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This is several days worth of spit-balling on this topic.
HydroB, your ideas motivated me to add that last third. Thanks!
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Another difference between the two major topics, climate and evolution, is that climate change is presented as needing a solution, whereas evolution is not seen as a problem, except by the religious fundamentalists that may feel threatened by the seeming contradictions with Creationism.
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...but thinking of the example of AIDS....
Maybe it's simply "government involvement" that is the key characteristic of a cause, problem, or paradigm which motivates the strong reaction in denialist-types. Strong religious fidelity might be just another expression of that revulsion to government involvement.
Free-enterprise ideology sees government involvement, regulation, or competition as anathema, amoral, and abhorent.
It is mainly those religions--which can be interpreted to promote or exalt the material rewards that free enterprise can provide--mainly those religions which are used to support the denialist, anti-government mindset.
I think those religions also provide the source of certitude for denialists who see government as nothing but a transient interference; and a source of certitude that sees intellectualism as also transient--the latest fad--as previous intellectual proclamations (like government edicts) have passed into the passe.
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Though now that I think about certitude, I wonder if it is as simple as a spectrum of personality types--personalities with a proclivity to cleave to certitude, or personalities compelled to embrace vicissitude.
That's an interesting spectrum to think about; from certitude to vicissitude. When integrated into a personality, each end contains elements--at different levels--of the other end, like a yin-yang symbol.
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