Why conservatives hate science

John Derbyshire at the Corner on why so many conservatives hate science.

There are two big reasons and a host of smaller ones. Top of the list:

• Big reason 1: Science has no moral content. This is simply appalling to a lot of conservatives — that a body of knowledge with so much prestige and importance can be morally empty. Human beings want to know how to live, and a mass of knowledge that contains no guidance on this is just abhorrent to many, most of them self-identifying conservatives.
• Big reason 2: Scientists are irreligious. They mostly are. On the broadest definition of "scientist," over 60 percent are unbelievers.
• Small reason 1: Science is incomplete. Our core of scientific knowledge about topics that have been thoroughly investigated for decades or centuries — combustion, electromagnetism, gravitation, evolution — is as solid and indisputable as human knowledge can be, but there's a lot of stuff around the edges we're not sure about, and plenty beyond that where we just don't have much of a clue. For reasons I don't understand, some people find this intolerable.
• Small reason 2: Scientists are left-wing. Again, largely true. Check out the comment threads on any science blog. (GNXP is one of the very few exceptions.)

More on this thread here, here, here, and here.