This week, the Pope cancelled his visit to an Italian University due to the protests of that institution's professors and students. Their reason: in 1990, 21 years after man landed on the moon, the Pope, then a Cardinal, defended the Church's persecution of Galileo back in the 1600s. His defense: at the time, Galileo's contention that the planets revolved around the sun was unproven and counter to "rational belief."
Religion has always been threatened by scientific knowledge and has a long history of attempting to derail its progress. Even today, almost 400 years after Galileo, we have a State that wants to eliminate the teaching of evolution and a presidential candidate who believes in the literal interpretation of Scripture. The support for such positions comes primarily from a scientifically uneducated populace who, ingrained with strong religious beliefs, don't want academicians disrupting their simplistic view of the world (and their hope for immortality).
While the "spiritual component" of life is a reasonable subject for debate and investigation, religious dogma is purely a human product, steeped in mysticism and sustained by fear, hope and guilt. Religion fears science.
