In Kentucky, the fight over science education is getting ugly. Kentucky has been one of the first states to consider adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards, a set of goals meant to improve US science education. Given that the NGSS were developed by organizations like the National Research Council, National Science Teachers Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, their adoption would seem to be an obvious choice. But things have become less obvious in Kentucky because the standards assure that students will learn the mainstream scientific view on the topics of evolution and climate change.

In what passes for political discourse in the US these days, state school board hearings provided citizens with the opportunity to accuse the new standards of being simultaneously fascism and socialism. The Courier-Journal quotes a Baptist minister as saying, “Outsiders are telling public school families that we must follow the rich man’s elitist religion of evolution, that we no longer have what the Kentucky Constitution says is the right to worship almighty God. Instead, this fascist method teaches that our children are the property of the state.”

Meanwhile, another person suggested they could be a platform for socialist genocide: “The way socialism works is it takes anybody that doesn’t fit the mold and discards them... we are even talking genocide and murder here, folks.”

These sorts of scenes are likely to be repeated across the country. The NGSS were only finalized this year and, as of last count, only four states had approved them (although one of them was Kansas, where evolution has been a contentious issue in the past). As other states consider them, the new science standards are likely to set off similar arguments in a number of them.

There are plenty of reasons that evolution and climate change are so contentious with the public. Both are poorly understood by most people, and both are perceived as posing a threat to some people's cultural identity. And, for both topics, the public seems to have little idea about how well accepted they are within the scientific community. Polls consistently indicate that the US populace thinks that evolution and climate change are subject to fierce debate within the scientific community. In reality, there's nearly universal acceptance of the general outlines of the science.

None of this is especially new. What has been new is that the Kentucky evolution controversy come hot on the heels of some public figures saying some things about evolution that are about as ill-informed as the statements that were made in Kentucky.

Evolution in the eyes of a climate contrarian

Ironically, the first place where this occurred was in a US Senate hearing about the other issue, climate change. The hearing featured a number of poorly informed questions from the Senators, although that's probably to be expected—hearings like this are, in theory at least, meant to help them inform themselves.

But things veered well off script when one of the witnesses, Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama-Huntsville, was brought on. Spencer is a favorite among those who label themselves as climate skeptics because he's active in climate research and accepts that human-driven climate change is a real possibility, but thinks that the current era of warming climates may be driven by natural factors. He's even published some controversial papers that suggest alternative explanations for the past century of warming.

But Spencer's grasp of science in other fields is apparently questionable, and he's publicly taken a stance on evolution in the past that suggested he didn't have a good grasp on the structure of science in general. In an attempt to raise questions about his credibility, one of the Senators asked him about those past statements. His response was stunning:

I believe that evolutionary theory is mostly religion; it is naturalistic. But my faith is not strong enough to believe that everything happened by accident. I mean, there's a lot of work out there that's shown that you cannot statistically combine all the elements that are contained in a DNA molecule by chance over how ever many billions of years you want to invoke or how many—how much—known Universe there is with all of the matter in it. So what I'm saying is some areas of science deal a lot more with faith than with known science, and so I'm open to alternative explanations. I think I could be put into a debate with someone on the other side and I think I could give more science supporting that life was created than they could support with evidence that life evolved through natural random processes.

The difference between an extremely well supported theory and a religion are rather significant. But it's clear that Spencer doesn't even understand evolutionary theory well enough to know that it doesn't even attempt to account for the origin of the first strands of DNA. Yet he feels that he's on equal footing with any biologist on the planet. It's also not the first time he's gotten his science mixed up with his personal religious faith. He's signed on to a declaration that calls on people to "understand the truth about climate change and embrace Biblical thinking." Based on the declaration, Biblical thinking involves believing God would never have created an Earth that's fragile enough for human pollution to alter it.

Put another way, Spencer thinks both his biology and his climate are intelligently designed.

Evolution meets literary criticism

But Spencer wasn't the only one equating a well supported scientific theory with religion. In a column she wrote for Yahoo, Virginia Heffernan proudly explained why she's a creationist (and she's not inclined to believe in climate change, either). Heffernan has a background in literary criticism, but has been writing about technology and digital media for years. When it comes to matters of science, she's apparently returned to her literary roots.

For Heffernan, scientific understanding is just another narrative. And, when it comes to evolution and climate change, the stories don't appeal to her. Plus, she doesn't happen to like the scientists she's met. Mix that together with a belief that all narratives are equal, she feels it's perfectly fine to choose a non-scientific narrative for these topics. In the case of climate change, this means adopting a Panglossian belief that everything's fine, despite the evidence that it's not. For evolution, she happens to like narratives that include a God, so she's decided she's a creationist.

Now, many people find various narratives about the history of life on Earth extremely compelling. But that turned out to be completely aside from the point. As the outrage poured in on Twitter, Heffernan made it clear that she thought it was quaint that the people supporting science felt that there was an underlying reality that made scientific conclusions more likely to be valid. For her, it was all arbitrary belief, chosen based on personal taste.

Surprising commonalities

On the surface, these two critiques of mainstream science would seem to have nothing in common; one is motivated by an overzealous interpretation of religious beliefs, the other by an overzealous adaptation of literary criticism. But, beyond the motivation, the two of them have a surprising amount in common.

Both Spencer and Heffernan look at the collective expertise of generations of scientists, and decide that it's not worth much. (In Spencer's case, he seems to think he knows biology better than actual biologists.) They both make major categorical mistakes—Heffernan seems to think evolutionary biology is just another narrative, while Spencer gets it confused with the origin of life. And they both substitute the miraculous when natural causes seem unsatisfying to them.

But the biggest thing they probably have in common is that they continue to promote the mistaken impression that evolution is something you can take or leave, rather than the fundamental principle underlying modern biology. And, as the events in Kentucky indicate, that's not a harmless impression to make. In a climate where teaching the basics of fields like biology and earth sciences are the subject of political attacks, basics like a decent science education are at risk. And providing those attacks with a veneer of respectability through platforms like Yahoo and Congressional testimony only makes them more likely to succeed.

Choosing to believe your own reality when it comes to physics puts you at great personal risk. When it comes to doing so with biology, there's a certain protective buffer provided by people like doctors and public health officials, who understand reality so you don't have to. For climate change, we're still in a period where we can convince ourselves that most of the consequences are just a string of unusual weather. So Heffernan and Spencer can probably continue in their misguided beliefs without much in the way of consequences.

Unfortunately, they've both cashed in their prestige to create consequences for anybody who cares about science education. The most we can do is hope that people stop paying attention to them.