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Edited on Mon Nov-08-10 02:39 PM by LeftishBrit
Not just in fundies, but in the anti-science Right in general. It's not always a matter of fear of all change - some such people are quite prepared to embrace technological changes resulting from science - as fear of a threat to Traditional Values. At least in the UK, where true fundie-ism is much rarer than in the USA, this is often linked to culture-wars and to a somewhat ecumenical anti-secularism, rather than to a single type of religious belief. Though we do have our own religious nuts; and it's my impression that in the last two or three years, there has been something of a backlash among religious conservatives, within both the Anglican and Catholic churches, against secular science, atheism, and liberal religion alike. This is in a country where less than 20% go to church regularly, so it certainly doesn't have the same influence as in the USA - but it has some.
The poster girl for British anti-science right-wingers is Melanie Phillips - not a fundie (she is in fact Jewish and I doubt that she's ultra-Orthodox), but a fanatical culture-warrior, anti-secularist, and right-wing Tory who thinks that Cameron is too left-wing. She is a regular writer for the Daily Mail - need one say much more?
Here are some excerpts from an article that she published in the 'Jewish Chronicle' a couple of years ago. I am squeamish about linking to anything by her, but will do so if requested. I am glad to relate that most comments hammered her! (The Jewish Chronicle is less of a natural home to such as her, than the Daily Hate-Mail.) I am quoting from this article because it sums up the views of the anti-science Right:
'The decay of religion, he (Herbert London) says, has given rise to moral relativism, which regards all beliefs and principles as being of equal value and truth as a relative concept. This has given rise to multiculturalism, which masquerades as the promotion of equal rights but is actually a disguised form of cultural and national self-loathing.
This in turn lies behind the idea that nations are illegitimate or passé, and that the world's problems can all be solved by everyone on the planet coming together to harness the power of reason to arrive at a solution. But, in robbing people of their national identity and capacity to believe in anything except the fiction that reason trumps all, this is an essentially irrational negation of self-interest.
...The dogma that science provides the answer to every question and so supplants religion has led to a junking of the moral codes deriving from Judaism and Christianity that underpin western society.
This loss of cultural nerve has created an unwitting collusion between secular zealots and the Islamists who have declared war upon western civilisation, and who believe - correctly - that a secular west will be unable to resist them.'
This article also calls Dawkins 'the Savonarola of atheism'!
Thus, relying on science is bad because it leads not only to a rejection of religion, but thereby to a repudiation of traditional moral codes, and of nationalism. It softens us up, and makes us less good fighters against the cultural enemy - 30 years ago, the Communists; now the Islamists. (Though personally, I make the prediction that within 10 years there will be a significant problem of collaboration between the Christian Right and the Muslim Right against evil modern secularism and 'scientism'.)
In my view, there are few things so IMmoral as the rejection of the ideal of people of different nations, religions or cultures coming together to solve problems; and few things more moral than people from traditionally rivalrous groups rejecting their group enmities to fight together against the world's real enemies: disease; poverty; ignorance; war.
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