Is the rise of religious fundamentalism in the US causing it to lag behind in science?

There are many many things I don’t agree with in respect with religion sticking there nose where it doesn’t belong. As far as the stem cell research goes I think it should be the right of a women getting an abortion to have a box to check off to donate the cells if they so choose to. If we are going to have the right to abortion in this country the right of how the matter is disposed of should be ours as well and if we want to donate it to science we should be allow. I am not say I personally could ever have an abortion I couldn’t but I am saying the rights are there lets at least use them for good. So yes it is holding us back form finding possible solutions for things like diabetes and other diseases.

Yes, of course it is. If you’re not allowed to do the research, you’ll never stay on the cutting edge.

It’s only certain areas of science that the fundies want us to fall behind on, though. Their all-loving God apparently has no problem with us finding new and more interesting ways to blow people up.

Lagging behind relative to what measure? I think that religious fundamentalism has the potential to affect scientific progress in the US and I suppose that if you are comparing the state of science in the US to a hypothetical case where there was no religious fundamentalism, then I could see the potential case. However, I think that the US is still in the forefront of scientific research in almost all areas. Still, best to be aware of the problem and keep an eye out for trouble further down the road.

It depends on the branch. Anything regarding biology is hampered a bit by the Fundies, but I don’t see any such hindrances in weapon-related research, and the issues researching energy are for an entirely different ideological reason (a secular one rather than religious).

@Tocon_Tactus Yes, but a car goes a bit faster when you don’t have the e-brake on. Rooms are bigger when they have fewer walls.

I think the lack of money trumps the input of fundamentalists.

@tranquilsea But the lack of money is often a result of the fundamentalists.

@Uberwench But fundamentalism grows during periods of recession. Oops, a recursive loop. We might have to spend the rest of our lives answering this question.

@Tocon_Tactus You’re equivocating between lack of funding for science and a general downturn in the economy.

Any time researchers allow someone else to subsidize their research, they are subject to being hampered by the organization that controls the purse strings. If they expect the public to fund their research through government grants, they must expect the public to have some input.

There never was a ban on stem cell research in the USA. All Bush’s ‘ban’ did was make them seek private funding, or spend their own income.

The United States has always had a strong fundamentalist Christian base. Always. So no, I don’t think that’s the problem. I do think that there is a problem, but I think that it’s because we have far too much politicization of science and technology in general. That is, too much of it depends on research grants delivered by the federal and state governments through various agencies and into universities. (I don’t think the universities themselves are the major problem, but they’re part of it.)

It’s not that we’re not willing and anxious to do science, both pure and applied, but the various governments tax us with the promise that “we’re going to do all this great science stuff” and then when problems such as our current economic malaise come along they divert the money into more pressing issues which means ‘anything that will help them get elected next time’. And that’s not “science” or “research”.

I think that if our tax policies were aligned to a) tax us all less heavily and b) reward risk-taking by lowering capital gains taxes and taxes on business in general, then there would be more interest in building better mousetraps. As long as we continue to treat our economy as a zero-sum game, however, where if “A” gets ahead then we assume that “B” is automatically losing, then we’ll continue to fall down the well.

Franklin was right when he said that “A rising tide raises all of the boats.” Unfortunately in tough times we forget that.

Yes, absolutely. It isn’t just research funding, it’s also the horrible quality of our science education, which falls way, way behind most Western nations- and part of this is the reluctance of many teachers to teach evolution. Without a firm knowledge of evolution, you can’t understand biology.

Yes, fundamentalist religion and Republican politicians trying to appeal to that part of their base have done serious harm to science education in the US. There are the issues you menationed, the push to support their donor fossil fuel industry rather than solid climate science and the push to teach creationism and/or intelligent design in lieu of, or alongside evolution in biology and science classes. And the whole demonization of college professors as elite eggheads disconnected from the “real world” hurts probably more than any of their other anti-science agenda.

During Bush’s “ban” on stem cell research it was still legal to do stem cell research, he banned government monies to fund the research except for some alreafy existing lines of stem cells being utilized for the research.

We still have great scientific minds in the US. Funding is a big part of what research gets done, and a tremendous amount of it depends on government funding, but I don’t feel the US is lagging behind in scientific research and discovery. The fundamental Christians who are not science minded are only a perentage of the US population. Statistically our population is so large, we are likely to have some great minds, and overall the country is science minded.

@creative1 Stem cells are not from abortions. Stem cells are undifferentiated cells at the embryonic stage, surgical abortions are done weeks later.

No, the atrocious gutting of support for education has caused a simultaneous rise in religious fundamentalism and a lag in science.

@WasCy “Fundamentalist Christianity” is a technical term used for a reactionary movement that has roots in the 19th century, but didn’t really become strong until the early 20th century. So by definition, the United States has not always had a strong fundamentalist Christian base.

Semantics and sophistry, @SavoirFaire. From the Puritans and onward there has always been a strong “fundamentalist” belief in the literalness of the Bible in the United States. Whether it went by that name or some other, the beliefs have been present for nearly as long as the country has been populated from Europe.

Let’s not get religious fundamentalism confused with all faith systems. My understanding of the US scene is that there are a lot of extreme idiots going under the name of Christian (as well as hopefully a lot of moderates). This type of extremism is what will hold up the progress of real science. A moderate belief in God does not.

@WasCy Semantics can be important, and it’s not sophistry to point out that there is a difference between “fundamentalism” and “Puritanism.” Even in the loose sense that the term “fundamentalist Christianity” is used, it includes strict and literal interpretation of the Bible. Yet the Puritans, like almost all of the early Protestants, invited everyone to interpret the Bible for themselves and did not insist that there was always a single way to read it. Meanwhile, the Puritans insisted on the validity of every moral rule in the Bible, whereas fundamentalist Christians pick and choose which laws were overturned by the New Covenant. Perhaps you just meant religious extremism? That is perhaps more accurate, though I’m not sure that element was always strong.