They bum me out a lot. Why?
Because they create a false dichotomy of religion vs. science, for starters. I can understand that people who need to push the 5,000 year old earth story will need to undermine science to have any validity at all. But plenty of people with perfectly reasonable beliefs still try to strengthen them by diminishing the value and trustworthiness of science. It seems like this can only come from some kind of questioned faith, which makes me uncomfortable. If you do not believe what you believe regardless of science, then the next step down is to believe it by spiting science. It's not that I begrudge these people their spiritual journey, but this coping mechanism is deeply disturbing to me.
In some ways, that critique could seem a little bit meta. But the reason this insecurity makes me uncomfortable is that I feel by arguing with them I'm simply exacerbating the problem, and not being constructive in any way. Also, I am suspicious people who react to things that make them uncomfortable by arguing that those things are completely invalid. Then again, the KKK has ideas that make me uncomfortable and I definitely believe that they are completely invalid. This road goes two ways, and I'm sure scientific critiques of religion bum people out too. The only defense I have to this is that I don't think scientific critiques are applicable to religion until religion tries to take on a scientific perspective voluntarily.
Anyways.
My most specific problem is in a particular rhetorical strategy. The thing that kills me the most is when people reference the changing views of science. They say because some discoveries have been corrected, any fact could be wrong. If the word "unscientific" comes up then I really lose it. To change your beliefs based on new data is the most scientific way of doing things. Even Einstein had trouble with new models of atomic structure. To be able to think critically and warp your mind around weird phenomena based on either experiments or math is entirely scientific. Adherence to old beliefs because you were brought up with faith in them is where science is held back. I feel like someone famous said that new ideas don't take over, the people who believed the old ones just die.
So, yeah, it bums me out.
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