"If we look back in the history, many of the disaster have occurred because of the misuse of science. Science is powerful but the same science can be dangerous if put in the hands of ignorant. Atomic bombings, nuclear disasters, cyber war-fare, biological weapons such as Anthrax are some of the examples of the misuse of science."

Instead of debating with opinions, why don't we debate with facts..the way Science does?

You mention atomic bombings, nuclear disasters that science brought upon us. How many died of these "disasters?" The only atomic bombing with major casualty was the WWII bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The total number of casualties was around 109,000. Nuclear disaster has yet to directly claim a life except in the case of Chernobyl where documented number of deaths was around 31. Even if we tally up the indirect deaths (cancer etc due to the leak), the toll doesn't exceed 10,000. So far 120,000 against Science.

It's hard to tally up the number for casualties from biological warfare, but one major war involving this was Japanese bombings of China which claimed around 3000 lives (http://www.peace.ca/masscasualties.htm). Some claim the bombings of Nangbi could have caused casualties of over 400,000. Let's include holocaust as gas chambers were used, so that total count goes above 2 million now. In total, casualties directly related to Science is less than 3 million.


Now, let's see the tally in religion's favor. I present to you, this page from wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war
Between 1095 to 1618, total number of casualties (remember this is when WMDs were not even existent) ranged anywhere from 8M to 23M!!!!

So let's repeat your sentence now, "If we look back in the history, many of the disaster have occurred because of the misuse of science."

Does that sound right?


Now there are few critical points to be made:
1. Casualties related to religion were directly related to religion, i.e. religion was the cause. Science in itself was NEVER the cause for the casualties reported above, Science was merely a mean. This is a big difference.

2. You might argue the difference in period, I'd argue it is much easier to kill more now that it was in the past. The effect of religious killing lingers, just watch our neighbors fighting in the name of religion.


I am not taking anybody's side; but when a factually wrong statement is made, I feel it begs refuting.