Thursday, April 10, 2008

Why Religion? Why Not Science?

If you have been following the democratic presidential candidates and the programs and bills they seem to be approving, debating on or thinking to work upon, you will see most of them are things like health care, immigration problems, religion, terrorism, education etc. These are definitely the burning issues for elections in any country today, and the politicians need to have clarity in their policies towards tackling these problems; more so, because they connect directly to any commonplace person in the country - these define the basis of our existence and society today. However it is very interesting to note their inclination towards exploiting the issue of religion, often to their own benefit, than participation in a science debate! Is it because people are more sensitive to religious issues than science? Is it because people connect to religion more, and take science rather for granted, or to be something which only a handful of people take interest in?

If you would take a peek into the Wired blog to keep yourself up-to-date with the latest technological endeavors, you will notice that as reported here, the two most promising candidates for the 2008 presidential elections, Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama, refused to attend a science debate, whereas in their other debates they would directly or indirectly always pull up the issue of religion.

It is unfortunate that the politicians who are going to spearhead a nation for probably the next two tenures are turning a deaf ear to scientific issues. Scientists and environmentalists from round the globe are worried about global warming and energy crises, and a nation where power is dissipated almost next to wastage, a nation whose main backbone runs on power mostly derived from non-renewable exhaustive sources, these two issues are customary to be considered for a whole next generation's survival. The count of deadly challenging diseases are not on a dip, rather everyday reaching newer heights beyond the expertise our current technology possesses. Under such situations, America needs probably a more scientifically-conscious candidate. Despite the fact that both Obama and Clinton have their own set of skills in certain policies, and they have huge public thronging behind them, their outlook towards scientific issues are rather disappointing.

The question remains, how is America's next President going to define the fate of this country or the ones associated, about issues that are currently being pushed back so much...


2 comments:

Puranjoy said...

Erm, the question is not 'how', it is 'why'. The answer--because the scientifically conscious are not large enough a votebank, just like in every other country in the world. Politicians are very good at spotting incentives. Another curious thing, US is unique in its religiosity among the developed nations. The western Europe and Canada don't set much store by religion, but in the US...I wonder why this is so.

Munmun said...

@ Puranjoy
I agree. Probably US has a more diverse crowd with people with widely variant religious thoughts.