All week long The Stream‘s “Science for All” series has been analyzing and critiquing Saturday’s March for Science and its pro-progressive, anti-scientific inquiry agenda. Now it’s time for a little bit of fun. Here’s one side of an imagined conversation between a March for Science advocate and a friend who isn’t so sure about it. Yes, it’s intended as satire. Enjoy!

Do you see it? A few of us do. There’s a movement afoot. It’s insidious. It’s out to ruin us all. That’s why we’re marching against it today.

It’s fed by vast numbers of religious people working hand in hand with legislators in backward southern states. They’re doing all they can to put an end to science. They may not call themselves the “Anti-Science Movement,” but for people in the know like you and me, that’s what they are.

Hmm… You don’t look like you’re quite with me on that.

That’s because they’ve masked their conspiracy so cleverly. They’ve hidden their contempt for science under a thin veil of using it everywhere they go — everything from modern medicine to smart phones to the internet. Crafty, eh?

“They’ve even infiltrated science!”

They’ve even infiltrated science with some of their own. Do you find that shocking? Check out Midland, Michigan. Huge research center there — they call it the “Chemical City.” There was a time Midland had more Ph.D. scientists than any non-university city in the world; now they’ve got a university, too.

Yet Midland is also known as “The City of Beautiful Churches.” I’ve been in many of those churches. (Reconnaissance.) You can’t open a hymnal without fanning the face of a chemist, physicist, computer scientist or engineer standing next to you. They’re right there among us!

They’re crafty, these anti-science scientists. They make it look as if they believe in science. But we know better. They show their true stripes on issue after issue after issue — four of them, at least! There’s religion, global warming, vaccinations and of course sexuality.

Let’s start with that last one. Here at the March for Science we’re absolutely committed to diversity, including sexual diversity. Because science says so, right? Right!

“Here at the March for Science we’re absolutely committed to diversity, including sexual diversity. Because science says so, right? Right!”

Yes, yes, I know, biology shows that male is male and female is female. (You didn’t have to interrupt me to say so.) Yes, psychology shows that “gay” isn’t really so gay after all. And the best treatment for gender issues isn’t to comply with requests for “sex change” surgery. Yes, the best science shows that same-sex marriages tend to be unstable among men, and relatively violent among women.

But we can’t let facts get in the way of modern science.

So let’s cut to the chase. Did you know there are whole laboratories filled with measuring scales labeled “right” and “wrong”? Put the words “LGBT is just fine” on the scale, and you’ll hear those bells ring as it tips toward “Okey-doke.”

And I’ll bet you thought right and wrong weren’t the kinds of thing science can study!

What — are you cutting in on me again here? (Sigh. I do wish you’d be quiet and listen. Things can be so tiresome this way.)

“But yes, actually, you’re right; I don’t suppose it works exactly that way.”

But yes, actually, you’re right; I don’t suppose it works exactly that way. But I do know there must be some scientific way to know that LGBT is right — otherwise we couldn’t call it anti-science to say there’s something wrong with it, could we?

And let’s not forget how the very existence of science proves that all of today’s popular ethics must be right. Really! Would I try to mislead you? It goes like this: Science always makes progress. Therefore what’s later is always better than what was earlier. Today’s sexual morality is later than what came earlier. Therefore science says it’s better!

What? Would you PLEASE quit interrupting? I’m making all these pronouncements on behalf of science and rationality, and now you’re telling me there’s no logic to that line of thinking?

Sorry. My fault. I wasn’t supposed to put it out in the open where you’d have be able to see what’s going on and to think it through rationally. It works a lot better if people just pick it up out of the air, without thinking about it.

So do me a favor, please, and forget I even brought it up? Thanks.

Hey, look with all your questions I’m going to run out of time before I can get to vaccinations and global warming. But I can’t skip the big one: religion.

Religion is anti-science because religious people think miracles can happen. (Not to mention their distaste for abortion and modern sexual ethics.) Science has shown that the universe runs according to laws that never, ever, EVER change. We know that because we’ve scientifically observed every single thing that’s ever happened. (Just kidding. You don’t need to interrupt me again for that.)

“It works a lot better if people just pick it up out of the air, without thinking about it.”

Take Easter, just a few days ago. Take it. Please! You have to be full-on scientifically illiterate to think Jesus rose from the dead. Those backward people 2,000 years ago didn’t know that dead people stay dead. We know better now — even though the average person back then had seen more deaths, human and animal, than just about anyone alive today. They just didn’t have science.

But no — really no, now. Are you telling me God did it? That’s the most anti-science thing of them all. Do you know how messed-up science would be if there was a God who did miracles on us all the time? Do you know how many peer-reviewed journal articles and conference reports have been published that prove God couldn’t do that?

And did you know — but wait, what’s that you say? You do know how many of those articles there are — and it’s exactly zero?

“Oops.
You weren’t supposed to have known all that.”

And now you’re telling me that discounting miracles that way is merely an opinion scientists hold based on their personal philosophies, not their lab work?

You’re saying that many highly qualified scientists can — and do — believe in a God who does miracles, not often, but just enough for us to recognize them as being way out of the ordinary?

You’re telling me science itself has never come close to saying miracles are impossible — that science doesn’t even have the tools to say so?

Oops.

You weren’t supposed to have known all that. You were supposed to be “in the know” the way I am. You were supposed to believe science is what I say it is. I’m wearing a lab coat, after all.

And the time has come to march! I’m marching for science! You march with me too! Stand up against the underground anti-science conspiracy! Tear down the anti-science scientists. Prove you’re just as devoted to truth and rationality as I am!