Science and Religious belief

A very, very large reason why our country is so mixed up is the transposition of personal belief into public policy, and inversion of reason into a subjective choice. Religious belief is meant to be strictly personal, an experience unique to each person (either as a believer or a non-believer) with the freedom to reach as many different personal conclusions as there are people, because it is by definition a subjective experience.

The two most influential factors determining one's spiritual beliefs are where you are born and your family's worldview.

Science is meant to be a unifying approach to thought and reason, enabling all different people to reach comparable conclusions. The two most important factors in ones ability to reason are education and religion.

Spirituality is specifically designed to be a personal journey, where as science and reason are meant to be journeys common to all. The consequences of confusing these two experiences (spirituality and reason) is the imposition of personal belief into public policy (Indiana legislating the right to discriminate against LGBT's) and the relegation of reason to become merely a personal choice (climate change denial, rejection of human evolution). We are losing both our moral compass and our ability to reason with one another. Our country, and the entire world is suffering profound consequences as a result of these fundamental mistakes.