[MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

[Ron Kulp]

"Of course, some folks were hard at work trying to dispute inconvenient scientific facts long before conservatives began to borrow postmodernist rhetoric. In Merchants of Doubt (Bloomsbury Press, 2010), two historians, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, have shown how the strategy of denying climate change and evolution can be traced all the way back to big tobacco companies, who recognized early on that even the most well-documented scientific claims (for instance, that smoking causes cancer) could be eroded by skillful government lobbying, bullying the news media, and pursuing a public-relations campaign. Sadly, that strategy has largely worked, and we today find it employed by the Discovery Institute, the Seattle organization advocating that "intelligent-design theory" be taught in the public schools as balance for the "holes" in evolutionary theory, and the Heartland Institute, which bills itself as "the world’s most prominent think tank promoting skepticism about man-made climate change." - See more at: http://m.chronicle.com/article/The-Attack-on-Truth/230631/#sthash.cc0fahpi.dpuf

Ron replies:
Thanks for pointing me at that book Dave. I found something similar at:
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/04/bible_barons_how_the_gop_uses_religion_to_keep_voters_captive_to_corporate_ideology_partner/

I had a lot more to say but I have been ill and I'm in the middle of changing Jobs so I lost my train of thought. When things calm down and I can concentrate on the subject at hand I would like to take it up again.