Science and the Religious Right

This week on the Point of Inquiry podcast Chris Mooney interviews author Peter Montgomery. The discussion is long so I felt compelled to transcribe the following exchange which I think neatly sums up their respective positions.

Chris Mooney: I wrote a book called the Republican War on Science and it had this section on the religious right messing with science. And so what turns out is that if you take away their god-inspired moralistic language about sex, abortion, or whatever, then they make up phony scientific arguments that are secular. So suddenly adult stem cells are better than embryonic stem cells, and they've got phony science on that. Or, condoms don't actually work, and they've got phony science on that. Or, abstinence education DOES work, phony science, here it comes. Or what are the other ones? It goes on and on. Abortion causes breast cancer, abortion causes mental illness. They start makin' all this stuff up. But REALLY it's the religion driving the policy view.

Peter Montgomery: Well that's right but the thing about the fact that they feel compelled to make up phony science, I think it's a good thing because that science can be exposed and challenged as bogus and phony and as no real basis for policy and that's what our side has to do better. If it's just about disputing their theology then you kind of get stuck on who's got god right. And there's really no way to know who's got god right. But it is a lot easier to know who's got science right. And even though they have a tremendous propaganda machine that backs a lot of these bogus scientific claims, those are things that we can engage on, we can challenge them and we can martial the consensus support of the scientific community to challenge those claims.

Listen to the entire discussion here.

While Peter Montgomery was making this point I immediately thought of the incessant denial of anthropogenic global warming among some very vocal conservatives. From my perspective, the best part of this debate is when conservatives fund scientific assessments of climate change and find exactly the same conclusions as have been reported over and over by federally funded researchers. The climate is changing and human generated carbon dioxide is largely to blame.  This recently happened to the Koch brothers. The satisfaction in seeing real science vindicated is priceless. 

Center for Inquiry - VIDEO

The use of video in the free-thought community is growing rapidly and I love it. Seeing video of bloggers I regularly read makes them more real. In the following video Chris Mooney hosts the Center for Inquiry's radio show Point of Inquiry. The video was recorded in Amherst, New York and focuses on maintaining a separation of church and state.

Talking with the Devil

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Rebecca Skloot on science journalism

During a 2010 visit to her alma mater - Colorado State University - Rebecca Skloot gave a series of seminars on communicating science to the public. I asked her what she thought about the role of science journalism in a world where more and more scientists are communicated directly to the public. Here is her answer.

Inoculation Against Charlatans

Listening to Rick Santorum rail against higher-education claiming that colleges drain young-adults of their faith by teaching the scientific method has left me fearing for the people of the United States.  Have we gone so far as to forget our country was founded on enlightenment-era ideas not the least of which being respect for and use of the scientific method?

Earlier today I read and reflected on this blog post by Chris Mooney in which he cautions scientists to be careful about their delivery when it comes to proposing new scientific ideas to tea party folk.  I left the post with a lot of unanswered questions.  How do you broach a topic such as, I don't now... THE AGE OF THE EARTH with people who start off thinking 6,000 years is the right answer?

How do you start a conversation politely with a person who sees you as a threat to their faith before you even open your mouth (or keyboard)?

Neil deGrasse Tyson has called scientific education an "inoculation against charlatans."

There's no greater sign of the failure of the American educational system than the extent to which Americans are distracted by the possibility that Earth might end on December 21, 2012. It's a profound absence of awareness of the laws of physics and how nature works. So they're missing some science classes in their training in high school or in college that would empower [them] to understand and to judge when someone else is basically just full of it. Science is like an inoculation against charlatans who would have you believe whatever it is they tell you.

The problem with this Dr. Tyson is that the people who need this inoculation most are the people who don't believe in vaccination.  At what age do you just give up on people?  How do you spread the vaccination to people who choose to be socially irresponsible?  I want to ask Chris Mooney and Neil deGrasse Tyson how these conversations ought to begin? One-on-one facebook conversations? Door-to-door visits by two young scientists in white lab coats and pocket-sized biology textbooks?  Perhaps large public lectures where an Erlenmeyer flask is passed around for donations?

How do you start fact-based scientific conversation with a religious adult?

Motivated Reasoning

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.