The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bring it back

Where have you seen a sign like that? Like what country, and what part of that country? If it's in America, I wouldn't interpret those sorts of signs as evidence of a religious attachment to science, but rather a reaction against the tsunami of anti-science sentiment that has taken over the Republican base and the people they vote into office. The Republican Party has spent the last 10/30/50 years (depending on which historical inflection points people focus on) courting Evangelicals (who themselves are a religious demographic almost entirely unique to the US) and feeding into all of their fears/hatreds/insecurities in order to get their votes and their money. If you've seen signs like that on American lawns, there's like a 99% chance that that phrasing is an intentional low-key troll vs. Evangelicals and their choice of words when they pick and choose what to believe in from both science and their own religion, and how they choose to defend those beliefs.

People not "believing" in science is a huge freaking problem, and is just one of many symptoms of the hellbound handbasket America finds itself in right now. Science by definition is not something you choose to have faith in or not. The only way to disagree with science is more science that disproves the previously accepted science, it's not a choice of faith or belief. The way you can tell that science doesn't function as a faith-based enterprise is the fact that one of the greatest accomplishments a scientist could have is disproving long-held scientific assumptions, which itself can only happen with reproducible results.

For example, a Pew Research poll from several years ago showed that fully 2/3 of self-identified Republican voters were Young Earth Evangelicals, meaning they believe that the planet is ~6000 years old and any evidence to the contrary is either wrong, or a literal test of faith by an apparently insecure deity who will only be satisfied by the basest, most unthinking fealty imaginable. That's obviously going to have an impact over the long term.

What does this lead to? People like Lamar Smith being made the chair of the House Science Committee. Someone who literally doesn't "believe" in science, who has used his authority for the last 6 years to literally squash scientific research that didn't lead to the predetermined conclusions that his faith (and more likely, his donors and voters) assures him are true.

TL;DR I am not at all remotely concerned about people putting signs on their lawns stating that their household believes in science. It's a couple decades too late but whatever. It's a sad world we live in where that's something that anyone feels like they need to publicly state support for.

I think people put signs up like that because there's a culture of anti-fact, anti-science, generally anti-thought growing and becoming more vocal and a sign or bumper sticker might make people feel like they're fighting back. I admire science, I'm aware that part of science is challenging itself and new understanding can unravel previous notion.

I don't really know of any science enthusiasts that want to burn the religious or their texts (well, I did as a teenager, but they grew out of it), but I know more than a few religious who want science out of their schools, deeply believe religion should be more involved in our government, and let's not forget the anti-vaccination movement. These people are neighbors and co-workers, and while they themselves are generally not horrible people those sorts of ambitions feel dangerous at best.

Anyway, my point is - I would rather have a problem with overenthusiastic science fans that could use some perspective, than a problem of people not vaccinating their children and "rolling coal"

It's from the book Ideas And Opinions: https://www.amazon.com/Ideas-Opinions-Albert-Einstein-ebook/...

Some other quotes:

"The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition."

"Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion."

"His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages."

This book is worth a read, on the subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise

I would say that an even larger problem exists.

Among the public, science has always had some portion of people who understood it's processes as those of a secular priesthood and those who understood it's processes as discovering the truth through skepticism and experimentation. Even among this working scientists, this division has existed (and given a society that never discarded religion, anti-science along with anti-intellectual views have naturally always been part of American thought).

The problem today is two-fold. Aside from the corruption of scientific processes others have noted, the other aspect is the majority of people aren't seeing the material gains that science offers the world - science is broadly part of progress and when the average American's life expectancy and median income isn't increasing, why would they believe in progress?