darwinian evolution was only a theory. The insert implied that Alabama students did not need to take natural evolution or science seriously for an education in the state.

This newspaper article rang warning bells in my head: calling Darwin’s work only a theory meant that the authors of the law did not understand science theories or, worse yet, were calling for the public to ignore scientif ic theories—Darwin’s theory, in particular, and the worldwide scientif ic community in general. The aerodynamic force that produces lift to the wings of airliners is only a theory; but millions of people accept the theory, bet their life on it, and f ly every day. Should labels be placed on the doors of airliners to warn passengers that lift is just a theory? How can the same person reject the science of evolution and accept the science of aerodynamic lift?

The fact that a state government could mandate a religious interpretation of science textbooks meant that the legislators either did not understand the difference between a democracy that treats science independently and a theocracy that controls science with a religious agenda. Later that same morning, a local newspaper in San Diego reported that the city was selling a few square feet of public land with a large cross on it to a private group in order to circumvent a federal court ruling that the Christian cross had to be removed from public land. Similar to the state officials in Alabama, it was clear that the City of San Diego was maneuvering to circumvent the Constitution’s provision regarding separation of church and state and that the city managers were acting out of religious motives.

In two strokes of religious zeal and political pandering, a state and a city government thousands of miles apart demonstrated profound ignorance or disregard of science and our democracy. Another warning bell rang in my head when I realized that Fundamentalist ChristiansA had the political power to override our democratic principle of the separation of church and state by inserting an anti-science statement in public books and by approving (and reapproving six years later) the placement of a religious icon on public land. Since then, the Alabama textbook-insert outrage has been replicated in other states and equally serious roadblocks to science education in public schools have been erected by other school boards. Fifteen years later, the Soledad cross caseB is still on public land while court cases are pending.

The profound ignorance and arrogance displayed by city and state officials can do great damage to citizens and the education of their children of any city or state. At the national level, however, far greater damage can be inf licted, which, unfortunately, has been the case for most of the 21st century. We have but one country, one science, and hundreds of religionsC, all of which contribute to our society. Within our democracy, science and religions are independent from each other, and our democracy is independent from both. Science and religions are needed for their contributions, but it is our democracy that provides us with our personal freedoms, and it is the glue that holds us together as a nation. There is an understandable resistance on the part of persons with a god-centered life to grant that secular science and democracy should be independent of their religion, but that independence should be understood by now for it was established by our Founding Fathers as critical to our democracy.

The textbook-insert mandate did not correspond to my experiences as a student growing up in Alabama. I know I was just a school kid, but I cannot recall such interference by religions with science in the public schools that I attended. Christianity taught its creation story about Adam and Eve in church, but it stayed in the churches. The same churches abetted segregation by following the rule that whites should stay in white churches and blacks in black churches. Darwin was taught in the public schools, and at the university, all topics were open for discussion. I now know that some public schools, particularly in smaller towns in the state, did routinely mix Christianity into their curricula; so I guess I was just lucky that I lived in the largest city in the state and went to the largest public high school in the city. There were serious social-governance problems in the South then for sure—racial segregation, equal educational availability for blacks, black voting rights, and equal opportunities head the list—but science education was not one of them. Possibly, the pressing social conf licts of segregation captured most of the attention and kept science off the political table.

As it turns out, the attack on science textbooks by Fundamentalist Christians in Alabama is not an isolated event but part of a broader attack on science across the country by a dedicated minority of antiscience Fundamentalist Christians, who, in the last few years, have been supported and encouraged by the likes of the Fundamentalist president, George W. Bush. But why? Haven’t they, as other Americans, greatly benef ited from the medical advances that biological scientists have delivered using the natural science theories of Darwin and others? Better drugs and medical treatments come from the very same secular biological science being attacked.

Attacks on Darwinian evolutionary continue even after the stunning victory for science education over the attempt to get the religious theory, Intelligent Design, taught in the classrooms of Dover, Pennsylvania, in 2006. One reaction to this in the spring of 2008 was the release nationally of a science-bashing movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, by Ben Stein that continued the argument that the religious theory of Intelligent Design should be taught in science classrooms and it’s only the evil scientists preventing this. The struggle to dilute natural science teaching with religious science theories is a continuing goal for some Christians.

In addition to the direct attacks on science are the stealth attacks on science education and governmental policies on science that have been encouraged by political pressure to prevent scientif ic information—from contraception drugs to global warming—from being made available to the public. This sounds a lot like the forced theocratic dictates of the sixteenth century. Current examples of governmental interference include the struggle to secure approval for an over-the-counter morning-after pill (an oral contraceptive) and to secure education to the vulnerable on all options of contraception, including the use of condoms, to lower the abortion rates and the infection rates from AIDS and other diseases. The why to the actions of Fundamentalists can only be that science is being rejected because of the fear of uncertainty and change brought about by modernity. With modernity there is fear of secularization and the loss of political power and the chance of Fundamentalists ever achieving a Christian nation.

These are not just idle arguments because there is urgency to having science taught and used in its fullness. Lives are being lost needlessly by bad medicine based on bad science. The brains of children are being diminished needlessly by bad education based on bad science, leaving our students less educated. Science is critically needed for our competitive future as a country. Alarm bells should be ringing loudly in all of our heads at this time, calling us to remove outmoded religious barriers to the quality of our health care and science education.

Equally disturbing are efforts for federal, faith-based funding of churches and imposing of the Christian icons, such as the cross and the Ten Commandments, onto public land around the country, both of which are not just isolated, local efforts but the concerted efforts by many Fundamentalists across the country. All of this is being done under the misguided banner of returning the country to a Christian Nation, a mythical nation that Americans have never seen and, as will be argued, never would want if they knew the details. Do Fundamentalists not understand that our democracy is in danger of becoming a theocracy when anyone’s religion is imposed on all others? The action of our government’s leaders to use religion as a tool for enhancing their power is an old ploy and was noted by Seneca the Younger (4 BCE-65 CE) two thousand years ago: Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by (the) rulers as useful.

To answer these and other pending questions on the conf licts of Christianity with science and democracy, we need to step back in time and examine the evolution of these three intertwined disciplines and understand how and why we got to where we are today.

As a starting point of understanding the conf licts in which we are engaged, we must understand that the conf licts in our public sphere are driven by the continuing historic overreach of Christianity into areas of science and governance—disciplines they should leave to others. At best, the expertise of Christian leaders in these areas has been, and is, rather limited. In the Alabama case cited conf licts over biology would have never occurred if Christian Fundamentalists had a working knowledge of the science or talked their universities. If the state legislators had read books by or even asked the opinion of one of their more famous sons, biologist E. O. Wilson, their misunderstanding of evolution could have been avoided.

The extent and force of this overreach for power varies among Christians. Fundamentalist Christians push the most to impose their biblical dictates on science and governance while most other Christians have exhibited more tolerance and an increasing understanding of science and the U.S. Constitution. One must ask the question, why do Fundamentalists focus on f ighting with natural science and secular governance while underachieving in their own discipline—implementing the core message of their religion—humanistic services?

The intensity and breadth of the Fundamentalists’ attacks were addressed by former president Jimmy Carter a Southern Evangelical Christian and a longtime member of a Fundamentalist Baptist church, in his recent book (Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis) expressed his concern about the narrowness, rigidity, and non-Christian moral positions taken by his church in their attacks on democracy and science. In protest, he resigned his long-term relationship with his church and joined a more open and moderate one, believing that he and other Baptists can and should live with modernity.

All of this leads us to ask: Why do good people (Fundamentalist Christians) do bad things to natural science and to their democracy? Why is modernity such a threat to Fundamentalists? Why did the state officials in Alabama feel it necessary to put the ill-advised and anti-science religious inserts into the state’s biology textbooks? Why was it so important for Christians to try to impose Christian icons on public land? What are the effects of these actions on our American democracy?

Today, conf licts between science and religion and between democracy and religion are as vigorous within the Christian ranks as they are between Christians and non-Christians. The reason is simple—the acceptance of modernity within the Christian community is not uniform. All Christians are not Fundamentalists and most are striving to forge a relationship with modernity.

Our discussions will focus only on conf licts with religion in the public arena, leaving religions free to f ight among themselves on Christian theology and religious issues within their own houses.

For a healthy democracy, it is necessary that all viewpoints are brought to the stage and addressed for modernity will continue to produce future shocks, bring new challenges, unearth unintended consequences (i,e, global warming), and introduce new conf licts. An essential viewpoint is that our democracy has prospered by adapting to the changes brought about by modernity, by assimilating Christians and non-Christians, and by acknowledging that no one religion holds a monopoly on moral behavior or righteous governance and that all are accountable to our secular Constitution. Answers to these questions can be found if modernity is faced head on by religions, new advances of science addressed and the laws of our secular democracy accepted. It is a discussion of the ascendancy in public arena of secular, democratic law over religious laws and of natural science over supernatural dictates on science.

When discussing the subjects of religion and politics, I remember my mother saying, In polite society, one doesn’t discuss religion, politics or sex. Well, to address the conf licts, we must discuss all three including the impolite subject of reproductive sex: so social politeness and religious correctness is at peril on every page. What are not at peril are one’s personal religious beliefs, which are respected, off the table, and not questioned: they are personal freedoms protected by the Constitution. But when church organizations, through their leaders, step onto the public turf of our secular government, public schools, or science and attempt to inject religious dogma, they have gone public and can expect no immunity from criticism. They are, therefore, fair game; and their views are treated as any other public subject—open to critical discussions.

The subject matter of the book ref lects answers to the wide range of questions raised by students from many different backgrounds and beliefs during seminars given on the conf licts at the University of California San Diego and at the university’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. In preparing this book, the sheer breadth of the material has led to many summary brief statements, which, in turn, have shortchanged the depth given to many subjects. Greater detail on topics can be found by the reader in the many references listed throughout the book. Arguably, not enough weight is given to the humanities or the personal value of religion because they are not in conf lict, but nevertheless critical to any conf lict resolution.

It is an exciting time to review conf licts with religion in light of the steady march of advances in science (biology, physics, philosophy, neuroscience, etc.) and democracy (new laws). The expansion of global conf licts, such as, global warming from use of fossil fuels and exploding population from unbridled birth rates, has left us, believers, scientists, and politicians alike, with large and devastating issues impacting our common home—our planet. The end of the Bush Administration will hopefully free the discussions on these conf licts from the smothering incompetence in science and democracy displayed by our government over the last few years.

Searching for solutions to religious conf licts in our country is an important task for us; but also for the faith-based wars being fought around the globe, particularly those into which our country has, unfortunately and unnecessarily, injected itself and became deeply involved. All of this underscores the critical need to understand the dynamics of the conf licts between religion, science and government at home.

1

Introduction

One evening, in a smoky tavern, thousands of years ago, a pagan bartender named Bud was serving beer to his customers when he heard disturbing news from three travelers.

First, an excited Hebrew traveler told him that his leader, Moses, had just delivered a set of commandments from his God to his people. A second traveler from the big university over the hill told about a scientist who had just published a new theory on the makeup of god’s universe. The third traveler told of hearing that a lowly farmer had been made the ruler of a country by the people without being divinely appointed by the priests and god. Bud, the wisest man in the village and a deeply religious man, was shocked because these were all heretical activities that would not have happened in his country. These acts could only mean that evil forces were at work in the world. He knew that only his god could give divine commandments to govern man, explain the mysteries of the universe, and appoint leaders by his divine action. In Bud’s view, surely the world would come to an end if such heresies continued.

Three thousand years later, we in the United States f ind Bud’s beliefs turned upside down, yet the world has not come to an end. Pagans, Jews and Christians now practice freely and live not only beside each other but also among peoples of other religions that Bud could never have imagined, including a sect spun off from Judaism—Christianity. Scientists are still offering yet another new theory of the universe without referencing God, replacing the last failed one; and f inally, we f ind ourselves in a democracy that doesn’t mention God in its laws, elects secular leaders, not divinely appointed ones. The world may not have come to an end; but the paths traveled from those past times and certainties to today have been rough and have included many conf licts along the way, particularly for those who have dared to initiate change, the foot soldiers of modernity.

Over time, this transition has changed the relationships of religion with science and government and has changed religion itself in directions that could not have been anticipated. Ordinary believers who were happy with the certainty and purpose of absolute laws sent to them by their gods and their divinely appointed rulers have become unhappy with the uncertainties and an apparent lack of purpose brought into the world driven by secular science and secular democracy.

Christian biblical dictates on science are being replaced in the country by natural science theories from an expanding, self-policing, worldwide science community. Theocracies using biblical dictates for absolute laws for governance have been largely replaced by democratic governments, embracing expanded secular laws and personal freedoms, including freedom of religion. Our democracy was a major step in the transition away from theocratic monarchies 220 years ago.

In establishing our democracy, our Founding Fathers were well aware of past religious conf licts with theocracies, which had caused bloody religious wars across Europe, and were determined to avoid them in the new American government. They had no illusions that theocracies and divinely appointed kings would ever support the personal freedoms they sought, and in their place, a new solution—a major philosophical step—of a secular democracy under a godless Constitution by the people. This was a revolutionary transition in the West from past theocratic governments that operated under divine authority of the Christian God. We emerged as a country with one set of secular laws (the Constitution), embracing theories from the independent science community and accommodating several hundred (thousands?) religions.

Multiple religions are asked to respect and live alongside secular science in our secular democracy. Personal beliefs in any one god with this god’s set of moral laws are personally important, and in a democracy, such personal beliefs are retained. But a democracy addresses the public laws of all citizens, so the laws must be secular and supersede those of any one’s personal religion.

Since the founding of our secular, democratic government, science has been allowed to advance; personal religious freedoms for citizens of diverse religions have been protected;A and conf licts with religion have been manageable within our secular, legal framework. Most importantly, over this period, advances in science, expansions of minority rights and personal freedoms, increases in societal support programs, and increases in the diversity of religions, have been accommodated, not perfectly, but well enough to continue to make changes.

It has been democracy’s and science’s successes with modernity that have made Fundamentalist Christians fearful of having their religion and their power marginalized by what they see as advances of largely secular forces. This fear found a receptive ear from the Bush Administration and provided a base of support to confront secular science and secular governmental laws.

Democracies are messy, and their laws are cloaked in uncertainties and racked with conf licts, but the overall result of the evolution of our democracy has been an increase in personal freedoms. Even with this track record of success, conf licts with Fundamentalist Christians continue and raise serious questions: Why do we still have conf licts with religion today? How can the rise of secularism be accommodated? What are the dangers of increasing Christian inf luence in our government to our personal freedoms?

To explore these questions, we need to examine the conf licts caused by theocracies during the evolution of science and democracy over the last few thousand years. We need to examine the underlying biblical dictates, science theories, and democratic laws and their interactions and conf licts with each other. Importantly, we will search for credible ways for religions to accept a relationship with science and our democracy which will reduce conf licts in the future.

For any progress to be made, we will need to separate the facts from the noise by following the good adviceB voiced by :

Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle." (Thomas Jefferson) and

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. (Daniel Patrick Moynihan)

The disciplines of Christianity, democracy, and science are each robust, doing needed jobs, but sometimes overlapping with conf licting activities. These disciplines will be with us into the far future, so our hope is that by understanding the conf licts and separating the opinions and myths from the facts, we can f ind rational approaches for accommodating religion and mitigating conf licts within our democracy.

Any discussion of religious conf lict requires definition of the players and organizations involved. For focus, only Christians (although there are hundreds of religions in America and thousands in the world) will be explored. For simplicity’s sake, Christians will be divided into four groupsC def ined by their acceptance of modernity: Fundamentalists (wishing it would go away), Traditionalists (resisting yet rationalizing and adapting while knowing it will not go away), Liberals (accepting much of it) and Deists (accepting most of it). Giving labels to a few groups lumps together considerable diversity and complexity of beliefs, but nevertheless, such groupings are useful for discussing the major differences of beliefs across the Christian spectrum. Just off the end of the Christian spectrum are the Humanists D E who believe in nature independent of all supernatural entities. These include the atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, skeptics and secularists. These labelsF for Christian groups will not satisfy or cover all the differences within each group but will, nevertheless, be helpful for discussion.

In addition to the players, we need to understand and compare the underlying knowledge bases and fundamental beliefs of each group: for Christians, we use biblical dictates (God’s Words); for science we use natural theories based on man’s observation of nature; and for democracy we use nurtural laws constructed by man for his governance. First we need to study the elemental differences between Christianity’s views of the world and the views from science and democracy.

Elemental Conf licts

There are elemental differences between religion (Christianity), science, and democracy. Believers of Christianity employ a supernatural God as the causal agent that brings design, orderliness, certainty, direction, morality, and purpose to the universe and to man. In return, the Christian God demands strict obedience to its dictates (commandments, laws, etc.) from believers (as do gods of other religions) and in return gives the reward of personal salvation.

On the other hand, science and democracy employ no supernatural gods and, instead, use lowly man as the causal agent for acquiring knowledge. Science obtains its theories and laws by observing nature and verifies its natural theories through experimentation. Democracy obtains its laws from the people who vote laws into use and governments into power. Science demands obedience to the scientif ic process while using theories acceptable to the scientific community. The reward is satisfaction of doing good science and supplying new knowledge and tools for people to improve their lot. Democracy demands obedience to the democratic process outlined in its Constitution while using the laws on the books. The reward is protection and betterment of the lives of all citizens.

Christian theocracies use their God as the authority for governing laws; our secular democracy uses the authority of the people for governance laws independent of any god. This fundamental difference allows our democracy, since it is tied to no one religion, to accept believers of many different religions as equals under the law. Believers are free to claim the dictates they wish from their religion for their private use. Christians argue that morals and, hence, moral laws, are given by their God; but philosophies have given us, albeit less well-known, arguments for comparable morals and moral laws without a god. One such argument is given in appendix B, God and Morality by philosopher H. Scott Hestevold. It is now recognized that here are morals, God based and nature based from which one can choose, according to one’s personal beliefs. No arguments are given for the superiority of either set of morals or of any one religion—or of no religion for that matter.

All knowledge developed by man is seen as usable but f lawed. Christians see knowledge differently by believing that knowledge comes unf lawed from the Words of God (biblical dictates; commandments, laws, morals, etc.). On the other hand, science accepts theories only after experimental proof is obtained. By comparison Christianity offers no experimental proof for biblical dictates and for believers, no proof for God’s dictates is required.

Science and democracy are immersed in their messy evolutionary process of acquiring knowledge from the bottom up one little step at the time while Christianity receives dictates from their God on high without the messy input from man. The process for knowledge from Christian dictates has been simplif ied on a bumper sticker:

The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it. (Christian)

This can be compared to one from scientists:

The Textbook says it; I challenge it; that unsettles it. (Scientist)

In science, when errors or wrongs are uncovered by new discoveries, the f lawed theories are corrected and replaced by new or right ones that better f it the data. Democracy also corrects its wrong laws when voters reject, change, or enact new laws. However, Fundamentalist Christians have shown little inclination to acknowledge, address or correct biblical wrongs (that is, biblical dictates that conf lict with established science or social data). So with different sources for dictates/theories and different paths to error resolution, it is easy to see how conf licts with religion appear, continue, and are diff icult to resolve. But we must get along with daily life and make decisions, knowing full well that the knowledge from science and democracy may be f lawed and in many cases in conf lict with religious dictates.

Although some Fundamentalist Christians claim that biblical dictates are without f laws, many other more Liberal Christians recognize that some of the biblical dictates are in errorG and in conf lict with nature as theorized by scientists and with governance laws which have been enacted democratically. Rationalization or denial of information conf licting with science is a personal choice for each of us as we select which theories, dictates, or laws to use in our lives. Christians when their biblical dictates are conf licted by science theories and democratic laws are presented with choices: reject science; sidestep the conf licts by rationalize biblical dictates as metaphors. For example, the Bible says the earth is the center of the universe and science says that it is not. One way to bypass the conf lict is to claim that the biblical dictate is a metaphor (the earth is the most important place for us earthlings).

In our democracy, Christians and peoples of all religions are free to apply their different religious laws and morals on a personal or private basis without conf lict; but when religious dictates on such topics as science, medicine, public off ice or public education are injected into the public sphere and imposed on others, they violate the constitutional personal freedoms of those who hold differently. When such conf licts happen