The shopping holiday of the year, otherwise known as Black Friday, was not only an exciting time for shoppers this year, but for scientists as well. On Black Friday, the Mars Science Laboratory blasted off for the red planet, which it will reach in September 2012. The one-ton Mini Cooper-sized rover will spend the next few years (at least) photographing and investigating Mars rocks, looking for signs of life.

This mission is what science and engineering is all about. Science is about finding precise answers to the multitude of unsolved problems in the universe and engineering is about building the tools that help get them to the answers. Why do we continue to search for questions and their answers? Perhaps it is just an evolutionary impulse that has helped humanity develop as a species. But it is no question that the new scientific data we discover could be revolutionary and at the very least will add to the human pool of knowledge.

I spent some time a few weeks ago listening to one of the department chairpersons from the University of Minnesota talk about the long history of conflict between faith and science. It was extremely interesting and while it was mostly a review of old history and biology classes for me, it was an introduction to many famous scientific discoveries and theories for a good number of the adults listening.

But what struck me most about the event at my church was one of the questions at the end of the lecture from the man behind me. He pointed out that after watching a debate between two people recently where one argued that our planetary system is geocentric (Earth-centered) and the other supported the scientific heliocentric (sun-centered) view, he found it more compelling to believe the pre-Copernican (Earth-centered) viewpoint.

That was a bit stunning to me.

I couldn’t believe that there are still people that think the sun revolves around the Earth, as impossible as that may be in a universe of Newtonian physics. They have consciously made the decision that the Bible holds more truth than the scientific process in this matter. To an engineering student like me, this is simply amazing.

For the record, the fact that the sun is nearly 333,000 times more massive than Earth makes the physics of an Earth-centered system quite impossible.

While I don’t want to go too far down the science-religion rabbit hole here, I agree with the professor that while many literal teachings of the Bible that may have been true to the knowledge of their day, but are now proved false are just that – teachings. The central tenets of faith can’t be explained away by science. You have to have faith that your god forgives you of sin and that you will have the chance to pass judgment and find life after death – science will likely never prove those beliefs to be true or false.

On the other hand, the belief that the man in my church held that we shouldn’t believe science unless we can verify scientists’ work with our own two eyes is ridiculous. If this were the case, it would be impossible, because not all of us have electron microscopes or space telescopes sitting in our basements to help us make sure scientists aren’t feeding us lies. If proof is what we seek, we need only look at the peer reviews in the science community and the work that is done to repeat experiments to prove a good hypothesis and build on prior work.

If I take my criticism of non-factual beliefs a few steps further, I can also apply it to the 2012 presidential race. It worries me that a number of the Republican front-runners have made more statements that websites like PolitiFact.com have found to be blatantly false than statements found to be true. The worst offenders are Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry. Though I should add that many of the other candidates have very good records of truth-telling and many Democrats also have records that are littered with half-truths and nowhere near spotless.

But, it isn’t hard for anyone with a moderate understanding of logic to see that super-conservatives seem to live down a deep rabbit hole these days where the media is out to get them, science is not to be believed, compromise is seen as defeat, and corporations are king. With so many of these far-right Republicans in Congress, the voice of the mostly moderate group of Democrats is largely drowned out.

As students, is this how you think politics should be? Should good politicians be the ones who don’t believe in facts or science and who tend to use partisan polling groups when they need numbers to back up their points? Do we continue the practices of the super-conservatives and never plan for anything past six months from now? We can just increase the debt, release smog in the air and defund technology advances because it will be our children’s problem to deal with the long-term fallout?

This is not how our founding fathers ever wanted the country to be run. Without the reasoned consideration of all opposing views and use of compromise to make law, we are little better than the monarchy that we fought for years to break free of. So do us all a favor in 2012: Research ALL the candidates you can vote for, pick the very best person for each job (hopefully someone willing to believe science and use facts), and then go vote, either in Ames or in your hometown. Scientists will continue to reach into the universe and into the atom to discover and explore, but it will mean little if our representatives never pay attention to what they find.

Curiosity launched successfully from Cape Canaveral, FL at 9:02 a.m. CST on Nov 26. You can follow the rover’s progress by following @MarsCuriosity on twitter.