Attitudes like this are one reason some folks don’t trust science. They feel a godless society would strongly favor the elite more educated. Once this group came into power the hostile attitudes as expressed above would become more prevalent.
Some people object to teaching critical thinking because it undermines fixed beliefs and parental authority.
If we had to pay all the externalities for coal, gasoline, how could it not devastate our lifestyle. Would the government lower taxes because they didn’t have to use taxes to fund our adventures in the middle east. We’re all ready seeing efficiency initiative chip away at our lifestyle either directly or by costing more. American’s have worked hard to reach their present lifestyle so some of us don’t take kindly to a scientist in a suit telling us to use compact fluorescents or drive around in tiny clown car.
I want a car I can haul wood chips in, drive in the snow, and drive to Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, etc while refueling in 5 minutes. I don’t care one bit if it can win a drag races. So far even the Tesla doesn’t do that.
Zombie! Zombie! Zombie!
The car, not the thread.
What I’ve given up trying to understand are the people who attack science as biased, corrupt and unworthy of analyzing their woo-based beliefs - while citing scientific studies in an attempt to prove their point.
Comical hypocrisy or major critical thinking defect, take your pick. 
How many people got their religios beliefs with their MOTHER’S MILK?
PSIK
As well it should. Do you want a society run by scientists, engineers, doctors and people with advanced education, knowledge and training? Or do you want a society run be people who make decisions because they “just know it’s right”?
The nice thing about science is that it is correct or not correct independent of what people “believe”.
On another message board, now defunct, we had people saying “Science is always changing. God’s word never changes.”
Try to tell them that’s the point, but I don’t think they understand.
We may think it’s nice. Some people think it proves that scientists are fascists.
Neither. I want a society ran by people who maximize the number of people who get to do what they want. I don’t want a society where someone who is smart tells someone who is dumb what they should want.
As pointed out before, your points do come from the same sources that claim that there is no problem. Scientists, even republican ones like Richard Alley here can tell you that the same objections from powerful lobbies were put to prevent modern civilization to take control of the lack of clean water and sewage control.
As Alley reports, roughly 1% of the economy was then used to control that that also included benefits like getting rid of cholera and many other diseases, just about that is also calculated that it will take our current civilization to control our emissions, and to change to clean energy sources.
Perhaps what you fear is that many of the people that will get jobs from the change would become liberal, that does not follow, there were new industries that came out the change to control our human waste, and indeed many did not became liberals just because they worked in the industry that resulted from the change. In essence, you have to ask yourself:
Why do you have a nice conservative like Joe the Plumber?
An this is said even when the company became profitable now, indeed denial can be very powerful stuff.
When doing what you want is irrational in the extreme and out right harmful to others do you really want people doing what they want?
Do you want people raising children to be able to recite the Koran from memory and believing the way to paradise is through martyrdom? Before you say no, keep in mind the American version of this is christian indoctrination of children and it goes on every single day. Teaching children not to reason, not to think for themselves. On one hand you have parents doing what they want, on the other you have their victims whos rights are never even considered. Children should have the right to grow up get an education not based on easily falsified nonsense and make their own decisions about religion when they are of age.
This is a single example of the kinds of harm going on daily in the world caused by delusional thinking and the freedom to act on those delusions.
I want a society run by scientists, engineers, doctors and people with advanced education, knowledge and training. Who are very careful about using their power to strip people of their freedom to do dumb things.
Well, the honor system has never let us down before …
What I’m trying to say, probably awkwardly, is that the freedom to do dumb things is a pretty important one to me. I prefer the smart people to be running things myself but there’s always a blurry line where the imposition of rules prohibiting dumb behavior becomes instead a cessation of freedom. Generally, I’d like my smart chiefs to err on the side of more freedom instead of more prohibitions.
Is it fascist to build concentration camps with gas chambers where all you have to do to escape is to figure out the change on a $5 bill and a penny for a $3.41 latte?
This debate seems to involve two separate topics; both labelled “science”
-1) the “scientific method” which is the application of logic to scientific questions;e.g. what accounts for the vast age of the earth?
-2): the conclusions of scientific reasoning: such as: radiocarbon dating of the “shroud of Turin” indicates that it is at most about 700 years old.
If one accepts “magical” explanations for what is observed, there is no need for science or logic at all.
Science is both extremely democratic (in principle) and extremely anti-democratic (roughly corresponding, respectively, to the division ralph124c notes). It’s democratic in that a hypothesis that explains the evidence and makes testable predictions that are borne out is a theory, regardless of whether the hypothesizer was a PhD or a 6-year-old. It’s antidemocratic because if something is deemed true, it is treated as true no matter how many people hold the opinion that it isn’t true or don’t want it to be true.
And the anti-democratic bit comes from the results that are observed after experimentation, so:
It works… bitches…
-Richard Dawkins, (not original by him but it is an ascended meme.) 