Christians are right when they say it’s becoming more acceptable to attack them publicly. And thank goodness! It’s about time the secular community mobilized against the religious insistence on influencing the political and scientific progress of this country. In particular, it is about time that those who understand the benefit of scientific research in the areas of climate research and genetics, biochemistry and geology, and most of the fastest growing scientific fields stand up for the validity of empirical data over the strong arm of the religious lobby.

Moreover, it’s more than about time that the religious stop attempting to dictate scientific education, influencing the perspectives of current students (and future scientists) and ultimately harming the American scientific establishment as a whole.

To begin with an anecdotal example, two recent documentaries about the state of current American evangelicalism (“Jesuscamp” and “Friends of God”) showcase the particular ways in which religion and religiously motivated education can fuel ignorance and waste resources. “Jesuscamp” shows a family in which a home schooled child is being taught about global warming. With a strategically placed photo of George W. Bush on the wall, the mother systematically robs this child of access to real-world knowledge; she tells him that global warming doesn’t exist and that the earth has only gotten a few degrees warmer since people have been talking about climate change. “Friends of God” shows teenagers at a Christian gathering; in one interview a high school student talks about how he wants to become a biochemist later in life. When asked why, he responds that he wants to work at the Institute for Creation Research to prove the validity of intelligent design.

These are symptoms of much larger problems. The Union of Concerned Scientists and Government Accountability Project released a study on Jan. 30, 2007 which showed that over 60 percent of surveyed federal climate researchers said they experienced incidents of being pressured to eliminate references to climate change, of work being doctored or changed to misrepresent findings, and of climate change-related material being removed from pertinent web sites. Witnesses testifying at a meeting of Committee on Oversight and Government Reform cited specific ways the Bush administration has kept research indicating problematic climate change from coming into public view. The New York Times notes that even Republican members of the committee were unhappy with the actions of the administration.

In the realm of stem cell research, the American religious and political Right has been abhorrently impractical. Deborah Blum of the New York Times makes a brilliant analogy comparing the opposition of this group to stem cell research to the opposition to the smallpox vaccination in the 18th century. Religious groups then called inoculation “sinful,” and today’s religious groups wish to label stem cell research as dangerous and unethical by blocking the possibility of investigating the medical potential of embryonic stem cells. Like the smallpox vaccine, it is quite likely that stem cells will prove miraculously useful in medical care; the only thing stopping the U.S. from being a leader in this potential industry is its backwards, anti-scientific religious position.

The insistence of the religious right on presenting intelligent design or creation theory in schools as “science” is one of the most frightening, and telling, problems of all. In addition to attempting to co-opt public education, these intelligent design movements (falsely) present themselves as “scientific” or comparable to science. The truth, though, is that intelligent design is not science and does not deserve a place alongside science in the laboratory or in the classroom. Natural selection is a theory which has been substantiated by decades upon decades of empirical research; from Darwin’s finches to modern-day gene-tracking, the scientific method has more or less given validity to evolutionary science. Intelligent design in the classroom, then, only serves to mislead and retard the educational progress of students all over the United States.

In general, politics and religion ruin science when they involve themselves in it. Religious and political groups should leave science to the scientists.