inquisition
look at secular rulers, holy roman emperor, feudal lords.  what do if 
offended?  write a courteous letter?  "dear contemacious vassal--please 
accept my apologies for being an inadequate ruler"  No!  They resort to 
interrogation and torture, which were the methods of the day.  That's why 
it's so fatal to ignore historical context.

Where can science lead us?  we know about genetics and evolution.  so to 
improve human life, just weed out the bad genes: eugenics, holocaust.  
"Master race" not celebrated in Bible, but follow very readily from 
scientific understanding of genetic inheritance, descent with 
modification.  Why, then, do we see the inquisition and holocaust as bad?  
because we value individual human dignity and autonomy.  We value freedom 
and equality.  Where did those values come from?  Did we acquire them by 
examining all the empirical evidence?  No, we got the same way that led 
people to have faith in God: we  inherited them.  History has reasons 
whereof reason knows not.

We can not treat religion as a choice, any more than our value on 
individuality.  We take that principle on absolutely blind faith.

you want to see everything as having a scientific answer.  Fine, that's 
the movement in universities these days.  For deciding such things as 
legal punishment, maybe science can take us a long ways.  But we must 
remember that not all moral questions have scientific answers.  Any 
scientific justification is a noble lie.


You want to see history as nothing but the making of the modern 
world--the view that we are standing upon the shoulders of giants.  That 
goes a long ways for certain aspects of culture, such as medicine.  But 
political institutions or moral questions aren't necessarily something on 
which to make progress from worse to better.  We can also see history as 
shifting between alternative ways of being human, without necessarily 
finding one alternative superior to another.  Every age provides 
opportunity for thoughtful, sensitive individuals to use their powers to 
improve the world and live fuller lives, whether religious or not.  The 
best we can hope for is to live at the level of our own time.




We have to accept that not everything about us can be proven or justified 
scientifically or philosophically.

To categorically label the religious as living in "blind loyalty" and 
scientists enlightened is disrespectful and shortsighted.  If common 
sense and science are continuous, then so are religion and common sense.