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The left is trying to get a lot of mileage by making an issue of the faith of supporters of President Bush.

Now, I cannot see the advantage to this strategy in the first place, as the United States is a very moral nation. Surely attacking the faith of people is a losing issue from the get-go!

However, the left continues to soldier on, either unaware of the drawbacks of their strategy or unwilling to accept the reality of the last election as an indicator of the popularity of their position.

One of the most strident claims is that faith leads one away from science. Again, this is a strange position to hold given the propensity of United States citizens to make great strides in science.

This is not to say that religion and science have never been at odds. Obviously the Scopes Monkey trial and the Vatican's treatment of Galileo were motivated by a fear that a scientific notion was amounting to heresy.

Those controversies, and others like them amount to differences between humans, not differences between humans and deities.

The left, however, would have everyone believe that religious fanatics (are leftist editors thinking "redundant"?) are trying to stop scientific progress in such areas as stem cell research.

The left, as usual, is wrong. What motivates people of faith are their values. They are not rejecting science, they are making a stand that their belief in the sanctity of life makes them willing to proceed with great caution in an area where human life may be at stake.

The left seems again either unwilling or unable to accept this stance. This is puzzling, given the left's penchant for moving at the pace of a glacier when the life of a snail darter or salmon is at stake.

The argument is not whether progress should be made in science, it is whether progress should be made at the expense of the lives of people who have not volunteered to participate in such studies, much less signed away their life to science.

For those on the left either unwilling or unable to accept that, just pretend that it is a snail darter or salmon in that petri dish. Ah, there it is, now you agree that we should make all possible efforts to avoid killing any of them, don't you?

The United States is a very moral nation.

One of the most strident claims is that faith leads one away from science.

This is not to say that religion and science have never been at odds.

The argument is not whether progress should be made in science.