Episode Details

Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray, a deeply Evangelical believer and state college professor, has long been speaking to and educating Evangelicals about their science denial

Unfortunately, science denial and pseudoscience run rampant in Evangelical circles. In our previous episodes, we’ve learned about the exceptionally strong correlations between being Evangelical and: … being against COVID protection measures (vaxing, masking, social distancing) … being against evolution (particularly so about human evolution) … denying climate change … accepting the Sunday School version of the Noah’s Ark story as historical … and otherwise disagreeing on several other points which many others take for granted.

Our guest today — Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray — has been teaching, speaking and writing to Evangelicals for decades about this science denial. Here, we talk about her latest book coming out next week from Eerdmans: The God of Monkey Science: People of Faith in a Modern Scientific World.

Points that we covered include:

• science denial and pseudoscience run rampant in Evangelical circles

• phylogeny (creating a “family tree”) of anti-evolution arguments shows how their arguments gradually evolve, and also how Evangelicals will use the “play-book” for their anti-evolution campaign (e.g., the Scopes Monkey Trial) in their war against COVID policies, or climate change, or vaccines, or ……

• her first book, Baby Dinosaurs on The Ark: the mental and theological gymnastics involved in explaining or rationalizing the Noah’s Ark story, and a comment made by a Young Earther in a discussion forum about the logistical hurdles in floating that boat: “let’s not get caught up with logic when dealing with faith,” which is a perfect example of one of the things that Mark A Noll wrote about in Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.

• Evangelicals and Evangelicali