#138 – Science denial / Science education

Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray, a deeply Evangelical believer and state college professor, has long been speaking to and educating Evangelicals about their science denial

Unfortunately, science denial and pseudoscience run rampant in Evangelical circles. In our previous episodes, we’ve learned about the exceptionally strong correlations between being Evangelical and: … being against COVID protection measures (vaxing, masking, social distancing) … being against evolution (particularly so about human evolution) … denying climate change … accepting the Sunday School version of the Noah’s Ark story as historical … and otherwise disagreeing on several other points which many others take for granted.

Our guest today — Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray — has been teaching, speaking and writing to Evangelicals for decades about this science denial. Here, we talk about her latest book coming out next week from Eerdmans: The God of Monkey Science: People of Faith in a Modern Scientific World.

Points that we covered include:

• science denial and pseudoscience run rampant in Evangelical circles

• phylogeny (creating a “family tree”) of anti-evolution arguments shows how their arguments gradually evolve, and also how Evangelicals will use the “play-book” for their anti-evolution campaign (e.g., the Scopes Monkey Trial) in their war against COVID policies, or climate change, or vaccines, or ……

• her first book, Baby Dinosaurs on The Ark: the mental and theological gymnastics involved in explaining or rationalizing the Noah’s Ark story, and a comment made by a Young Earther in a discussion forum about the logistical hurdles in floating that boat: “let’s not get caught up with logic when dealing with faith,” which is a perfect example of one of the things that Mark A Noll wrote about in Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.

• Evangelicals and Evangelicalism have become not only anti-science but also anti-intellectual, as seen in their rejection of whole categories of art, music, philosophy

• the Galileo Affair didn’t have the impact that the “Scopes Monkey Trial” did. Why?

• Biblical Criticism (introduced by Julius Wellhausenin the mid-19^th century) crystalized a response in Evangelicals against science and intellectualism, leading to an embrace of Biblical inerrancy and infallibility

• the birth of the new Young Earth Creationism — Intelligent Design — which was presented as an “alternative science”

• Evolution Theory became a target for Evangelicals, who saw it as the source of all social evils (abortion; homosexuality; rape; murder; etc)

• science became the front in a culture war … anti-COVID measures were seen as an assault on religious rights and Christianity itself

• the creation of an education bubble …. Evangelicals set up their own elementary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions, and poured themselves into home schooling; also set up their own publishing houses and music industry. Answers-in-Genesis and Institute for Creation Research even warn parents not to send their kids to certain Christian schools (the ones that are friendly towards evolution teaching). This leads to intellectual and cultural siloing and cloistering.

• America has a very broad Evangelical demographic, including “Evangelicals” who don’t attend church

• Evangelicals have learned to approach/do science with pre-existing assumptions, leading to all forms of pseudoscience (ivermectin; hydroxychloroquin; Young Earth Creationism; Flood geology; Intelligent Design) because secular scientists can’t be trusted (“they’re in on it”).

• Evangelicals lose the ability to discern between an expert and an authority. A celebrity, athlete, family doctor or pastor can substitute for nationally and globally recognized scientists (Francis Collins), doctors (Anthony Fauci) and institutions (national and global medical boards). The YEC film Is Genesis history? features individuals with scientific degrees who defend views and interpretations completely opposite to those held by a large majority of their peers. Our previous episodes featured ID “experts” who don’t actually work in the scientific fields on which they speak, contradicting scientific experts who do work in those fields.

• people feel empowered by the internet to be their own experts (“doing the homework”; “following the data to where it leads”)

• the damage done by denying science and denigrating scientists … Evangelicals can no longer discriminate between authorities versus experts, or recognize when someone is speaking with or without expertise

• cherry-picking, misapplying and misquoting Scripture in defense of bizarre scientific claims

• the exponential development of the apologetic industry, making the Bible speak to science, and vice versa, sometimes in order to prove the existence of God

• science is trying to exorcise itself of teleological language (talking about Evolution as if it had agency, and intention/purpose). Intelligent Design tries to re-insert teleology back into science

• Dr. Ray teaches at a state [secular] university and is open about evolution: Christian students sometimes feel threatened by her (in their minds, she becomes the Hollywood-ized professor whose goal is to kill their faith). She has had to develop strategies to best teach evolution as well as a healthy Christian response/attitude to it.

• the damage/costs of an anti-science bubble: opportunity costs (esp. with respect to employment) and health risks (vaccines; transfusions; mental health; sex education; prolongation of the COVID epidemic because of anti-vaxers). That bubble can also actually predispose young people towards losing their faith (they’re not able to deal with the contrary evidence).

• does evolution have any impact on ones ability to do medicine? ….. or to do research?

• pro-evolution Christians need to involve themselves in confronting science denial …. get in the conversation (otherwise, you remove self from the conversation) … become relevant.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find out more about Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray and her books at her profile page at Eerdmans Publishing, or at her FaceBook page.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like our mini-series of episodes on:

• Young Earth Creationism (9 episodes)
• Intelligent Design (8 episodes)
• Evangelicalism (10 episodes)
• a Christian response to Evolution (11 episodes)

or maybe individual episodes on science denial (#27), COVID-denial and pseudoscience (#61), the Evangelical response to science (#24), a prominent social influencer whose faith was destroyed by YECism, aka “Paulogia” (#25), or another one whose faith was ruined by working for Answers-in-Genesis (#31).

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