Ep. 171 - Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray ”The God of Monkey Science” pt. 1

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[00:01:02] The light on the hill from a bush that's burning. Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark Professor of Biology at the University of North Texas Intersection of Science, Culture and Faith Disconnect between faith and science Why science isn't at odds with religion

[00:01:50] Why the two are what we would refer to as dance partners The God of Monkey Science pt. 2 People of Faith in a Modern Scientific World A lot has happened since last we spoke. We talk all about the fact that I think the first time we spoke,

[00:02:06] it felt like it was sort of in the midst of the height of the pandemic. And so lots has happened. A lot of things have happened since then. And there still seems to be sort of this like battle between science and religion.

[00:02:19] And we just talk about the fact that, you know, we don't we don't feel that way. Like, again, we feel that the two are very much partners and are not at odds. So we talk all about that. And I learned a lot.

[00:02:34] So hopefully you guys learn a lot, too, and enjoy this episode. But this is part one. And next week we will drop part two. But until then, I give you Dr. Janet Kellogg-Ray. I think it's calling to me I think it's calling to me

[00:02:57] All right. Welcome back to the podcast. I have Janet Kellogg-Ray back on with me today. Thank you so much for spending some time with me. Thanks, John. Thanks for inviting me. Absolutely. Anytime. We were talking a little bit before we started recording,

[00:03:11] and I was really excited to have you back on because the time that's passed, I think the last time that we spoke was before sort of the pandemic hit. And, you know, I really was kind of curious that whole time.

[00:03:24] I'm like, I wonder what she's thinking about sort of the way that society has responded to this whole mess. And here we are. You've got a new book out, The God of Monkey Science, People of Faith in a Modern Scientific World. And that's pretty accurate.

[00:03:38] So I think I know where the title of the book came from. But tell the listeners a little bit about how you came up with the title of this book. Well, I'm glad you brought up the first book, because the first book, which was about evangelical science denial,

[00:03:55] specifically the denial of evolution, launched in the fall of 2021. And so I was in the midst of all things book launching during the spring and summer before the fall of 2021. And it was I think it was February of 2021. And the governor of Texas, not surprisingly,

[00:04:27] ended the mask mandate for the state of Texas. Now, at the time when the governor did this, only about 7 percent of the state's population had been vaccinated because the vaccines had just began to roll out to non-medical personnel.

[00:04:46] And so I was in a group chat with some folks and someone brought up the fact, oh, did you see that the governor ended the mask mandate? Well, you know, I'm kind of known for my opinions on all things science.

[00:05:06] So I kind of hung back a little bit. But there was it was it was very civil. People were saying, oh, man, isn't this a little early? Aren't we jumping the gun a little bit? I haven't got my vaccine yet.

[00:05:20] And, you know, comments like this and someone else had commented, oh, well, I'm getting my vaccine next Tuesday or whenever. And so I jumped in with a comment, something along the lines like, go ribosomes, go, you know, some science nerdy comment.

[00:05:41] And, you know, as you as will happen when you write something for others to see and comment on, not everyone is going to like what you say. Well, there was a comment, a follow up, I assume, to what I said that went something along these lines.

[00:06:04] There she goes again, Janet and her monkey god science. Oh, no. I actually know the commenter. And I know that this commenter is anti-vax. It tends to be anti-modern medicine in general. I also know that this commenter has called my evolution supporting monkey science before.

[00:06:35] Monkey science before, not the monkey god science before. And so I wasn't offended. I wasn't terribly shocked to hear it from this particular poster. But what I was perplexed about was why monkey god science? I mean, the conversation was not about evolution.

[00:07:00] It was not about my supportive evolution. It was about masks and vaccines and a pandemic. What did one thing have to do with the other? And so that before this, the first book had been launched, the wheels were turning in my head.

[00:07:19] And over the next year and a half or so, I was digging deep into a lot of social media, because we were all isolated at home. We did a lot of social media, listening to a lot of people.

[00:07:35] And what I found was that there was this perfect Venn diagram of people who denied evolution and who were also very much against all things COVID, whether it would be distrust of the scientists or the vaccines or not wanting to wear masks.

[00:08:01] And then coming down into this Venn diagram here, we had people who also were deniers and resistant to any evidence for human involvement in climate change. And so there you go. That's the story behind the god of monkey science. Oh my.

[00:08:23] Yeah, and it's been, I would say, for those of us who are on the side of science and God, and yes, those two things can coexist, it's been a very frustrating last, we'll say, five, six, seven years.

[00:08:39] And of course, the pandemic just exacerbated that whole sort of debate because this thing that was never... I'm sorry, but I think we've talked about this before. Like science, and as I was prone to saying often during the early days, especially of the pandemic,

[00:08:59] the virus is not Republican or Democrat. It doesn't give a crap which political party you follow. It's going to get inside your body and do what it does. That's just the way it works. But this thing that is not political at all became suddenly political

[00:09:16] and people kind of drew a line in the sand and fell on one side or the other. And it just, it still like baffles me. I just don't understand how we got here. Well, interestingly, that was one of the first rabbit holes that I fell down,

[00:09:35] just trying to trace the history of evangelical science denial. And again, when I say evangelical, I kind of go into more of this in the book. I'm not just talking about people who attend an overtly evangelical church. A lot of people are just politically evangelical,

[00:09:55] or maybe Catholic or Mormon or no religion at all, but still identify with many of the characteristics that we would use to describe evangelicals. So the first deep dive I went into was just to see how did we get here? How did we get to this point?

[00:10:13] Because, you know, scientists used to be our heroes. When the polio vaccine was released, people were dancing in the streets, ringing church bells, the race to space. We were proud of our scientists. You know, we were proud of our country. We were proud, especially of our American science.

[00:10:33] But, you know, so what happened? And I found that we really had to go back to ground zero. And that's the Scopes, called the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925. You know, it's interesting that during what was called the trial of the century,

[00:10:56] at least not that, it was the science trial of the century. It was interesting to find out that no scientist at all testified during the Scopes trial. And that no science evidence at all was entered into the testimony.

[00:11:16] Yet Scopes was convicted of teaching human evolution, and off we went. So why the 1920s? Why did this become a big deal all of a sudden? I mean, Darwin's work had been out for decades before now.

[00:11:35] So why did it all come to a climax in a courtroom in Tennessee during the Scopes trial? You know, we have to kind of put it into a historical context and understand that at the same time that Darwin's work was becoming more well-known outside of scientific precincts,

[00:12:02] there was a theology that came about actually at the same time that Darwin was writing, that was coming out of Germany, that likewise was becoming more understood, more known by the rank and file common everyman. And it is known today as historical biblical criticism.

[00:12:24] So this is the idea that the Bible perhaps should be read through ancient eyes and that perhaps the Bible wasn't the very actual words from the actual mouth of God and that maybe we should look at history and context and genre and things like that.

[00:12:44] And so in the 1920s, both of these ideas were coming into the public mindset. So on one hand, you had these scientists telling us that we came from monkeys and weren't specially created by God. And on the other hand, you had these intellectual elites telling us

[00:13:07] that the Bible wasn't the dictated words of God. And so where we see that coming to a climax is in the Scopes trial. Well, back to no science being introduced. The prevailing attorney was William Jennings Bryan. He was a very popular guy of his time.

[00:13:28] You know, if he were alive today, he would have a talk radio show or he would be on cable news. He was known as the great or I'm sorry, the great commoner is what he was known as.

[00:13:40] And so when he was speaking against evolution during the Scopes trial, he basically had three talking points. He's a talk show guy, so he's got his talking point. He said, first of all, there's no evidence for evolution and even scientists don't support it.

[00:13:59] The second thing he did was he characterized those who support evolution as being enemies of the Bible. And then finally, and this is a big one. Bryan said that because the majority of people in the United States do not accept evolution,

[00:14:18] their rights are being violated when evolution is being taught in the public school. So, you know, we went along for a few decades and, you know, evolution was the only big science bad guy. But here we found ourselves in the 21st century.

[00:14:39] And lo and behold, arguments against all things COVID, arguments against climate science, we find embedded in all of this 21st century rhetoric, we find these argument fossils that were initially launched against evolution. Now they're retooled and launched another day.

[00:15:05] The science is overblown, whether we're talking about COVID or the climate. Science threatens our faith. Science is not putting your faith in God, but putting your faith in science instead. And then here is a big one, is that science comes at a cost,

[00:15:26] or acceptance of science evidence, I should say, comes at a cost. To personal rights and freedoms. And there you go. We just have conditioned ourselves for decades and using the same arguments that were used in the 1920s against evolution.

[00:15:49] Here we go with COVID, here we go with climate science. And you can find the same line of argumentation used against these 21st century areas of science concern. I think my biggest complaint is if you're going to take that stance, then you have to go 100% in, then.

[00:16:13] That means I get to come to your house and take your Tylenol and your cough syrup and your heart medication. So you can't just on one hand say, well, I don't believe in science, but I'm going to take Tylenol on the side.

[00:16:31] You have to go 100% in, then, I think. That's at least my opinion, anyway. Well, and you know, I think that where that U-turn was made was a few decades after the Scopes trial. In the late 1970s, early 1980s, the young Earth creationist movement,

[00:16:56] the modern young Earth creationist movement was birthed out of a quest to make creationism a legitimate science. And so, you know, before fighting against evolution had been a theological principle talked about in churches. But late 70s, 1980s, we see the birth of these big young Earth creationist institutions

[00:17:27] and think tanks, and with the goal of trying to investigate or trying to find evidence for creation science. Well, it didn't take long before, you know, those individuals and those institutions found that it couldn't be done.

[00:17:48] There wasn't the evidence, the science evidence for the things that they were looking for. So they switched gears in the 1980s, and instead of evolution being a theological problem, evolution then became the source of all societal ills. Evolution became the source of abortion, homosexuality, disobedient children,

[00:18:19] gun violence, you name it. Evolution was credited with those societal ills, with those cultural ills. And so now we find that we've continued along that path, and fighting science has become a front in the culture wars.

[00:18:42] So when COVID came in and our economy had to be shut down to a degree, we were asked to wear masks, we were asked to not gather in large groups. All of a sudden, our rights were being violated by the big bad government.

[00:19:05] And then who was pushing for it? It was the scientists. So instead of being our heroes, the scientists just became shills of those who would want to attack our very American way of life.

[00:19:22] It's those scientists that for decades have been trying to make atheists out of our children by teaching them evolution, and now what are those scientists doing? They're shutting down our churches, or they're making us wear masks.

[00:19:39] What are they going to do next? Are they going to make a cake for somebody we don't want to? And so it became all tied up in this big culture war. So when science became a front in a culture war, all bets were off.

[00:19:55] But you're exactly right, there is just this disconnect between what we accept as science and what we see as a front in a culture war. Most people will take a Tylenol for a headache. Most people want their surgeons to wash her hands before she operates

[00:20:16] because they believe that germ theory is real when it comes to surgery. But they doubt germ theory when it comes to understanding or accepting the science behind a novel coronavirus. So yeah, there's that. A lot of culture warrior-ism going on there.

[00:20:39] Yeah, and again you just continue to see these examples of just the pure hypocrisy where all of a sudden at the tail end of the height of COVID, you see these folks now rebelling against the vaccine, my body, my rights.

[00:20:58] But yet when it comes to women's reproductive rights, no, no, no. You're like, do you not even see you're using the same slogan? And I think it becomes, they have forced a situation where it becomes an all or nothing proposition.

[00:21:12] Where if you are a biblical literalist and you think that everything is literal in the Bible, then it becomes a house of cards theology we might call it. Because if all of a sudden evolution is proven to be real, then that collapses the entire system. Right, right. Exactly.

[00:21:33] Yeah. So talk about, you know, in the beginning of the book, you talk about the playbook. And I think you're sort of already kind of talking about that here. Just in terms of the approach to sort of this weird battle against science.

[00:21:49] And yet again, if one of those individuals had a loved one who was dying, they're not going to call 911. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I was going to say, when you were talking just then, I thought of something else, you know,

[00:22:06] just when you think things are dying down and we've got some of that behind us. This summer, this fall, there are state legislatures across the country with bills before their legislature houses to do away with school vaccines. The vaccines that school children have gotten for decades.

[00:22:29] And so we're seeing this continuation there and being anti-vax. You know, before we were okay with taking the measles vaccines, except for a certain segment of the population. But now we're seeing it actually being put up before our lawmakers to do away with school vaccines.

[00:22:54] But you're right. You know, there is this playbook that we see. And I think it can all be traced back to the talking points that Brian gave us. Especially those talking points about our rights being violated and science attacking in some way our faith or our religion

[00:23:22] that somehow science is out to make everyone an atheist. And that scientists are just shills that are wanting to infringe upon our rights. You know, our right to drive our big gas guzzling car truck when we don't really need it for work.

[00:23:42] Those scientists want to take away our rights to have a gas stove and even a ceiling fan. That's been the latest way in which scientists want to encroach on our rights. But, you know, it is just tragic. The fallout of fighting science in the form of evolution.

[00:24:07] It's tragic when we see the fallout of that absolutely forming and coloring the way that people are approaching 21st century science. And what is fascinating to me, it's not just people from religious backgrounds that are feeling the pain of evolution denial by religious people.

[00:24:36] In the book I talk about one of the most stunning pieces of research to me that I found while I was writing and researching for the book. And this was a large research study done of public school biology teachers.

[00:24:55] Public school now, not a small Christian school, but public school biology teachers looking at how these public school teachers approached teaching the topic of evolution. And so, unfortunately, the survey found that about 13% of public school teachers overtly teach creationism. But that wasn't the worst piece of news.

[00:25:24] The worst piece of news was that more than 60%, the survey, the study researchers called them the cautious 60%. Because teachers were so hesitant to raise the ire of parents and the community by overtly teaching evolution. Evolution was soft-pedaled.

[00:25:51] By 60% of these public school teachers, they didn't take a strong stand one way or another. So, what did that look like? Well, for some teachers, it looked like just completely skipping the human part. Or maybe just focusing on the molecular level.

[00:26:12] But all too often, what that looked like was this. Okay, students, you don't have to believe this. Just learn it for the test. Generations of students have been told regarding evolution, you don't have to believe this. Just learn it for the test. So, generations of students,

[00:26:40] whether religious or not, have been told in their public schools that science is a matter of values and beliefs and not evidence. That science is not something that is evidence-based. That you can make your own decision about science because it's only a matter of your opinion,

[00:27:06] your beliefs, your values. So, fast forward to the 21st century, and my opinion is no more valuable than your opinion regarding masking or vaccinations or social gatherings. The opinion of scientists is no more valuable than my opinion regarding the novel coronavirus

[00:27:39] and what it is expected to do and how it behaves. After all, I did my own research too. And how much trouble did we get into during the pandemic because science was a matter of a belief or an opinion or a value and not something that was evidence-based.

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[00:29:00] Yeah, I think we clearly got ourselves into a lot of trouble and still continue to because Bob googled something and ended up on a website with one person's opinion that is not fact-based whatsoever or peer-reviewed or any of those things.

[00:29:19] And then on top of that, the other thing that I find confounding is when COVID first hit the shores and sort of take off throughout the population is that, yeah, we took some pretty stringent approaches to it initially.

[00:29:37] And I keep looking at some of my friends even who are like, well, I don't understand why we're doing X, Y and Z. And I said, you know, wouldn't you, if you had a brand new virus that no one had ever encountered before,

[00:29:51] none of us have natural immunity built up to fight it and you don't know what it's going to do, nor do you know the long-term effects, this could be as simple as a cold or it could kill you.

[00:30:02] We don't know. Would you not take the strictest approach possible and be on the safe side rather than not doing enough at the cost of potentially millions and millions of lives? And the idea being we can always scale back, but you can't go backwards.

[00:30:21] And what you're describing there is just a basic failure of science communication and science literacy. And again, that goes across the board, just not understanding how science and scientists work. And absolutely there were breakdowns in science communication, but like you said, it was a novel virus.

[00:30:50] Things were changing daily sometimes, even hourly at times as we got more information. And so, you know, I think that the general population outside of science precincts seems to think that once someone representing a scientific background speaks, it's not written in stone.

[00:31:18] In fact, I tell my students the first day of every semester that if you ever hear someone say something is proven in science, that's a huge red flag. That scientists don't speak in terms of proof.

[00:31:37] Scientists speak in terms of the best evidence that we have at the time. And so I say, you know, will the vaccine turn you into a zombie in 20 years? Well, you know, we don't know, but there's absolutely no evidence that says it will.

[00:32:00] And so, you know, we got into all sorts of trouble during the pandemic about early on when we weren't sure if asymptomatic people could spread and people were hoarding everything, including toilet paper and paper towels.

[00:32:19] And nobody had a supply of face masks, surgical masks, you know, just tucked away in their kitchen pantry somewhere. And so, you know, the idea was before we were sure that asymptomatic spreaders were a thing,

[00:32:38] then maybe we should save what few masks there were on the market for our medical personnel. And then a few months later, we found out why, yes, people that are asymptomatic can spread.

[00:32:53] You know, we had all these weddings and funerals and gatherings of people that refused to mask and all these giant outbreaks that went. But when we weren't sure, we reserved what we had for our medical personnel.

[00:33:10] My husband is a medical doctor and a lot of his patients are elderly, and he never went to telemedicine. He didn't miss a day seeing his patients. And so, you know, pre-vaccination, it was critical for docs like him that were still seeing their patients,

[00:33:34] especially high risk patients, elderly patients. It was critical that these people have the mask. But when we found out that really everyone needs one, you know, science switched gears. But we had all sorts of people just having rigors that, you know, Fauci lied, the NIH is lying,

[00:33:58] and, you know, just not understanding how science works. You know, and the same thing with accepting all of these, you know, alternative treatments, the hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, you know, all of these things that just the general population outside of science areas did not understand the difference between anecdotal evidence

[00:34:25] and peer-reviewed, double-blind, controlled studies. And we're putting anecdotal evidence on the equal with a rigorous science study. So, you know, there was a lot of breakdown in science communication. But as a science educator, I think that a lot of the breakdown lands on us.

[00:34:51] I've taught science from middle school to the last 18 years in a university. And I think all too often we focus on facts instead of process. And so, again, we have generations of people who have not really been exposed to the process of science.

[00:35:13] You know, they can name all the planets and the chemicals on the periodic table, but, you know, do they really understand how scientists work? Where the company line was the only way to get paid. We built a church on uncertainty that fears everything against it.

[00:35:49] Where the refugee suffers and the white man has it made. Don't do it anymore, it's taking me too long to recover. Feed the sick and poor and try to help the world to recover. I sat myself in your pews every single week.

[00:36:38] I gave you my money so that you would tell me what to think. From a book that you had taken the heart out of. That's how I learned to make exclusion look like love. Don't do it anymore, it's taking me too long to recover.

[00:37:35] Feed the sick and poor and try to help the world to recover. So come, come as you are. Take up your cross, use it to build a wall. And reach across the aisle and fire your guns. So you can keep them in love.

[00:38:14] Love how you want, if we approve. And you'll be us. So come, accept our gift. Salvation from sin. Don't do it anymore, it's taking me too long to recover. Feed the sick and poor and try to help the world.

[00:38:57] Don't do it anymore, it's taking me too long to recover. Feed the sick and poor and try to help the world to recover. It'll take a while to wade through the fear and the hurt. But I think there's a way for us to love and heal.