Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg ask in an article at Edge, why some people, perhaps a lot of people, resist science.
I think the question is miscast. Very few people resist science. People are, by and large amenable to empirical demonstration. Even counterintuitive theories like Einstein's relativity theory are not rejected by the average person even if he doesn't understand it.
What people tend to resist is a metaphysical agenda masquerading as science and the two examples of resistance that Bloom and Weisberg site are perfect confirmations of that.
The authors are concerned because so many Americans refuse to accept the notion that there is no immaterial soul and they resist the idea that natural processes are sufficient to explain all of life and the cosmos.
Neither of these is a scientific idea, however. They are the metaphysical conclusions of some scientists who are a priori committed to a materialist worldview. If materialism were obviously true then of course it would be puzzling that so many people reject it, but materialism is not science. It's not something that can be proven by empirical investigation like whether the earth is round or revolves around the sun.
The truth or falsity of materialism is a philosophical question so Bloom and Weisberg would have done better to ask why so many people resist the philosophical entailments of materialism.
The answer to that question is much easier to see. They resist it because they see its sterility. They see that it leads to a view of life that renders all meaning, morality, human dignity, and hope just so much illusory baggage. They resist it because, quite frankly, a lot of people think that anything so at odds with their common sense intuitions about life is just false, and if the only evidence scientists can offer in its support is their testimony that it's true they're not going to persuade any but those who want to be persuaded.
And most people simply don't want to be persuaded that their lives are hopeless and meaningless.
RLC
