Religion only stunts the advancement of modern science.
Modern science has created the nuclear fusion bomb.
Is that a good thing?
I don’t believe so.
Modern science is not categorically good.
If modern science proposes to do something bad which religion then hinders, would religion still be an evildoer … or, in that situation, a doer of good?
Can a doer of good ever be “the root of all evil”?
Science simply makes discoveries. Science is not the one deciding what to do with their discoveries. Science is neither good nor evil; it is neutral.
You make a simple claim. Do you have anything substantive to back your generalization?
Religion has actually advanced science. The scientific method, as we all know, was devised by men who assumed that God had created an orderly universe, and for that purpose - to show just that. And religion has been responsible for almost all of the great centers of learning in Europe in the Middle Ages and even the Rennaissance. Many leading american universities, including Harvard, started as divinity schools. Many of the top schools in the world today, including but not limited to those of ancient origin, are now under religious auspices, or started that way.
And they teach science, and do research.
This is just history. Nothing controversial about it.
Generalization? Hyperbolic nonsense is more like it.
Before anything was published in those times, it had to be approved by the religious leaders of the time. If the discoveries contradicted what the Church believed at the time, the discovery was not publish or had to be altered accordingly.
And yes I am a aware that this is a simplistic point of view but on the other hand it makes sense. Is science not what explains the world around us to the best of our ability? Does it not make our lives easier? Does it not solve a lot of the world’s major problems? Logically, anything that prevents the advacement of science does not want advance the human race.
If a soldier is ordered to slaughter a village full of peasant civilians, is he innocent by virtue of not being in charge of what he did?
The scientists created what they knew would be a bomb of unprecedented deadliness.
Are they innocent because they were ordered to do so?
If science is neutral, so is religion.
If religion can be other than neutral, so can science.
Both function to understand, explain, predict and control.
And one can produce religious fanatics … the other, mad scientists 
.
This question is irrelevant and of no philosophical value. If I carve an axe, the axe can be used both for woodchopping and peoplechopping. If somebody uses my axe for hacking flesh, I am not to blame, but may want to consider making axes that can’t be used for peoplechopping.
Now, if somebody hands me an axe, and says “Go kill people”, the situation is greatly different. The two situations are not comparable, and this being so, Jennyheart’s example should be ignored.
I’m sorry, I don’t want to be harsh, but you are making giant leaps of assumption in each of your statements. You are entitled to your opinion, but you have offered no explanation that is more than opinion.
Science explains a great deal within its limitations, but it has no particular claim to ‘best’ explanation. It cannot declare its’ own value.
Some might point out that for all of our easier, there is a much made harder.
Does it not create a lot of the worlds major problems?
Well, this would be true, but you offer nothing to show that this is true other than your considered opinion.
I’m not disagreeing with your statements but with the presentation and no substantiation of them. If you wish to convince, it would be good to show that the preponderence of evidence supports your claims.
I’d like to clear this up, please.
Throughout human history, popular teachings about morality and the nature of reality – have always been known as “religions”. “Religion” doesn’t stunt science, because science is a sort of decentralized, open-source religion. Aversion stunts science, because aversion and pidgeon-holing cause people to regect and hate things which they themselves could have been learning about. Your aversion to ‘religion’, for example, would stunt your scientific understanding of it.
Let me rephrase my claim: Religion, when mixed with science, creates major problems. Religion should in no way affect a scientific discovery. Science explains the world around us from a neutral point of view. When a standpoint is taken on that point of view, religion then becomes involved. This can be a good and bad at times. Religion should in no way interfere or prevent someone from making a discovery.
Oooo – somebody has an axe to grind. 
spw317
Well, then. Pardon my French, but if science is neither good nor evil, who gives a shit if it’s stunted?
Science is good for us.
Yeah.
Old ideas should not suppress the development of new ideas.
But people will resist change. It’s not going to be easy for humanity, as information itself is exponentially advancing in almost all forms.
Yeah. I’m guessing science will always cause more help than harm, in civilization, but if I’m wrong, then damn… suicide for all.
thezeus
Yes, I agree. I think we do science because science is good for us.
Especially those neat-o keen-o new weapons science helps make that are so good that everyone wants 'em.
I’m thinking maybe we need to put a governor on science and its high priests. 
Yeah, that’s the ticket – we’ll put every potential new scientific development to a popular vote and let the people decide if it’s worth pursuing that spiffy new space laser cannon or that hot new personalized-DNA-targeting deadly microbe. 
Or I know – how about “separation of science and state”?! That’ll keep doomsday devices out of government hands.
Hey – we did it to religion … and we can do it to science. 
Who says Pandora’s any more powerful than Jesus, anyway. 