Santorum Calls Democrats 'Anti-Science'

ndogg writes with news that Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has counterattacked those critical of conservative views on science, saying that they're 'anti-science' themselves. From a CBS report: "In his remarks Monday, Santorum went beyond his usual discussion of the importance of increasing domestic energy production to deliver a blistering attack on environmental activists. He said global warming claims are based on 'phony studies,' and that climate change science is little more than 'political science.' His views are not 'anti-science' as Democrats claim, Santorum said. 'When it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones. We are the ones who stand for science, and technology, and using the resources we have to be able to make sure that we have a quality of life in this country and (that we) maintain a good and stable environment,' he said to applause, and cited local ordinances to reduce coal dust pollution in Pittsburgh during the heyday of coal mining."

Comments

So says the religious guy.

[sethstorm]

Santorum Calls Democrats 'Anti-Science'

Not only is he from the party that brought you Intelligent Design, he is the candidate that epitomizes anti-science.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[cforciea]

Only in this particular debate, the actual scientists agree with Unnamed Democrat. That doesn't quite have the symmetry you were going for, though, right?

Re:So says the religious guy.

[meerling]

Many politicians don't understand and tend to be against science, especially when it's inconvenient for them. They foolishly think that opinions can change reality. Though it is true that lately the Republicans have brought the anti-science rhetoric to a new achievement in ignorance and stupidity.

Santorum himself is one of the biggest of the ignorant loudmouths on the Republican side at this time. The only place he is not anti-science is some alternate fantasy land, and I really wish he'd either go back there, or at least honestly pass a grade school science class and leave his religious beliefs both out of politics and science as it has no place in either.

Let's hope this fool goes back to whatever toilet he crawled out of, and soon.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[betterunixthanunix]

The Bible says...

...nothing relevant to any discussion of science. Who cares what the bible has to say? It is a bunch of ancient semitic stories, laws, government records, prayers, and poetry, that for some unknown reason was all cobbled together and which excludes a large number of other stories from that period. Maybe the bible is your inspiration to lead a good life, maybe it is your excuse to attack people who do not share your beliefs, or maybe you just like the message it conveys -- none of that has anything to do with science or scientific discovery.

evolution doesn't explain what happened before the beginning of time, or where all the mass in the universe came from in the first place.

Your point being what? The theory of evolution concerns the diversity of and relationship between life forms on this planet, nothing else.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[Moryath]

We're talking about a party whose latest gimmick is "sonogram bills", a new method of "slut shaming" that involves forcing a woman to go through a completely unnecessary procedure in which a dildo-like object is wrapped in a condom, covered in cold nasty goop, and forcefully shoved into her vagina before they'll let her have a completely different, unrelated, completely legal medical procedure.

"Science" doesn't enter into their discussions on any level.

Santorum also got into "I'm more christian than you" bullshit when he insisted that Obama "follows a different theology" the other day... from where I come Republicans are the nonchristian ones. They certainly don't love their neighbors, they don't give a crap about the poor and needy, they're not remotely interested in creating fair legal systems (something the OT is pretty damn big on, Deuteronomy 27:19, Leviticus 19:15 as starters) and as near as I can tell, their religious ceremonies involve the worship of wealthy old white men and the pursuit of money...

Re:So says the religious guy.

[Reverand Dave]

you can't build bombs without science.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[Chris Burke]

They foolishly think that opinions can change reality.

No, they correctly think that if you can change opinions in your favor, then reality doesn't matter (or at least is someone else's problem).

The reality of AGW is irrelevant as long as they can sow enough doubt that they never have to take substantive action. Which has pretty much already worked. Reality loses.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[Tablizer]

That about sums it up: emotion and aggression. Rush "Limbo" and similars often mention something along the lines of "trust your common sense". But this is a code-phrase for "you are as smart as subject-experts in their respective fields".

If "common sense" says the world is flat, then it's flat! This is how it worked in the cave-man era (unless the guy with the bigger club says it's a cube, then it's a cube.)

Re:So says the religious guy.

[Dak RIT]

Your belief system as you've defined it is not diametrically opposed to evolution. However, that does not mean your belief system is not diametrically opposed to science. It is.

You have faith that you know a truth about our universe despite your lack of scientific evidence, and there may not be any amount of scientific evidence that can make you change your mind.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[betterunixthanunix]

The faith in a creator is not diametrically opposed to accepting science.

You are free to believe anything you want about the universe, and you are free to squeeze your beliefs into the space where science has not yet demonstrated those beliefs to be false. However, faith is irrelevant to discussions about science. Science is a process for determining what is or is not true in a very organized way, which allows people to verify claims; faith is belief regardless of and sometimes in spite of the available evidence.

One of the major problems we have in America is the confusion about science. Science is the product of a particular philosophy, and that philosophy stands in opposition to most of the world's religions. Discussions about science are discussions that are restricted to the philosophy upon which science is built, and there is no room for faith in that philosophy (except, perhaps, faith that we live in a logical, consistent universe). This is the point that is generally lost on Americans: religious faith represents an entirely different way of thinking about the world than science.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[betterunixthanunix]

He's just saying that he is an example of a Christian who believes in both science and creationism

This, in a nutshell, is the problem: the view that believing scientific claims is in some way relating to religious faith. The entire point of science is to be able to verify claims, which is very much different from believing in the existence of deities that cannot be measured, verified, or tested in any way.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[canadian_right]

Science doesn't claim that all beliefs must be justified by scientific evidence.

Actually, science does say everything you believe should be backed up by evidence. Science allows you to say "I don't know." It also allows you to say the evidence is weak, but the best theory is X. Science never says all you need is faith and/or an old book.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[betterunixthanunix]

Interesting hypothesis, so the next and most obvious scientific questions would be: where is the evidence, how was the evidence gathered, and how can I reproduce the experiment?

That is what differentiates most of the world's religions (perhaps even all of them) from science.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what are you saying: that republicans and creationists are still at the intellectual level of cavemen ?

Please stop insulting cavemen.

Indeed. Cavemen couldn't know better. We've had millenia of progress, and we have no excuse to dwell still on magical thinking.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[tthomas48]

Because funding comes from Congress that is usually the opposite party of the president?

Re:So says the religious guy.

[GreyWolf3000]

Science doesn't claim that all beliefs must be justified by scientific evidence.

Actually, science does say everything you believe should be backed up by evidence. Science allows you to say "I don't know." It also allows you to say the evidence is weak, but the best theory is X. Science never says all you need is faith and/or an old book.

Where the hell does science "say" anything of the sort? Science is a process by which we can reliably improve our understanding of the world around us. Nothing more, nothing less. Some folks might embrace beliefs and views not backed by scientific evidence, but science ain't gonna jump out of the bushes and tell them anything.

Science can obviously refute beliefs it can prove are wrong, but you're conflating that with epistemology -- e.g. the study of defining what "knowledge" is.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[betterunixthanunix]

In science you accept postulates which can neither be proven nor disproven.

Only one: that we live in a logical and consistent universe. In other words, that if we reproduce the conditions under which a phenomenon was observed, then the phenomenon itself will be reproduced. This is not something that can be definitively proved (the next attempt to reproduce any experiment could always be the one that shows that the universe is not consistent), but if we lived in an inconsistent universe there would be no "truth" to speak of -- things would be true and false at the same time, and any claim that could be made would be true.

Beyond that, however, there is not much in science that goes without proof or evidence. That postulate is all that is needed for scientific experiments to be meaningful, because it allows us to draw conclusions from the phenomena we can observe, and it allows experiments to be reproduced by others.

it is a cardinal violation of science to believe in anything that can't be tested, then why is it acceptable to believe definitive in the inverse?

Except that there is more evidence to suggest that the Christianity's deity is the invention of human beings than that such a deity exists in the real world. The characterization of the Christian deity is dependent on the age of the particular story characterizing that deity, with the new testament painting a very different picture from the old testament, and with elements of the Jesus story being apparent in the mythology of those cultures that Jews had contact with in the early days of Christianity. Not quite enough evidence to say exactly what happened or to build a well-developed theory, but more than has ever been collected to suggest that such a deity actually exists (which is, "none at all").

Re:So says the religious guy.

[Dahamma]

And your post was what we call a "straw man".

It did nothing to refute the actual point, and didn't even correctly represent what I was saying (which is 40% of the US takes Genesis literally, not allegorically, yet doesn't seem willing to admit the inherent contradictions with modern science that a small child would happily point out.

But anyway, thanks for sharing, other than the above you really contributed to the debate!

Re:So says the religious guy.

[Black Parrot]

Yea, republicans are definitly the dumbest.

They're not dumb, they're just following an agenda that requires a bit of science denial now and then.

For global warming, it's because the rich assholes they toady to don't want to change the way they do business, even if it means destroying the nest we live in.[*]

For creationism, it's because there aren't enough rich people to win elections, so they have to con various flavors of fools into voting against their own best interests.

They will eventually deny the basic facts of chemistry, or that grass is green, if they think it will help the rich get richer.

[*] Related note, the junk food industry is fighting efforts to remove vending machines from gradeschools, because their profits are more important than the kids' health. It's "tobacco is harmless" all over again. We've evolved into a society where the haves only care about having more, fuck the consequences.

Never assume that a corporation, or their political pawns, will tell the truth if that would shave a few pennies off their profits.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[betterunixthanunix]

If there is an entity that can and does affect results in an intelligent way (let's call it god) it is impossible to reproduce any conditions completely.

Thus rendering the scientific process meaningless, because we may be at the mercy of a trickster who is carefully guiding the results of our experiments to ensure that we see what we are supposed to see, and nothing different.

Which only brings us back to the discussion about science and religion being incompatible with each other.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[mug funky]

everything that can be tested. that's the point.

you can't test for the existence of God. therefore Science shouldn't waste it's time on it.

to think that there's people out there who think Science's sole purpose is to discredit religion is ridiculous. it's like saying that the sole purpose of cars is to make horses extinct.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[Black Parrot]

Thank you. I've been saying this for years. Being an atheist requires the same amount of faith as being a Christian, Muslim, etc.

Bullshit. Our species has had thousands of religions, none any more supported by evidence than the next. The only honest thing to do is to apply the same standard of evidence to all of them, with the result that you accept them all or reject them all.

But since most of them are mutually contradictory, the only honest + rational thing to do is to reject them all. No "faith" required.

How come everyone, regardless of their religion, can plainly see that every religion but their own is just some crap that someone made up, but can't see the same thing about their own?

[OK, some of us do... and that's when we ditch it and become athiests.]

On the other hand, agnostics are the ones left out of most of these discussions, even though they're the only ones with a provably reasonable approach to the question.

If you get down to cases, everyone is agnostic about everything. The sky *looks* blue, but maybe it isn't really.

At some point you've got to say screw the philosophical hair-splitting, and go with the reality you experience.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[schlachter]

Religion and Science are only at odds when religion or religious people dismiss strong empirical evidence as untrue because it conflicts with their story that some guy wrote down thousands of years ago.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[betterunixthanunix]

You seem very simple-minded. It has to be true or false. Right or wrong.

Did this stop being a discussion about science? That is what science is about -- determining what is true, distinguishing truth from falsehood, and so forth.

All of the scriptures from all religions have nuggets of wisdom

Maybe so, but when it comes to determining what is true or false about the world around us, religion and especially religious faith offers pretty poor explanations compared to the scientific method. That is what this discussion is about: how we determine what is true and what is not true. If you want to find "nuggets of wisdom" to help you live your life, that's fine, but those nuggets will not be very helpful when you need to answer questions about the natural world.

You can make any claim you want. I make my own choices based upon my experiences as to how much weight I give to your claims

Which is not how the scientific method would be used to evaluate claims. That is why we are able to accept things like quantum mechanics, which makes all sorts of bizarre and counter-intuitive claims, while rejecting equally bizarre claims about space aliens.

I acquire knowledge wherever I can and accept nothing, not even science, on blind faith.

The great thing about science is that you can verify scientific claims on your own. You can get a telescope and observe Jupiter and its moons, you can get a prism and a thermometer and confirm the existence of infrared light, you can breed plants and animals and observe heredity, you can perform chemistry experiments, etc. Some experiments are expensive and hard to reproduce, which may present a problem for you, but scientists do publish their methods along with their claims. Reproducing experiments is crucial in science: it is how scientists can verify each other's results (and anyone can be a scientist, even for a short period of time, if they are following the scientific method).

Now, if you would rather discuss morality, or philosophical views, or any number of other subjects that cannot be subjected to scientific rigor or scrutiny, that is fine -- but let us at least be clear that we are doing so. I happen to study the torah on a weekly basis, but I would not delude myself into thinking that the torah will provide answers to questions about nature, or that the torah can help me distinguish between truth and falsehood (no, not even the sections about dealing with "false prophets").

Re:So says the religious guy.

[Hooya]

I was perplexed for the longest time how the republican party worked since all of their policies seem to be in favor of the rich. where did they get their votes? It finally clicked for me: they get their money from the rich (by favoring that segment in policies, taxes etc.) and the votes from the religious zealots (by appealing to the creationism, every-sperm-is-sacred etc. crowds).

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. - Seneca

Re:So says the religious guy.

[Tablizer]

Both "sides" often overdo things or make mistakes. The presences of mistakes does not necessarily mean everything resulting from an idea is wrong. But at least the left respects subject experts for the most part rather than think their gut feeling or "God's hand" is good enough by itself.

As far "permanent poor", you do realize that capitalism requires inequality? Inequality is the primary fuel of the motivational mechanism of capitalism. Also, other nations have reduced the percentage of poor better than we have without cranking up capitalism higher. Thus, "more capitalism" as the solution to poverty does not hold water to observation.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[Black Parrot]

I was perplexed for the longest time how the republican party worked since all of their policies seem to be in favor of the rich. where did they get their votes? It finally clicked for me: they get their money from the rich (by favoring that segment in policies, taxes etc.) and the votes from the religious zealots (by appealing to the creationism, every-sperm-is-sacred etc. crowds).

Yeah, it astonishes me that it took me several decades to figure out what the game was. I always wondered why unions support the Democrats - the average ironworker or longshoreman is hardly a liberal.

But liberal and conservative don't have diddly to do with our two-party system. It's all about money.

It finally clicked for me when the Republicans had control of the country in 2001-2006, and worked real hard to help the rich get richer, but only occasionally threw the social conservatives a bone.

For the short term the Republican strategy was a good electoral strategy, but now the turkeys are coming home to roost. The rich don't like seeing their party actually becoming what they've spent the last 50 years pretending it was just to garnish votes. I think we're building up to an ugly divorce between the "R-is-for-rich" Republicans and the "R-is-for-right-wing" Republicans, which have no common interest other than greed for power so they can run the country their way(s).

BTW, in addition to the bedding-down with religious zealots that you mentioned (starting in 1980), they had Nixon's "southern strategy", which was to play up to anti-Black bigotry in order to lure in the former Southern Democrats (making the Old South now the reddest part of the country), and they're now pushing what historians will call a "southwestern strategy", to lure in anti-Latino bigots.

The problem (other than the turkeys coming home to roost) is that these strategies keep alienating large and fast-growing minorities.

Re:So says the religious guy.

[Zoxed]

Except most people who tick the "Christian" box do not believe in the bible: they just mix and match, and re-interpret to make it support what they want !

If this guy ever got in it would truly show ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... how stupid America really is ...

Santorum claiming that....

[Slutticus]

Santorum claiming that environmentalists are "anti-science" is like saying anti-rape activists are against sex. What a fucking lunatic, I can't believe this is the best the GOP can come up with. Are they sitting this one out or something?

Re:Santorum claiming that....

[rednip]

Are they sitting this one out or something?

No, It's all they have left after twenty some odd years of trying to 'out do' one another on being the 'most conservative' as determined by a combination of scores given by various corporate funded 'think tanks' and random radio hosts. Even Ronald Reagan, the President who arguably made 'being conservative cool', would be graded as a RINO based on his record, which included some tax hikes, gun control and some compromises with the Democratic party.

Re:Santorum claiming that....

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Actually they are sitting this one out. The RNC doesn't want to win this election any more than they did the last one. Look, the economy isn't going to "recover" in the next four years. Oil prices are going to continue to increase whether Iran is in the picture or not. Formerly prosperous Americans will continue to have their wealth harvested by the global elite that cares about no country. Would you want to be the party in power while all this was happening? Much better to be the loyal opposition and keep those lobbyist checks rolling into those offshore bank accounts.

Absent of a Palin to poison the well, the best the RNC and SuperPACS can do this time is to promote a useful idiot like Santorum. Barely credible enough to be a candidate, but certain to lose to Obama. Keep him in the news. Leak (or create) enough bad press about Romney and it's a shoe-in.

Re:Santorum claiming that....

[Enry]

Anyone know a nice pro-science, individual rights, fiscally responsible, small government oriented party out there? It would also be nice if they could also ignore gay marriage, contraception, abortion both pro or con, and also just about every other distracting hot button issue out there. It would be nice if they simply had a government that worried about balancing a budget for a change.

See: Clinton, Bill 1992-2000

Pots and Kettles

[roeguard]

Both political parties are willing to throw science under the bus when it suits their agendas. The more ideological the wing of the party, the more busses they find driving by.

By the same token, both parties are willing to embrace the infallibility of science, and the certainty of the consensus, when it validates what they already believe.

Science is in good company though; politicians will do the same with the Supreme Court, the Constitution, Religion, or anything else that they can get their hands on.

Re:Pots and Kettles

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Both political parties are willing to throw science under the bus when it suits their agendas. The more ideological the wing of the party, the more busses they find driving by.

By the same token, both parties are willing to embrace the infallibility of science, and the certainty of the consensus, when it validates what they already believe.

Science is in good company though; politicians will do the same with the Supreme Court, the Constitution, Religion, or anything else that they can get their hands on.

This.

It takes a remarkable human being to trust science over his or her own beliefs when the two are in conflict. It's one thing when we haven't decided what the right answer is--but when we've decided, God help Science if it's not on our side. We are more likely to question methodology, etc... if the result is not one that we like.

This is troubling among people conducting experiments as much as it is among politicians. Clinical trials where someone has made up their mind beforehand and so doesn't even bother to write down a patient symptom that the person conducting the trial believes is easily explained, for example.

Re:Pots and Kettles

[mmcxii]

people are willing to embrace the infallibility of science, and the certainty of the consensus, when it validates what they already believe.

Fixed that for you.

The fact of the matter is that most people who discuss science don't know jack shit about the science. Sure, they'll repeat what they hear. They will embrace the science if their party of choice embraces the science. They may even be right doing that but they care little about the science itself. Sadly, this will probably never change.

"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." -Carl Sagan

This is not surprising at all...

[pyrr]

...considering it's coming from someone whose view of science is something that you believe on faith, ignore inconvenient research, and consider even the slightest doubt or margin of error that an opposing viewpoint has to completely debunk it. It's not science to believe that since you have 100% confidence in your faith-based theory that has no evidence, but you can imagine a miniscule source of error in an opposing theory, that the person with the fewest doubts "wins". But just try telling a "Creation Scientist" that...or someone who believes on faith that there is not any possibility that there is human-caused global climate changed. They hold their views on faith, their minds will not be changed no matter how much evidence they're presented with.

Re:This is not surprising at all...

[Chris Burke]

If a creationist says that the Oort Cloud is unscientific, people mock them. But the reality is, it doesn't follow a single tenet of the scientific method. It exists purely because without it, the presence of comets in the solar system would prove that the solar system is too young. So a theoretical "comet-holding" cloud is invented out of thin air because long ages require it, not because of any sort of observation or because the facts led anyone there.

Yes they would be correctly mocked. The Oort Cloud is scientific: It is a hypothesis proposed to explain observations, it is consistent with the available evidence, and is currently waiting for further observation to verify its predictions.

That's the scientific method right there.

The falsification of this hypothesis would be quite intriguing, but "prove the solar system is too young" is an unscientific conclusion. That is one possible explanation, but that hypothesis would have to contend with all the other observations that suggest an old solar system. You would also have to investigate modifying our models of solar system formation to account for old star/planets and young comets. Or a source of old comets that isn't the Oort Cloud. Each would have different implications, and you'd have to look at the data before saying you'd colloquial-sense-"proven" any of them.

Calling someone "anti-science..."

[Fned]

Calling someone "anti-science" because they advise restraint when using up natural resources and changing the environment, is like calling someone "anti-capitalist" if they refuse to spend all their money and go into debt.

Huh...I think I just figured out Republican fiscal policy.

Re:Obvious

[icebraining]

Nobody on the left has a bold scientific vision

The left? I thought you were talking about Democrats?

That's no theory!

[sizzzzlerz]

Whatever the bible says about life, the universe, and everything, it is most assuredly NOT a theory in the true scientific sense. It a mix of myths and goatherder tales and is no different in that regard than creation myths from native americans, the incas, or any other religion.

Rove would be proud.

[forkfail]

As would Orwell.

Attack your opponent with what your opponent should be attacking you on.

Turn the truth and the meanings of words completely around.

It goes so far beyond lying that I'm not sure that there's a word for it outside of a Newspeak dictioary.