At my school, we were taught Christianity fist (general, not Catholicism or C of E, just vanilla Christianity). Then we spent about 3-4 weeks on each of the "major" religions. That was studied for 3 years, until we reached options, then we could chose to follow it to exam or not.

Any good scientist will tell you that science is based on things that are 'probable' not 'correct'. There are no 'definintes' in science. All aspects of science are contnually challenged and evolving.

One thing 'science' does say, if you look around at the studies, is that schizophrenics are more likely to be religious than the general poplulation and that they are generally more ill than schizophrenics who aren't religious.

* strokes chin *

Science can be regarded as being “correct” because a lot of the time it is presented as just that: fact. By the time it arrives on our TV screens, the debate about what is presentable and digestible by the public is long over. At times this “truthfulness” is decided by politicians to further their agendas. For example, we have no full understanding of the planet’s climate, and recent debacles have shown how shoddy the science has been handled. Yet there are theories that are presented as “truth” for reasons that go beyond the science and move painfully into global commerce.

I am as concerned about how science can be used to form public opinion and shape society as I am about the ability of religion to do the same. However, science has provided us with predictable and workable solutions to many problems - problem which religions would happily encourage prayer for and nothing else.

Corrected.

There are some faiths that eschew certain parts of science (E.g. JWs and blood transfusions) but by and large the majority of faiths have few or no teaching for or against it.

The problems tend to arise when people who don't much about either start spouting about the supposed conflicts between the two. I know precious few well-grounded theologians who have problems with science; I also am aware of lots of decent scientists having no problem with faith. Christians who think that Genesis disproves evolution tend to know very little about evolution and even less about what the Bible says about it. One must also remember that many the profess to Christian, Jewish etc. don't actually know very much about their own faith, let alone the beliefs of others.

The idea that faith and science are in conflict comes from the mistaken idea that they are trying to answer the same questions - they aren't.

A point I believe I went on to make, although probably not as eloquently.

I would certainly be interested to see a report of that research.

That sounds truly brutal. Brutal, I say.

The problem is some areas of science believe the science is settled. Doe we stop looking at evolution at the origin of species no we said oh my god there's a hole in my fossil record ellijiah and we went to fix it. But some science believes it's above and beyond question " what derrick theres cooling on my graph, sod it we'll call it climate change and fix the graph"