Josephus- I find David F's position as lacking and prejudiced and dictatorial against many religious cultures- there is a difference between science and scientism- he probably doesn't intend on being prejudiced- but it's really hard to see things in a way that is counter to your own interest.

As Joseph Stiglitz says no one will support a system that is not in their interest.

As has been attributed to Voltaire "I may disagree what you say but support your right to say it"- I'd probably vary this axiom somewhat but it's an approximation.

Sadly the government and special interest groups have subtly engaged in policies regarding culture that have disadvantaged incumbents for a long time in contradiction to principles of mandate. At the same time they have engaged in propaganda against the people to justify these policies. The establishment will always have a different position to the popular position and will try the subvert the process- sadly the power establishment is often more nimble than the popular establishment.

Someone put it in the following way- there is a continual revolution between the elites and the sub-elites to obtain power. The Communists seem to be well aware of this process and use counter-revolutionary tactics to maintain communism. Mao recognized the potential of the academics to act as a counter-revolutionary centre and pre-emptively acted against them. You can see these pre-emptive actions against dissenting academics in the west today.

Politics is complicated- in the Cold War they talked of being "trapped in the Hall Of Mirrors" perhaps an allusion to the Palace of Versailles.

http://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/estate/palace/hall-mirrors
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_73379.shtml
http://www.quora.com/In-psychology-what-does-it-mean-if-someone-is-in-a-hall-of-mirrors?share=1
http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=17086
http://text.npr.org/141682602

Dear Josephus,

The history of life can be found at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_life

Multicellular life can only existed for a small part of the history of the earth and human life a very much smaller part.

It's a fascinating story.

Dear Josephus,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_evolutionary_history_of_life is a more concise account of the history of life.

Enjoy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

Overview

In the philosophy of science, the term scientism frequently implies a critique of the more extreme expressions of logical positivism[2][3] and has been used by social scientists such as Friedrich Hayek,[4] philosophers of science such as Karl Popper,[5] and philosophers such as Mary Midgley,[6] the later Hilary Putnam,[6][7] and Tzvetan Todorov[8] to describe (for example) the dogmatic endorsement of scientific methodology and the reduction of all knowledge to only that which is measured or confirmatory.[9]

More generally, scientism is often interpreted as science applied "in excess". This use of the term scientism has two senses:

Anti-scientism

Philosopher Paul Feyerabend, who was an enthusiastic proponent of scientism in his youth,[51] later came to characterize science as "an essentially anarchic enterprise"[52] and argued emphatically that science merits no exclusive monopoly over "dealing in knowledge" and that scientists have never operated within a distinct and narrowly self-defined tradition. In his essay Against Method he depicted the process of contemporary scientific education as a mild form of indoctrination, aimed at "making the history of science duller, simpler, more uniform, more 'objective' and more easily accessible to treatment by strict and unchanging rules."[53]

[S]cience can stand on its own feet and does not need any help from rationalists, secular humanists, Marxists and similar religious movements; and ... non-scientific cultures, procedures and assumptions can also stand on their own feet and should be allowed to do so ... Science must be protected from ideologies; and societies, especially democratic societies, must be protected from science ... In a democracy scientific institutions, research programmes, and suggestions must therefore be subjected to public control, there must be a separation of state and science just as there is a separation between state and religious institutions, and science should be taught as one view among many and not as the one and only road to truth and reality.
— Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, p. viii[54]

Dear Canem Malem,

I have no argument with Josephus' principles. They are probably to be kind and obey the law as long as it doesn't conflict what one sees as moral. Those are my principles, and I doubt that Josephus will be cruel or harm anyone for those principles. We differ in beliefs, but in a civilised country one lives peacefully with a person who has different beliefs.

Can religion and science co-exist?

" The late German-born physicist Albert Einstein
believed that science without religion was lame, and
religion without science was blind. But the debate
over whether science and religion can co-exist has
been going on since the dawn of mankind and continues
to divide opinion even today ..." as INCH magazine
found out.

It may be of interest to read the various opinions
on the subject given in the link below:

http://ineos.com/inch-magazine/articles/issue-7/debate/