This Week

Chris Mooney - Unscientific America

October 9, 2009

Chris Mooney is a 2009-2010 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and author of three books, including the New York Times bestselling The Republican War on Science, Storm World, and Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum.

In this conversation with D.J. Grothe, Chris Mooney talks about the growing divide between science and society. He contrasts the issues addressed in The Republican War on Science with the current problems facing society as outlined in Unscientific America. He argues for the unique public policy significance of science for society, and why scientific literacy matters more than other kinds of cultural or historical literacy. He discusses the policy relevance of scientific illiteracy in terms of global warming and biotechnology. He talks about the need for scientists to become better communicators to the public.

He shares his criticisms of the New Atheists and explains why their attacks against religious moderates work counter to the goal of scientific literacy. He recounts his experiences as an atheist activist while in college, and how his views have changed about campus freethought activism since that time. He explores other underlying causes of scientific illiteracy, including our educational system, the media's dysfunctional treatment of science, and growing anti-science movements such as the climate deniers and vaccine skeptics. And he details concrete actions that science advocates can take in order to increase scientific literacy.

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Comments from the CFI Forums

If you would like to leave a comment about this episode of Point of Inquiry please visit the related thread on the CFI discussion forums

The rise of the New Atheists has created an intellectual and social counterweight to the rise of fundamentalism in this country. I don’t think the Four Horsemen and other prominent, belligerent atheists have anything to apologize for—they have broken the taboo against criticizing religion, and opened up the field for a wide variety of voices. However, I think it is also important for more moderate atheists and skeptics to criticize them publicly, as Chris Mooney does, to show that atheists are not all alike. The more the public becomes aware of choices of worldview, the more people will flock to moderate positions (especially now that the New Atheists criticize the moderates just as harshly as the fundamentalists do). I doubt someone like Kenneth Miller would have an audience otherwise. The decline in mainline Protestantism has drastically slowed, and fundamentalist churches are no longer growing. The word “atheist” is less and less stigmatized among younger generations. “Spiritual but not religious” is the fastest growing belief segment in America. The triangulation is working.

Posted on Nov 16, 2009 at 1:11pm by rcreative1 Comment #1