People choose to believe science because it seems logical because of evidence. Evidence - that's the thing isn't it? People think that science is always right, so if someone doesn't believe in it and chooses religion, then they are considered "uneducated." Well guess what, religion does have evidence, and that evidence is historical texts such as the Bible, Quran (or "Koran"), etc. Why can't those be considered evidence? Were they not written by people who experienced, saw, and felt God? One might argue that the people who wrote it had no interpretation of the world like science does, but science doesn't truly interpret the world either. Science is a set of beliefs on the small factors that make up the world and beyond, but isn't it all a set of ideas based on what they believe is evidence? It's illogical to say religion OR science is logical. Neither of them are logical. Is it logical to say a supreme being made two humans from dust and a rib to reproduce and create the world's population? No. Is it logical to say that apes somehow developed human emotions, feelings, and physical features over time? Not at all. But that's what they are; beliefs. To call someone uneducated and ignorant for being religious is just hypocritical and therefore, meaningless. By the way, no-one can say science is always right, considering scientists haven't even been able to explain what gravity really is yet.
People are not brainwashed, uneducated or ignorant for being religious. Science is a set of beliefs itself. If science is validated, why not religion?

That was what I thought. Now, what do you think? Are people really brainwashed for choosing religion/cultures over science?

Science is validated because a variety of people from all cultures and different parts of the world agree on one thing.  Two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom form water.  Koreans, Chinese, Americans, Egyptians, Israelis, Arabs, Iraqis, French, English, Spanish, Russians, Ukrainians, and everyone else agree on it.  It is a fact because you can look at the atom, see it, and say, "Yeah, there it is."  And everyone all agree those are two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

Religion pits various viewpoints against each other.  Everyone looks at a rock and they all have different opinions.  "God made that rock," say the Christians.  "Our God made that rock," say the Jews.  "No, Allah made that rock," say the Muslims.

No one fights wars over where the lithosphere starts and ends or why the sky is blue and flora is green.  No one fights wars over how volcanoes and gravity work.

People fight wars over the books you wish to submit as evidence.  People are killing each other right now because everyone has different opinions and no one can look directly at God and wave and have him/her/it wave back.  You may see God in everything, from water to plants to animals to love, but you can't reduce any religion to math.  

If you want to believe people lived 6,000 years and the earth hasn't been around for long, that's fine.  I don't think less of you.  If you want to ignore science, that doesn't empower your children or make them better.

Accepting beliefs over proof makes people superstitious and doesn't ground them in evidence based reality.  The trouble happens when you refuse to believe something that is proven again and again and we see happen in the real world (evolution for example).  I don't think you're ignorant.  If you're happy, good for you.

One doesn't have to ignore science or choose religion instead of it. I believe in God and creation, and many scientific facts seem to support that belief. I get what you're saying though, as some scientific theories deny the existence of God, and some of the less developed religions deny science because they feel it, of necessity, denies their god.

In the end, no one is brainwashed because they reject science or religion, they are simply deciding what they wish to believe. And it's worth noting again that both can be accepted. While I don't believe the theory of evolution, I also don't believe a lot of things that religious people believe. There's right and wrong in both sides, and it's up to us to figure out which is which.

warmaker : See my comment above. You're pretty cool and you seem like a fair and intelligent guy, so I'm sure you didn't mean religious people were uneducated or dumb for not believing in evolution, or that we're barbaric and fight amongst ourselves. While those thoughts do apply to many (if not the majority of) religious people, they are far from being all inclusive. I assure you, I'm one of the nicest and most respectful people you could care to meet. I also consider myself fairly intelligent, though not a genius by any means. I respect your views though, so please don't misunderstand me.

People are "brainwashed" by believing anything that they're told, not checking sources to see if they're credible, and not thinking carefully about things as they're told to them. It also comes by believing what they want to believe rather than what they should and realize is a lot more likely all factors considered.

I've spent a very large amount of time reasoning about things, and My beliefs change fairly often, albeit they are very minor, it's like undusting a lost artifact with a brush, the more that is revealed, the more previous assumptions are removed, and replaced with the way things really are. Some things you can know for sure, I can go out and test several ideas right now.

How bout vastly debated historical events?

I think not, as people still debate things like, "Was Patton Murdered" and "Who had Kennedy Killed" to this very day.

The further in the past something is, the harder it is to make certian that the event was recorded accuratly.

What if humanity was wiped out by nuclear wars nowadays just like that? but a few survived, and 2,000 years later, the people living in that period of time decided that those wars never happened?

They just couldn't believe that someone could make a "bomb" that could kill that many people with something like that.

"Our ancestors just made that up cause they didn't really know what happened."

"Who can you believe?"

And "How do you believe it?"

That is the question that we must ask ourselves.

Eirinn : Of course I don't mean all people of a religion are uneducated or backwards.  

But representatives, like ISIS, certainly make the general public look bad.  I live in an area with many Muslims and Allah taught people to love one another.  ISIS embarrasses the religion by killing and committing people who don't agree with them.  The Westboro Baptist Church teaches us God hates fags and sends disease and natural disasters because of how people are.  They're teaching us that God is destroying His creation because we're behaving badly.  Jesus walked around a few thousand years ago saying it would be lovely if everyone were nice to each other and his 'followers' picket funerals of soldiers and celebrities.

I've never seen the University of Virginia fight a war or picket the University of Texas over a theory.  They discuss and show evidence.  Their evidence is agreed upon by all people.

That's my difference.  I work for the YMCA, which is a Christian organization and I know hundreds of wonderful people who are fantastic.  They're religious and well-educated and are engineers, lawyers, doctors, dentists, and they believe in God and everything He has done.  

But the few take a lot away from representing the many.  Those people can be considered 'brain-washed' because nothing except what they originally learned can ever be true.  They don't respect or listen to opposing viewpoints and everything else is completely wrong, without any evidence.  That's bad.

Religion with an open mind is wonderful.  It teaches us to be nice to each other.

It's not so much that any scientific evidence specifically supports a situation with no god. It's that science doesn't see evidence of any gods using the scientific method.... that of repeatable tests that work when performed by multiple unbiased people under the same circumstances.

Science proves through things like the fossil record that evolution does happen, but there is the issue of the missing link. The thing is, just because we have one piece of a puzzle missing doesn't mean that we can't see what the picture is supposed to be.

That said, This doesn't even discount the idea that any god, even the Christian god, could have created the world. After all, the genesis of life itself is, from the best scientists can surmise, something that spawned from the right circumstances happening to be present and lifeless material of the Earth (dirt is a good analogy) to be filled with the breath of life. It is generally accepted that the Days that it took the Christian deity were not days the way we experience them on Earth. They could be on the timescale of the Galaxy of the Milky Way, making a year a little over 2,000 earth years.... or perhaps it is a timescale based on our entire universe.... In this case, the time frame could be millions or even billions of years.

We have to remember that the number 1,000 was just considered to be an unfathomable number to the people back then, as we didn't count objects that high. Now it seems like such a small and insignificant number, but during the early parts of the first millennium only the richest of people ever even needed to use the number 1,000, so it was seen as a huge number... like one billion is now. For them to tell the people during that time frame that something was one thousand years ago was the same as saying that it happened one million years ago, or one billion years ago to us now because our overall though process on numbers is so much greater. When you think about things from this angle, the various holy texts out there are not invalidated by science. We just need to look at our holy texts as at least allegory and metaphor... One thousand years is likely being used as a metaphor to mean "a really long time, as long as you can imagine".

That said, I do understand and sympathize with the atheists as well. They, overall, simply refuse to believe in something they don't see definitive proof of, and refuse to worship something they don't believe.

I, for the record, am neither an Atheist, or a follower of the Judeo-Christian based religions, but I believe that as long as your beliefs (or lack thereof) do not endanger others, but rather help society, then your beliefs are right for you.