You heard. They’re all, like, “anti-science,” right?
That’s not hurting them because today a lot of what passes for science is too nuts to be wrong. How can we prove we’re not living in a giant sim? Or that we are? Do reasonable people spend a lot of time on it? Yet Templeton gave the guy who thinks it’s possible this year’s Prize. As we say here, when science is nuts, anti-science is newly respectable. For one thing, it is a handy proof of sanity.
Now Goldberg comes along and asks,
Why does the Left get to pick which issues are the benchmarks for “science”? Why can’t the measure of being pro-science be the question of heritability of intelligence? Or the existence of fetal pain? Or the distribution of cognitive abilities among the sexes at the extreme right tail of the bell curve? Or if that’s too upsetting, how about dividing the line between those who are pro- and anti-science along the lines of support for geoengineering? Or — coming soon — the role cosmic rays play in cloud formation? Why not make it about support for nuclear power? Or Yucca Mountain? Why not deride the idiots who oppose genetically modified crops, even when they might prevent blindness in children?
Some of these examples are controversial, others tendentious, but all are just as fair as the way the Left framed embryonic stem cell research and all are more relevant than questions about evolution. (Quick: If Obama changed his mind about evolution tomorrow and became a creationist, what policies would change? I’ll wait.)
Most of the people who fit Goldberg’s description think that their laundry list of causes is science, along with the giant sim and the Big Bazooms theory of human evolution.
See also: He said it: Jonah Goldberg on why media promote failed experts