If I wanted an opinion on a suit, I might ask a fashion editor. If I wanted to find out how to cut a piece of metal perfectly in half, I’d ask a machinist. I would not expect the machinist to know much about the right cut of suit for my body, and I wouldn’t expect the fashion editor to know much of anything outside his area of expertise.
My impression of science today is that like many other fields, it rewards extreme specialization. Quantum physicists spend decades studying increasingly narrow but deep gaps. Biology is probably similar. These people are many things, but they are not generalists, and while it might be entertaining to find out what a quantum physicist thinks about Renee Zellweger’s Oscar gown, I wouldn’t expect the slightest level of expertise. If they are not qualified to comment on a dress, why should I care whether they think that the Bible is the revealed word of God Almighty?
FWIW, my fear is that we are descending into a world where both left and right embrace mutually-exclusive but equally-pernicious sets of non-truths. The left for its part is quite comfortable to dismiss every bit of reason that calls even its peripheral tenets into question.
The real danger in the Right embracing anti-scientific thought is that it increases the acceptability of these ideas generally. So we don’t just get more authority for Pope Benedict, we also get more authority for the Rev. Wright to talk about how white math turns black men into social outcasts.
