Are the roots of religion in goverment?

[QED]

Religious doctrine is based around a set of statements that have logical self-consistency but remain untestable. Reports of eye-witness accounts of events taking place a few thousand years ago are no more easily testable than a personal revelation from god reported by an individual.

Any fictitous story can be produced by such a process. This would account for the diversity found in various secular writings - and there are no shortage of these in the world. A very good motive for such works is easy to see: systems can be constructed to provide structure for peoples conduct. Within these structures key areas of human behaviour can be bought under the control of those seeking the control of populations.

The authority of these systems comes ultimately from the innapropriately irrefutable nature of the statements they make about themselves. After all, they are endorsed by nothing less than god!

[Jose]

I do not doubt the qualities of science that you point out.
Ascribing these qualities to scientists is a completely separate issue.

Of course. Scientists are merely human. This is one of the things that is now on the list of Essential Things To Teach In Science Classes--that scientists are humans, and are subject to the whims of cultural and societal norms. They try to be objective, but it's really very difficult. Of course, there are also scientists whose goals are pretty clearly defined beforehand, and who have a very difficult time recognizing contradictory data. I won't say more...

Political pressure changes scientific facts.

Let's be more precise. Political pressure changes the reports, and changes public access to the facts. Look at the tobacco fiasco. We knew in the late 50's exactly what smoking does to you. By '64 it was absolutely confirmed. Yet, the tobacco studies seemed to start showing ambiguity...because of political pressure altering the reported data, and affecting people's ability to recognize what the data actually show.

More recently, of course, we have the Bush Effect. As you noted with your link, there has been pressure to alter reports that are "bad for business." There has also been a removal of data from NIH and CDC websites that contradict the Bush ideology. Really good scientists have been removed from NIH panels because they didn't vote for Bush. I know some of these people--they are incredibly smart, capable, and eager to see the right things done. But political uniformity seems to be more important than facts. Look also at the use of government funds to pay journalists to pretend Bush programs are really working--like the No Child Left Behind law, which is a disaster. And, of course, there's the traditional approach, cutting the budgets of the agencies that fund research that contradicts ideology, like NSF and the EPA.

I really have no idea what we can do about this. These guys are out of control, but no one seems to notice or care.