(promoted from a rant in comments)
I have been thinking recently of the whys and wherefores of climate change deniers and evolution deniers, and the general problem of people who have a magical belief system instead of looking at the evidence before us.
The scary part to a lot of people, I think, is that both of these things suggest mortality of both the individual and species. We know the human species will end, whether it's when the sun dies out a few billion years hence or tomorrow from some human-induced catastrophe, it's just a matter of when. If people don't really have a strong enough faith or psyche to handle it without a religious structure to prop up their daily lives, it's a real downer.
The flip side is there's an inherent lack of faith in this position in humanity itself to change the game plan on its own. If some invisible entity is controlling everything, why, we don't have to be responsible for our own screw-ups. It's fatalism, resignation, and a lack of confidence in our own ability to shape our own destiny.
Personally, I believe we're in a game-changing phase of social evolution (and probably biological evolution) where, having developed science to the level that we're starting to understand some fundamental truths about existence, we are also in a position to change our outcome. Yes, one option is we extinguish ourselves through overconsumption or some byproduct thereof (social unrest leading to nuclear holocaust, what have you), but the other is we reprogram our own biology -- through our social organization, our consumption patterns, etc. -- so that we extend our own run on the planet and the universe indefinitely.
Basically, if you look at the track record of species on earth, statistically speaking we're in for a short run. Species died off without humans with great regularity and in short spans, relative to geologic time, just through normal natural selection. We've accelerated the die off for other species and in a timescale that will prevent other species from arising, certainly not in any timeframe comparable to humanity's dominant dominion over earth.
But even looking at the last century, we've done some amazing things. We've conquered all sorts of disease and early death, we are managing our fertility, we've managed to create new sources of food supply. Much of this progress that has resulted in (from a biological perspective) the incredible success of eight billion people, of course, has come about due to our ability to (a) harness energy, and (b) understand cause and effect via the scientific method. From a biological perspective, we're doing great, but unique among species on earth (and the universe, probably) we've started "grazing out" a resource other than food that is essential to our society.
I don't know where humanity will be in a million, a thousand, or even a hundred years. It's possible my kids' generation will see the end of natural death if medicine and understanding of aging and disease continues to advance (and computational power, nanotechnology, etc.) but it won't be my generation. That said, it's reasonable to believe that if we go with what has made us a successful species -- the fruits of science -- then we'll continue to be a successful species. There are weird frontiers way out there, if you look at physics and cosmology -- the end of time may not be the only place for us to go -- but we have to get over this larval stage to really explore those as a species.
That's why energy policy, and the flip side of the equation, climate management, are not just the most important political issues now, they're essential to our fate as a species, and in terms of timing, this is the crucial century. We have some people who represent an old paradigm and others who represent the new one.
I see climate change deniers and evolution deniers as being maladapted evolutionarily, certainly socially. Belief systems with essentially magical bases obviously had an adaptive advantage at one point in our history, probably between 50,000 years ago to a couple of hundred years ago, since they kept social cohesion in clan organizations that resulted in civilization itself being possible -- our herd instincts.
I am content to let people have whatever whacky beliefs they want to have as long as it doesn't affect my life, or that of my family, or that of my species. Unfortunately the idiots who continue to espouse these positions at the expense of progress forward are dragging us down like a millstone in the middle of the pond.
The antidote to this of course is education and dedication to, well, reality, instead of the magical world of previous generations. We have the unique ability to change our species' fate from generation to generation by learning and passing that knowledge from human to human and from generation to generation. That's our hope. And that's the irony: people with religious objections, or short-term economic objections, to stopping global warming and our insane energy usage system, are in fact the faithless ones, the ones who are damning us.