{pic by PsychoBauble}

According to Russell Kirk, who qualifies as a deep thinker in conservative circles thanks in large part to his authorship in 1953 of a book called The Conservative Mind, a key attribute of conservatives is that they “are champions of custom, convention, and continuity because they prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know.” In other words, fear the unknown, and cling to what little you do know regardless of how wrong it might be. While there is certainly some value in the desire for social stability that this mentality reflects, the “conservative” mindset is not particularly helpful when it comes to the acquisition of knowledge. In fact, history reveals that the “conservative” mind tends to glorify whatever forms of ignorance are most prevalent in any particular era. For instance…

… Back in the early 1600s, Galileo Galilei dared rely upon astronomical observations and mathematical calculations found nowhere in The Bible to conclude that the earth is not the immovable center of the universe, but actually orbits the sun. The “Theological Qualifiers” of the Inquisitorial tribunal which tried him reached a more conservative, faith-based conclusion; namely, that Galileo’s belief was “absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures.” In fairness, the Catholic Church did get around to admitting the error of this decision in 1992. Now that a few centuries have passed, most modern conservatives in the United States admit that the earth probably revolves around the sun despite The Bible’s failure to explicitly mention this fact.

… In 1925, a jury in Dayton, Tennessee, heard the case of John Scopes, a high-school biology teacher charged with violating state law by teaching the theory of evolution. William Jennings Bryan, speaking conservatively on behalf of a prosecution team led by the appropriately named Herbert and Sue Hicks, claimed that “if evolution wins, Christianity goes,” since the creation fable of The Bible states quite clearly that everything in the world was magically zapped into existence in six days. However, under questioning by Clarence Darrow for the defense, even Bryan admitted that not everything in The Bible can be taken literally, and that a “day” in the Book of Genesis may not have been 24-hours long. It is a tribute to the staying power of blind faith in devout ignorance that many modern conservatives act as if there is still some sort of “debate” over the scientific underpinnings of the theory of evolution. According to their worldview, there is far too little tangible evidence to support the idea of evolution, but plenty to support reading The Bible as a textbook in both history and science.

… In 2007, reflecting the consensus of scientists worldwide, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the available evidence on global warming is now “unequivocal,” and that it is “very likely” carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by human industrial activities are responsible for the phenomenon. Yet many conservatives continue to take it on faith that this is simply impossible. Columnist George Will claims that global warming isn’t even occurring, while scientific luminaries like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck argue that carbon dioxide couldn’t possibly be harmful since we breathe it. Presumably, the only acceptable “proof” of global warming will come if and when New York and Los Angeles are completely under water—at which point conservatives will finally be willing to tackle the problem.

The creationists and the global-warming-denialists of the conservative camp would do well to remember the case of Galileo in particular. Clinging blindly to conventional thought for its own sake may seem noble and high-minded at the time, but—more often than not—it makes one look monumentally stupid in retrospect. And in the case of global warming, it’s suicidal.