Point taken. The Catholics are definitely a good example. But let's take my deep south southern baptist cousins for example. They are avid creationists who take the Genesis story in the bible completely literally. There is no entertaining the thought that it might be meant to be viewed in more of a metaphorical sense and there is no room for evolution in their view. If you try to have any type of scientific discussion with them, they don't want to hear any of it. And most of them are college educated people too, but in their own words "they don't need to explore these 'alternative views' of how the world came to be because their pastor says Evolution is wrong, the bible story is 100% correct, and their pastor is more of an authority than any scientist is." And of course, they have the right to their opinions but I think it is those kinds of right wing opinions that get the scientific community so exasperated they end up lashing out at religion. That, and the misunderstandings and misuses of the term "theory." As for myself, I have always encouraged my children to be open minded. I have exposed them to varying religious beliefs and to science. I told them what my opinion was and added that they are just my opinions and my opinions are ever evolving the longer I live and experience and observe things. They may come to different conclusions than I do and that's fine, as long as they are always thinking and evaluating things for themselves. I don't want them ever just taking someone else's word (not even mine) about something. I want them to always be looking at all the evidence they can possibly find and reaching their own thoughtful and ever evolving conclusions. Michael Carnes <michaelcarnes@earthlink.net> wrote: Just a little correction here. I didn't intend my remark about control to be a blanket statement about organized religion. It was intended to refer to the ID/Creationist types and perhaps some other religious conservatives. It's not really news that many denominations (Catholics for instance) appear quite comfortable with the idea of Evolution (and even Astronomy, although too late to do Galileo any good). The last thing I want to do is come down hard against religion. There are a number of quite reasonable people who consider themselves believers of some sort, and the last thing I want to do is alienate them. Healthy religions have always shown the ability to grow and incorporate new knowledge into a coherent world-view. When times get a little scary is when the demagogues arise to take advantage of the situation. Michael _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search. Learn more.