Just to be clear not all conservatives are anti-science but most people I have seen who have dismissed science and scientific evidence tend to be conservative.
As well, certainly most Conservative leaders seem to be against science or at least choose to ignore it. This feature cuts across cultures and languages. In Ontario, Alberta, Trump's American, Brazil, the UK, The Philippines, to name just a few, the leaders of these political jurisdiction have ignored science on a whole host of issues and in many cases they are actually proud of their stance. How anybody can show pride in embracing ignorance is beyond me.
I used to think this as a largely English speaking white guy phenomenon but we are seeing this in many other political jurisdiction where conservatives have a significant presence. And it is not just with the conservative leadership either. Ordinary citizens of these places, who identify as conservative, are militantly anti-science. It seems that if a scientist says something then they disagree out of spite. "The sky is blue." said Dr. Smith. "No it is not." said President Trump.
If this were just an English speaking white guy thing I would just put it down to the knowledge that their days of ruling the world for their own benefit is coming to an end and they are just acting out. However, with conservatives of other ethnic groups following suit it is probably not that simple.
Maybe it is historical determinism. History has moved back and forth between enlightenment and ignorance for thousands of years. Every historical era where human civilizations acquired new knowledge, such as the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations, ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, Rome and the Arab world after the death of Mohammed have been followed by eras where superstition and ignorance reigned supreme. The last era where knowledge was valued for its intrinsic value was the Enlightenment. It lasted will into the 20th Century so maybe it should not be a surprise that we are seeing a backlash against it. It has happened before so it is no surprise that it is happening again.
I have never been completely sold on the historical determinism idea. Yes, humans do seem to have this habit of not learning from history so that we seem to repeat it but that cannot be the only reason. A second reason, which I find is more compelling, is science is getting in the way of the Conservative ideology. It is a fact that as long as human civilization has existed there have always been a segment of civilization who will put their beliefs above anything else and sometime react violently when presented with facts that challenge those beliefs. The old Soviet Union was brought down because the Communist Party of the Soviet Union chose to adhere to their ideology when ruling their country instead of modifying it or their policies to fit the facts on the ground. Now it is the turn of conservatives. That is one reason why I have stated that many modern Conservative Parties in the world are very much like the old CPSU. Ideology trumps all and that is the way they like it. Of course, the CPSU and the USSR should be a cautionary tale for modern Conservatives but that would require them to accept facts over their beliefs.
A third reason is spite, to "own the Liberals". If a liberal says it is true they believe it is false and if a liberal uses facts discovered by science to back up their arguments then science is part of the problem and should be ignored or even condemned.
The answer to my question is probably a combination of all three points in the post plus others I have not thought of. Regardless, that fact that many conservatives are so anti-science and anti-facts is troubling during these times. In the past, eras of ignorance were the result of the decline and fall of civilizations that value knowledge. This time the embrace of ignorance could be the cause of the fall of our current civilization.
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One of the great secular prophets of the modern age was the astronomer Carl Sagan. Replace “America”/“United States” with any other country or culture, or just “society” more generally, in this book passage and it still holds true:
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”
From 1996's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, his penultimate work before his untimely death from cancer later that year.
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