It really gets my goat

I get angry at things. Not always the things other people get upset about, but I can get very irritated by things. And people. Particularly people being stupid. 

Stupid is the polite if inaccurate term for what irritates me. Anti-vaccine people annoy me because they utterly fail to understand what they are citing  and because they are killing children. My fellow Christians who like to discount scientific discoveries annoy me because they are being willfully ignorant and turning a blind eye to some really cook aspects of creation. My fellow scientists are currently annoying me by being willfully ignorant the other way. 

This is a thing that causes me low level irritation on a daily basis, but then I saw this blogpost from one of the science bloggers I follow. Two things bothered me about this post. One, he was basing his entire argument off some truly awful questions. Another is his exhibition of the worst habit of contemporary science writers (and writers in general) to broadly generalize about anyone they view as an 'enemy' in a manner that makes them seem irrational.  Things like this quotation are particularly irritating.

A professed belief in something like creationism is one of the essential markers of a particular brand of political conservatism. As a result, even people who know the scientific answer are prone to giving the answer they’re “supposed” to give as a member of a particular political affiliation. And the number of people who self-identify as political conservatives, like the number who deny the Big Bang and evolution, is pretty consistent over the last thirty years.

Note that the answers he is talking about are the true/false responses given to the statements "“The universe began with a huge explosion”  “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.” 

Now I object to several things. One, the assumption that just because I believe in creation means I'm a right-wing nut job (I also object to my beliefs being co-opted by a political party, but that's a separate issue). Two, that there is one version of creationism. I also think true/false polls are terrible ways of gauging people's views.  

Attention non-religious science-types. The 'creationism' that you refer to so derisively is in fact Young Earth Creationism. This is a very narrow slice of people who believe that the universe was created and not just a random event. There are several flavors of creationism (main forms summarized here). If you went around and seriously interviewed a wide swath of Christians (since we are the 'creationists' everyone seems to want to poke), I'm willing to bet good money you would find most of them to be either Old Earth Creationists, or Theistic Evolutionists (I myself fall largely into the later category). But if you just straight up asked me "Are you a creationist?" I would probably answer yes.

I believe that the universe began with the Big Bang. I believe the the prima causa of the Big Bang was God. I believe that God used evolution to create the variety of life we have today, with a little nudging in the direction he wanted it to go. When it comes to the physics or the biology or the chemistry, I do not deny the scientific evidence or theories. I will argue for them with people who don't believe in the science. Why is science so threatened that I want to, and do, believe to know Who's behind the curtain?

Fellow scientists. You get mad as all get out when people deride your science without doing any research or learning beyond their own prejudices and maybe one newspaper article. Could you do other people the courtesy of not doing the same?