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Must a community use its shared values to make decisions about scientific issues? NO!

Krishna: NO!

What are shared values? Shared values are a community’s values that are usually developed by its leadership and then adopted by the other members of the community. Sometimes these are imposed by religious leaders too. The values are shared and followed by all members of the community or religion, most of the time without questioning the rationality behind these values.

Do these leaders know enough of science to decide anything? NO!

Let me take the example of vaccines. Several religious leaders say vaccines are against religion and therefore shouldn’t be taken (1,2)! As a result people are suffering and some are even dying.

In 2003 imams in northern Nigeria advised their followers not to have their children vaccinated with oral polio vaccine, perceived to be a plot by Westerners to decrease their religion’s fertility (3). The boycott caused the number of polio cases to rise not only in Nigeria but also in neighboring countries. The followers were also wary of other vaccinations, and Nigeria reported more than twenty thousand measles cases and nearly six hundred deaths from measles from January through March 2005 (4).

In Pakistan and Afghanistan, some Taliban (religious and community leaders with shared values) issued fatwas opposing vaccination as an American plot to sterilize people of their religion, and kidnapped, beat, and assassinated vaccination officials (5,6).

In order to process the scientific information, one should have enough knowledge about it. Shared values are not ‘knowledge enough’ to process science.

Moreover, science itself can deal with moral values (7,8).

Scientists have their own ways and means of checking things. You can challenge science but you have to use only scientific methods to do that.

The problem is not that science is being challenged, it is what it is being challenged with. And of course how it is challenged. If logical questions are being posed, it is appropriate. If the challenge comes from restating ancient faith-based fables it is not appropriate, both from a scientific and separation-of-religion-and-state perspective. Controversy and the various arguments for and against should be debated in a healthy atmosphere. To push religious, commercial and political agendas in order to dumb down people who might otherwise benefit from proper science training is deplorable and should be condemned as this makes people hopelessly out of touch with reality. This kind of backward progress is what brought about the crusades and the dark ages that followed. It might help those who want to exploit the public with their agendas. Science being challenged by scientists is the essence of science.

You have to use only science and its time-tested methods to make decisions. Keep other things away from science. If you don’t, you yourself will suffer.

Footnotes:

  1. http://Livio, Susan K (2014-11-19). "Nearly 9,000 N.J. school children skipped vaccinations on religious grounds last year". Retrieved 2015-03-11.
  2. Outbreak of Measles Among Christian Science Students -- Missouri an...
  3. http:// "Muslim Clerics Finally Embrace Polio Campaign". 2009-03-22. Retrieved 2015-03-11.
  4. http://Clements CJ, Greenough P, Shull D (2006). "How vaccine safety can become political – the example of polio in Nigeria" (PDF). Curr Drug Saf. 1 (1): 117–19. doi:10.2174/157488606775252575. PMID 18690921. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2007-07-28.
  5. http:// Brumfiel, Geoff (2011-07-14). "Fake vaccination campaign raises real fears". Nature News. doi:10.1038/news.2011.418. Retrieved 2017-03-14.
  6. http:// Warraich HJ (2009). "Religious opposition to polio vaccination". Emerg Infect Dis. 15 (6): 978–78. doi:10.3201/eid1506.090087. PMC 2727330. PMID 19523311.
  7. Science and Spirituality
  8. Can science explain or deal with emotions and morals?

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