Why They Hate Science

Update: I of course forgot to link to the post I'm plugging. Thanks to RBH for pointing it out and to Mumon for finding the link on his own.

Regular Pharyngula commenter Kristine Harley has put up an excellent post analyzing the Religious Right's hatred of science from an economic rather than cultural perspective. The gist of her argument is that making the people hate science is a good way to get them to oppose favorable socioeconomic policies, such as increased funding for health care and education.

First, she says, making people mistrust science will make them mistrust medicine and hence not care about health care so much. And second, dumbing them down will make them likelier to support policies that impoverish them while enriching big business. Unlike the standard economic populist critique of cultural conservatism, Kristine offers direct reasons for the link between the economic and social right, rather than just treating social conservatism as a diversionary tactic.

We are being groomed by her and the other media sock puppets of rich creationist conservatives for a new American order, one in which the U.S. health care system is for shit! Okay? In lieu of basic health services we are going to be given prayer and preaching and personal guilt, and to accomplish this, these cretins need to rewrite the whole history of science--the most precious thing that we have--in order to push supernaturalism. They who control the past will control the future. Is that clear?

(more below the flip)

Although the connection between creationism and poor health care is not direct, there is a clear indirect connection. In less advanced countries, a duped population often considers religious fundamentalism a real alternative to established health care, even when it exists. It's not a diversion, but a real attack: on the one hand, people selling snake oil suddenly become authorities, and on the other, the population demands real health care less.

Orwell wrote that a totalitarian state can say that 2 + 2 = 5, but in war it has to realize that 2 + 2 = 4. Obviously this is a constraint on the power of totalitarianism, and indeed, in 1984 the war's stalemate has largely removed this condition. So the trickling down of anti-science sentiments into the health care system will presumably remove another constraint. Right now any health care system has to produce marginally acceptable results, which drains money that could be spent on more fruitful causes such as a bigger military or higher corporate subsidies.

Kristine's second point, about education, is even more salient. Simply put, education is the silver bullet that ensures that people stay people rather than obedient drones. And the choice is not between being an ape and being God’s chosen species, but between being an ape and being a mythical God’s wretched slave.

We are, as Dawkins says, a species of ape, and we share a common origin with every living creature on this planet. I don't know how that could offend anyone [Emphasis in original], being that it is also a beautiful and an elegant concept, but I would say to those that it inexplicably does offend: life as a naked ape is much better than a dog's life, that being a figure of speech meaning, in this context, a life of endless work for increasingly devalued pay, a life filled with fear and humiliation, a life in which health care, clean water, clean air, and adequate food are increasingly hard to attain--the life of being kicked around like a dog.

One of the things we discusses in the Yearly Kos science bloggers' caucus was the coalescence of the anti-science right. In a nutshell, big business has a vested interest in making sure scientists don't say there need to be economic regulations, and religious conservatism has a vested interest in keeping the population ignorant about sex and human origins. Kristine’s post shows how these two groups work together, feeding each other at the expense of the people's dignity.