How are the conflicts between Religion and Science still relevant today?
Science has to work regardless of the observer. A cancer treatment has to work whether the doctor is a Buddhist, Christian, Athiest or Jain. Likewise, for any science to work, the belief system of the scientist can have no impact. If it does, people with other beliefs could not agree. Science is based upon the consensus of the evidence, not the emotional needs of the scientists for the evidence to fit their agenda. Religion is based upon supposed revelation from some divine being or authority. Religion makes affirmative statements that it does not test for truth. The problems between science and religion are still relevant because people still base their actions on religion when there is not evidence at all that religions are true. At least with science we know actions can be based on things not yet proved false. Public policy is made around religion in ways science knows to be false all the time. It may not be explicitly religious, but is done to placate religious constituents.
The hotspot of conflict is definitely relevant – because it is at that point of accepting or not accepting intelligent design into the science classrooms of America. I’m on the side of keeping it in the religion classes, but there are a lot of people who want it to replace the concept of evolution.
The only real conflicts are those created by people who insist on interpreting their favorite mythology book literally. As far as I’m concerned, if they stopped trying to run my government, stopped trying to insist that mythology is science, and stopped blowing stuff up when people disagree with them, there would be no conflict.
