Acknowledgement

Acknowledgement reads: "To those who have the courage to stand for truth. To my parents for teaching me how to take on a challenge."

Truth is a great and wonderful thing. The search for truth can be a slow and gradual process, but the seeds sown in the search for truth produce a great harvest for all mankind. Science is, fundamentally, a search for truth. There are means and methods for a scientific pursuit of truth. People of a religious perspective can often disregard or dismiss the findings of science, but they do so in error.

Galileo pursued the truth and the Church of the day didn't much care for that. The resisted; I suppose that's a kind way of putting it. Reading up on the clash between the two forces: Science and Religion is an exercise left for the reader. In the end, the Church may be "Infallible" when it comes to spiritual instruction; but they are not so flawless when it comes to understanding Science. 

The pursuit of scientific truth, truth about things which can be studied, requires a certain vigorous respect for the process. Impartiality must be maintained. Evidence must be gathered. Hypothesis made as the best possible educated guess from the available evidence are then tested. All in all, the researcher attempts to avoid bias, which is the nemesis of science. And I call it such for a reason.

In Sir James Frazer's, "The Golden Bough," he touches upon the evolution of magic, religion, and science. He begins by suggesting magic was poor reasoning wherein man felt he could magically control elements beyond his ability. Religion, Frazer suggests, then steps in. Magic ritual obviously fails and... eventually, the ineffectiveness of magic left man searching for another option. He fills the world with spirit which must be placated by prayer and supplication in order to achieve the desired ends. This provides an excuse for the failure of the magical seeming rituals. In time, however, man recognizes that religion fails to improve his understanding of the world and proceeds to science. Science, it can be seen, makes slow steady process.

Religion has advantages over Magic, but Religion still fell into some of the same traps. In particular, the problem with Galileo. Much like how fables and fairy tales try to answer age old questions such as why is the sea salty or what causes the tides, religion had been called onto provide answers. They came up with answers, but at no point tried to test their hypothesis. Thus we are told that a magic grinding mill is constantly churning out salt at the bottom of the sea and that the tides were caused by Thor getting into a drinking contest with a giant.

Religious answers are not testable and, therefore, are strongly influenced by confirmation bias and.. especially, the passions with which people invest in their religion. These strong emotions prevent people from seeing or entertaining other notions. Along with creating witch trials and being responsible for the burning of heretics; Religion has shown itself truly horrible in generating peace and good will between different faiths.

For these reasons, the Founding Fathers of the United State of America put a separation of Church and State into the Bill of Rights. In order to get people to get along, we needed them to keep their religion out of the rule making.

The consequence of which, many years later, are people who's affiliation to a political party is no less biased and unbending than Theology. Essentially, there are people who make a Religion out of their Politics. Given the title of this work, I believe the author guilty of this sin.

In order to search for truth, you have to step outside your pride and systematically gather evidence. Once you have gathered the evidence, then you can see how things fit and make theories. But people with a strong political perspective have a goal in mind before they ever start gathering evidence. This lack of impartiality obscures the truth. Bias blinds the researcher. Their holy and precious "truth" is an idol of their own vanity concocted in their brain to which every evidence gathered must pay homage or be sacrificed. Evidence supporting the bias is praised; contrary data ignored, distorted, or demonized.

Such is not someone who has courage to stand for the truth. You can only stand for the truth if you value diligently seeking it first. To seek the truth, you do not start with "how can I prove I am right?" You ask the harder question, "Am I actually right?"

....

So, I ask myself. Am I a seeker of truth? Will I consider evidence? Will I stand for the truth revealed by that evidence? I endeavor to do so.