COLUMN: Denying science is an affront to human progress
Writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley once said, "facts do not cease to exist simply because they are ignored."
Today, in an age of access to unlimited information, there should be no doubt about what has been proven as scientific fact. Yet there are those in political power on both sides of the aisle who wish turn back the clock on scientific discovery, which is—in so few words—absolutely mad.
If we are to move forward, we must do everything we can to denounce religious obstructionism against science as wholly illegitimate.
More than 56 percent of Republicans in the 114th Congress deny climate change is an actual thing, according to ThinkProgress.com. Since winning the U.S. House of Representatives majority in 2012, Republicans raced to flood top science committees with anti-fact crusaders, including Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas). Smith chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He and his GOP cohorts on the committee are "waging a war" on new climate research by calling it science fiction.
Earlier this month, a group of UK scientists believe they have evidence to support a long-dismissed theory stating life on Earth was catalyzed by "space seeds" planted here by extra-terrestrial beings. Even if Smith's science fiction argument holds weight in this case, if this theory were proven true, the religious right would recoil in blind fear. With Lamar at the helm, the science committee is almost guaranteed to deny an explanation of origin that doesn't put God at the beginning of the equation.
As a firm believer in God, writing this column puts an uneasy lump in my throat. Everything I know about reality points me toward the belief that there is an inexplicable force of purely positive energy moving the gears of our universe.
However, my belief in one God has never prevented me from accepting new scientific discoveries, even if the implications are terrifying. Sadly, a great majority of devout Americans can't bring themselves to do the same. They view science as not only detrimental to their faith, but as detrimental to human progress.
If that were the case, the artificial heart or the pacemaker would be heretical. Sounds silly, right? Especially considering some politicians in the anti-science camp might rely on those devices to survive.
Take a second to imagine how insane you would sound if you openly denied the existence of gravity in line at Taco Bell. Or say maybe you tell a coworker that the centuries-old proof of a round Earth is liberal anti-religious propaganda.
Most of the devout Christians I know would look at the above statements and call them ridiculous. I think we can all agree on that. So why then, do these same people label climate change, stem cell research and extra-terrestrial life as blasphemy?
When factions from the fractured political right dismiss these topics as questionable pseudoscience, they sound just as unhinged as the village weirdos rapping about conspiracies on the street corner. These factions endeavor to replace logic with faith-based reasoning while discussing the world's foremost environmental and medical problems, which is an absolute affront to human progress.
Huxley had it right. We can't simply pray our way out of our problems.
Intelligent men and women from all spiritual backgrounds have a civic obligation to reject ultra-religious, anti-scientific campaigns before they effectively undo the basic principles that guide our well-established understanding of the universe.
