The old aphorism “familiarity breeds contempt” is no more evident than in the rantings of the religious right in America. Too often we witness their vociferation against science. Science, they pontificate, brings nothing but evil. After all, look at the wars that science has enabled, the atomic bomb alone is testament to the evils of science.

All the while of course they use modern medicine to cure their ills, drive cars on surfaced roads, live in comfortable buildings benefiting from all the conveniences of running sanitised water and waste disposal, and use power generated using turbines and generators to heat and light their homes and streets. In short, they exhibit the same ignorance of irony as those who profess to support free speech whilst cheerfully denying it to those whose opinions they oppose in the interests of ‘the moral majority’ (which is seldom moral and even more infrequently the majority).

One cannot vilify science for the ills to which men put it while simultaneously enjoying the benefits it has wrought without falling foul of the worst kind of hypocrisy. Science is, in this sense, amoral. It can be neither good not evil, it is the use to which men put the fruits of scientific endeavour that determine how we judge the moral character of those men, not the technology and certainly not the means by which it was devised.

Let us then attend to these men. Who puts the fruits of science to use for good or ill? How shall we judge their character?