The main obstacle presented by most religions to the 

 full utilization of scientific knowledge and method is that 

 religions advocate an (unproved) faith in superhuman 

 power to solve Man's terrestrial problems — in complete 

 opposition to the advocacy of science that we should rely 

 on our own rational abilities for this purpose. The attitude 

 of any person who concedes with the religious viewpoint, 

 while being fully aware of the opposite scientific one, can 

 only be stated to be entirely irrational. And any scientist 

 who accepts both scientific method and religion and holds 

 them to be compatible, must certainly be deceiving him- 

 self. For to any intelligent person who has examined the 

 claims of these two opposing philosophies of life, without 

 preconceived bias, it is perfectly clear that there can be 

 no compromise between them on the basic question of 

 rationality. 



A continual impediment to the advance of applied 

 science lies in prejudice of one group or people against 

 another. A good example of this today is the manner in 

 which the white races of the world regard the yellow and 

 black races as in general genetically inferior to themselves. 

 There is no valid evidence to establish this, although there 

 may be significant racial differences in intelligence be- 

 tween certain peoples. However, for the present we must not 

 artificially produce bias against any human or group of 

 humans. 



Another factor which makes difficult the large-scale, 

 long-term, application of science to world problems, is 

 the generally quite limited time for which most govern- 

 ments remain in power, with consequent short-term eco- 

 nomic policies for their countries. Very few governments 

 give support to researches planned to solve problems 

 which will become important ones more than about five 



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