I was sent the following Washington Post tw**t, which refers to an article by Chris Mooney, an accommodationist who now works for that paper. Of course I was intrigued, so I went to both Mooney’s article and the source of that graph, an analysis of Pew-poll data and a post by Josh Rosenau, another accommodationist who works for the National Center for Science education.

But first, the tw**t and graph.

Let’s look at that graph first. Rosenau analyzed data from a 2007 Pew survey that asked Americans various questions (there’s a newer survey from 2014, but Rosenau didn’t analyze that one). The plot above comes from the answers of various religionists and nonbelievers to two questions. As Rosenau recounts:

I examined two questions. One asked people which of these statements they most agreed with:

Stricter environmental laws and regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy; or Stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost

The other question asked people to agree or disagree with the statement:

Evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth

And a bit more about the size and color of the circles, also from Rosenau:

To get the axes, I standardized the same way Grant did, except I didn’t rescale to the 0-100 scale, since I didn’t want this to seem like a percentage when it isn’t. [He’s referring to Tobin Grant, who made a similar plot on the political views of adherents to various faiths.]

The circle sizes are scaled so that their areas are in proportion to the relative population sizes in Pew’s massive sample (nearly 36,000 people!). The circle colors match the groupings in Grant’s graphic, though I used different colors just to be difficult.

So, just looking at that figure, you see several things.

First, there’s a strong positive correlation between acceptance of human evolution and support for environmental regulation. That’s not surprising, especially if you see that the denominations at the lower left are the more literalist and fundamentalist sects, who both reject evolution and think that Earth’s fate is in God’s hands, while the denominations at upper right are largely nontheists or very liberal religionists, who both accept evolution and are concerned with the environment. Also, political conservatives tend to be of the more evangelical Christian stripe, which has adopted both anti-environmentalism and anti-evolutionism as “in-group identifiers.” Accounting for this correlation isn’t much of a problem.

Note too, as I mentioned above, that the Rightest Thinkers are the small circles at upper right, namely reform Jews (face it, they’re atheists), those of “liberal tradition” (not sure who these are), Buddhists, Quakers, atheists, agnostics, and “New Age” believers (whatever that means). In other words, those who show the least opposition to evolution and the most concern about the environment are those who either don’t believe in gods, possess a nebulous “spirituality”, or barely believe in God. In contrast, the strongest and most dogmatic believers are the biggest science denialists.

How then, can this possibly be construed as showing that faith and science are not in conflict? But never underestimate the ability of diehard accommodationists to twist any data, no matter what they be, to that end. (We see this too in the endless Templeton-funded accommodationist books and articles of Elaine Ecklund, a master at forcing all survey results into the Procrustean bed of accommodationism.)

Well, here’s what Rosenau says:

First, look at all those groups whose members support evolution. There are way more of them than there are of the creationist groups, and those circles are bigger. We need to get more of the pro-evolution religious out of the closet.

Second, look at all those religious groups whose members support climate change action. Catholics fall a bit below the zero line on average, but I have to suspect that the forthcoming papal encyclical on the environment will shake that up.

Well, that shows that some religions don’t have to be in conflict with science when it comes to evolution and climate change, but what it doesn’t show is that religion and science aren’t in conflict when it comes to Jesus’s resurrection, the existence of Heaven, or the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving god. And when it comes to Islam, well, the denial of human evolution by Muslims of all stripes is nearly universal.

What the plot shows to me is that the more tenaciously people hold onto their faith, the more opposed to science they are. One can tentatively conclude from the figure is that the way to get everyone to move to the upper right is to dispel their faith! Of course that’s anathema to Mooney and Rosenau, both firm believers in belief! In fact, when interviewed by Mooney for the WaPo, Rosenau basically says that he doesn’t know what these data mean:

Reached by phone Tuesday, Rosenau (whom I’ve known for a long time from the community of bloggers about science and the environment) seemed to be still trying to fully understand the implications of the figure he’d created. “People seemed to like it,” he said. “I think some people are finding hope in it” — hope, specifically, that there is a way out of seemingly unending science versus religion spats.

. . . Rosenau told me he was still trying to work that [the correlation between the two variables] out — still playing with the data and new analyses to try to understand it.

Finally, note that the black Pentecostals and black “Holiness” adherents are way down in the lower left, along with the Mormons and members of the Assembly of God.  Why is that? It’s no surprise to me: American blacks have traditionally been very religious, as they are one of the most oppressed and reviled minorities in America (down there with atheists), but, unlike atheists, they also are, in general, socioeconomically deprived.  The social dysfunction of many black communities has led them to cling tightly to traditional religion, for, as we know, there’s a strong negative correlation between “successful societies” and religiosity. And that belief is “traditional,” both because many blacks took their religion from the South, where they were enslaved, and because that form of belief offers the most tangible rewards in the hereafter to those who suffer in the present.

But in a remarkable display of social-justice breast-beating, Rosenau manages to blame the black religionists’ rejection of evolution on the racism of scientists!

 Finally, creationism has a solid hold in African American churches. There’s important outreach to be done on that front, and it’ll have to be accompanied by an acknowledgment of racism in science, both historically and in its current practice. While science is not itself racist, and neither is evolution, both have been tainted by and abused for the benefit of racism, and the African American community has cause for its ambivalence. Those of us who love evolution, love science, and want to share that love with our brothers and sisters of all races and religions need to find better ways to bridge these gaps.

It’s just disingenuous to claim that blacks reject evolution and environmental controls because they think that science has been tainted by racism. Surely Rosenau knows better, and if he doesn’t, well, I feel sorry for him. Yes, indeed, some scientists have been racist; and eugenics as well as the Tuskegee Study were shameful episodes in the history of genetics and medicine. But if Rosenau thinks that if we scientists admit and decry that earlier racism (which we’ve done—repeatedly), then blacks will suddenly embrace evolution and become environmentalists, I’ve got a bridge in Riyadh to sell him. The way to get any hyper-religious group, black or white, to embrace these things is to get them to either give up their faith or convert to the liberal faiths (if you can call them that) at the upper right. Don’t forget Brother Tayler’s documented statement of this morning:  “[Religion] even has 49 percent of Americans believing that climate change is just another inevitable sign of the End of Days.”

As for Mooney, he’s not much better. While he admits that religion has something to do with evolution denial—which is like admitting that your stomach has something to do with digestion—Mooney readily interprets this graph to show that there’s no conflict between religion and science:

In any case, while the pattern above may require more analysis, one clear punchline of the figure is that it really doesn’t make sense to say that religion is at war with science. You can say that for some people, religion is clearly linked to less science acceptance — especially on evolution. But for others, clearly, religion presents no hurdle at all.

His message here is that religion and science are not in conflict because many believers accept evolution and anthropogenic climate change. But many religions also have tenets at odds with evolution and environmentalism. Even 23% of those liberal Catholics are young-earth creationists. Just because some believers can accept science doesn’t mean that religion isn’t an obstacle to accepting environmentalism and creationism, for it clearly is. And, I guess, Mooney and Rosenau are much more concerned with these two issues than with the other byproducts of faith, including oppression of women and gays, restrictions on abortion and people’s sex lives, and so on.

Here’s a hypothetical situation. You are Gandalf, and can wave your wand to do one of two things to increase evolution acceptance and environmentalism in America:

1. Immediately acquaint all Americans with the copious evidence for evolution (say, have them read WEIT) and for human-caused climate and environment change.

or

2. Immediately make all religious belief in America vanish.

Which do you think would be more effective in promoting science acceptance?