They'll love Mars then!
Since the 1960s Western Christianity, especially among the liberal academic and intellectual elite, has become increasingly marginalised. Although this drift undoubtedly predated the 1960s, the cultural marginalisation of Christianity by intellectual trend setters has, to people on the ground like myself, become noticeably more pronounced since the 1960s. The Christian reaction among those with fundamentalist tendencies was and is to counter this cultural shift with a loud proclamation of contrariness; although this contrariness is probably less caused by fundamentalism than it is the definition of fundamentalism; feel marginalised? Just shout louder! This contrariness expresses itself through one or more of a motley collection of shibboleth issues such as anti-vaccination theories, anti-climate change theories, anti-gay rights, young earthism, flat earthism, a huge variety of conspiracy theories usually involving "deep government", fear of government, anti covid-19 lock down, extreme market libertarianism, promotion of gun rights and above all a general identification with the tribe of right-wing of politics: I would not want to call all these people "conservative" because some of them advocate quite extreme un-conservative, anti-science ideas. (e.g. flat earth and other conspiracy theories)*
Although there are some overtly anti-rational Christians who openly embrace fideism many of the aforementioned right-wingers like to make claim to scientific legitimacy to give some kudos to their case. But because scientific epistemology is so often unhelpful to their theories the only way forward for them is to portray a distorted view of science before they can enlist it in support of their views. A common corruption of science which I have commented on many times is the false view that there is a distinction between observational science and so called historical science which is supposed to have no observational support. This concept falls over because no scientifically proposed object is really ever directly observable: What makes the crucial difference is not some bogus distinction between empirical science and non-empirical science but the fact that objects of scientific study have varying epistemic distances; this means that those objects have varying amenability to their structures being populated with observational protocols.
But rather than accepting that there is a sliding scale of epistemic amenability on scientific objects many right-wingers like to promote the notion that there is a sharp distinction between true science which is supposed to be thoroughly empirical and science they don't like which they claim isn't (very?) empirical. This distorted concept of science is then mobilised in an attempt to de-legitimatise science that is inconvenient to the right-wing world view. As I have recorded before on this blog this polemical technique is very often employed by fundamentalist theme park manager Ken Ham. In fact Ham's tame astronomer Danny Faulkner has spent so many years as an apologist for Ham's theme park that it seems to have addled his thinking about scientific epistemology; see for example this post of mine where I charge Faulkner with having a debased and caricatured view of scientific epistemology. Faulkner thinks that science is about what can be detected with the five senses. Well yes, science is about the five senses but very little in fact can be detected directly with these senses. The senses simply provide a limited sampling window on the complex but otherwise rational objects of our cosmos, objects which are for the most part well beyond our senses. The only reason why our sensorial "key-hole-view" works is (in my opinion) because God has created a thoroughly rational, ordered world and therefore readable world. Reading this world is like reading the sentences of a rational person**. Formal science works and works well. Praise be to God Almighty!
Another example of a right-winger who somehow thinks that true science should be "empirical" can be witnessed in this blog post of mine where Brian Cox clashes with Australia senator and conspiracy theorist Malcolm Roberts. Roberts is unwilling to accept computer climate modeling and Cox has to labour the scientific point that modelling is the only way to anticipate the future of the Earth's climate. Roberts' claim that the models don't work empirically (which is debatable) is not backed up by way of alternative, better models, tested against his pretensions to empiricism. It seems that Roberts simply doesn't accept esoteric modelling as part of the valid scientific method. I don't know what he thinks he's going to do with all this empirical data he makes claim to if it isn't used to help build and test a model. In any case let's beware of the "alternative facts" of those who have swallowed conspiracy theorism as a world view.
Finally another example of an anti-science right-winger has come to light in a post by PZ Myers where Myers quotes a Tweet from Republican John Carnyn who is even clearer in his denial of modelling as valid science:
Finally another example of an anti-science right-winger has come to light in a post by PZ Myers where Myers quotes a Tweet from Republican John Carnyn who is even clearer in his denial of modelling as valid science:
After #COVIDー19 crisis passes, could we have a good faith discussion about the uses and abuses of "modeling" to predict the future? Everything from public health, to economic to climate predictions. It isn't the scientific method, folks. https://t.co/OYBm3CIUxX— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) April 10, 2020
Anti-science Tweet
The Tweet reads:
My own guess as to what really drives the right-wing anti-science agenda is a paranoid counter cultural malaise which smarts under the realisation that they have little influence and credibility among the academic establishment elite. What's worrying, however, is that in America some of these right-wingers are armed to the teeth and may start shooting if they don't get their way.
After
#COVIDー19
crisis passes, could we have a good faith discussion about the uses and abuses
of "modeling" to predict the future?
Everything from public health, to economic to climate predictions. It isn't the scientific method, folks.
Cornyn obviously hasn't read his own Wiki reference and he consequently gets the mauling he deserves from Myers and his following. Their criticisms are along the lines you'd expect from professional science people: You just can't move in science without creating a model of some sort and testing it formally against experimental results: No model? Then nothing to test and therefore no science. Every department of science, and in fact even much of our day to day living, involves the tense and sometime contentious dialogue between our concept of how the world works (i.e. our mental on-board models) and our experience. We all use an informal version of science: That is we all have some kind of anticipation about how the world works (i.e. a "model", which maybe constructed from the sampling of previous experience) and then bring that anticipation into dialogue with experience. This, I propose, is even true of religions although let's just say that sometimes theology tends to be more creative, metaphorical, seat-of-the-pants and free format than the science of the relatively simple very regular objects of spring extending and test tube precipitating science; no surprise, then, that sometimes the gaps and ambiguities in the theological account are filled in with authoritarian fulminations of the raving fundamentalist.
My own guess as to what really drives the right-wing anti-science agenda is a paranoid counter cultural malaise which smarts under the realisation that they have little influence and credibility among the academic establishment elite. What's worrying, however, is that in America some of these right-wingers are armed to the teeth and may start shooting if they don't get their way.
Bang!, bang! bang! bang! You'd better dance to the tune of the AR-15!
Fortunately I think we are dealing with a fanatical minority here - at least I hope so.
Relevant links.
See also
https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2011/06/cloistered-academics-vs-punks.html
See also the link below to the de facto ID website Uncommon Descent where we find a video that is ignorant of the status of the second law of thermodynamics:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/when-scientists-ignore-science-by-mark-champney
Footnotes
* Some "New Agers" seem to be going down a similar road to Christian Fundamentalists especially regarding conspiracy theorism, and anti-vaxing. They have a similar attitude to academia as do fundamentalists.
** This assumption of a rational regular world appears to break down in paranormal connections. In paranormal circumstances the world, locally at least, slips into an almost dream state (cf "The Oz effect"). These experiences form muddled erratic patterns that are the anti-thesis of a testable regular reality. The paranormal is a breakdown of rationality, a kind of storm of delirium in the usually regular fabric of reality. Hence the great difficulty of attempts to get an epistemic handle on the paranormal. Paranormal experiences do, however, seem to have some kind of loose associative/connotative/Freudian meaning not unlike dreams
See also the link below to the de facto ID website Uncommon Descent where we find a video that is ignorant of the status of the second law of thermodynamics:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/when-scientists-ignore-science-by-mark-champney
Footnotes
* Some "New Agers" seem to be going down a similar road to Christian Fundamentalists especially regarding conspiracy theorism, and anti-vaxing. They have a similar attitude to academia as do fundamentalists.
** This assumption of a rational regular world appears to break down in paranormal connections. In paranormal circumstances the world, locally at least, slips into an almost dream state (cf "The Oz effect"). These experiences form muddled erratic patterns that are the anti-thesis of a testable regular reality. The paranormal is a breakdown of rationality, a kind of storm of delirium in the usually regular fabric of reality. Hence the great difficulty of attempts to get an epistemic handle on the paranormal. Paranormal experiences do, however, seem to have some kind of loose associative/connotative/Freudian meaning not unlike dreams
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