It is actually funny that, some people, living in the 21st century, enjoying the fruits of science, from electricity, televisions, personal computers to cars and airplanes, yet whenever having a chance, strenuously try to deny science, try to fallback to some groundless traditional and religious ideas, invented thousands of years ago by ignorant people, just to defend their dogmas, to cling to their long-held but totally wrong beliefs, to avoid facing the TRUTH.
Yet when they are asked: “What is it that you try so hard to deny?”, they will never fail to show that they have anything but the minimum understanding of it (science and its value).
So, what is the value of science? Is science just some incomprehensible theories derived by smart but weird scientists? And who do these scientists think they are, when they dare to step into the religious, spiritual world of gods and saints, to attempt to contradict their teaching? They are just SANE people. What they try to seek, to fight for, is FACTS, and a way of looking at the world based on FACTS, not MYTHS and LIES. Yes, science is not only theories, but also facts. Scientists love to find some grand theories to explain everything, but before that they had learned to respect facts and phenomena. A theory is just an attempt to explain the facts, the phenomena of everything that happens regularly, repeatedly around us. A theory must be based on facts and must be disprove-able by evidences. Before deriving the law of gravitation, Newton first has to respect the fact that things fall to the ground. Later, the phenomenon turned out to be better explained by the theory of relativity – matter twisting space-time, but, both Einstein and Newton first have to acknowledge the phenomena. Things do fall to the ground and the Earth does spin around the sun. These things do not alter their course by miracles of some gods. By upholding a way of seeing the world by facts, even at the cost of being burned alive, of getting status and reputation ruined, by innumerable bigots, these men and women of science have created a civilized world, the world which we are living in. Scientists do not contradict religious ideas and dogmatic beliefs arrogantly, they do so rationally and factfully.
It will not be easy to find a guide for my actions, a meaning for my life, while believing that there is no god to punish my sins, no afterlife where I have to pay for my offenses (well, sadly, my consciousness lies in my brain. It is not something that floats across generations like some 2000-year-old teaching). But I rather be a rational human being than a self-delusional bigot.
Update: A “thinking” few adopt some kind of relativism attitude, saying something like: what can’t be explained by science could be explained by religion/spirituality. I couldn’t resist showing a frown. Why can’t them utilize their reasoning capacity and ask themselves this simple question: How can the truth ever be attained, progress ever be made if everyone utters such platitude and stop trying, wondering, pondering and seeking the truth? Would we have Newton laws if Newton thought that it was pointless to try to find a law because everything could be explained by the existence of God and his force? Did Galileo jump to the conclusion that the empirical evidences against geocentric theory were just the influence of other entities from a spiritual realm, outside the physical world? So please, please realize that such kind of attitude belongs to ignorant folks, unable to make sense of the world around them. People with years of education can do better than that and should at least practice the habit of thinking before repeating.