{"id":1137,"date":"2009-01-01T10:41:19","date_gmt":"2009-01-01T18:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=1137"},"modified":"2009-01-01T10:45:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-01T18:45:00","slug":"who-is-pro-science-the-left-or-the-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/who-is-pro-science-the-left-or-the-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is pro-science, the Left or the Right?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the comments below<\/a> I made an assertion to the effect that conservatives are more likely to notionally reject the authority of science, which is one reason that I sometimes focus on right-wing Denialism. On the Left the main analog I experience are feminists and racial minorities who reject science’s authority due to its white male character. On some issues, such as the contention that population level differences between races and sexes are not trivial, the Left is more rejectionist than the Right. But, aside from feminists and racial minorities who reject science as a valid paradigm, my personal experience with Leftists is that they can often be moved into positions which are less rejectionist leveraging the fact that in theory they accept the power and witness of the scientific methodology. The main problem with Creationists, and the reason I simply refuse to engage with them, is that they reject the primacy of the scientific methodology on principle,* so that there is simply no leverage for me to work with (though to be fair, pointing out that St. Augustine noted that much of scripture was allegorical in nature is the sort of leverage which can be used with Creationists on a one-to-one basis).<\/p>\n

But I decided to double check my intuition here by looking at the GSS in terms of attitudes toward science. First, if you are curious about “moderates,” they’re less intelligent than those at the political extremes. That should make their results more intelligible. In any case, I am tempted to walk back down from the assertion I made in the comments below, as a wider sampling of variables shows that the reality is more complex, and I am now skeptical that my model captures enough nuance to salvage it.<\/p>\n

* I am aware that many avowed Creationists claim to be “scientific.” \u00a0Scientific arguments are not the real core of their Creationist\u00a0commitments. They know that, you know that, but for cultural & legalistic reasons they need to retain the transparent farce that their Creationism is rooted in a scientific basis.<\/p>\n

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In the comments below I made an assertion to the effect that conservatives are more likely to notionally reject the authority of science, which is one reason that I sometimes focus on right-wing Denialism. On the Left the main analog … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[1129,96,1132],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1137"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1145,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137\/revisions\/1145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}