The New Reality of the Scientific Method: Donald Trump Is Always Right

I outlined the scientific method, which is something in which anyone, not just scientists, can participate, in my previous book Scientifically Thinking. But there is a new reality about science, at least in the United States, which has developed since I wrote the book, and which I will now explain.

For many years at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, I taught the Research Methods course for science graduate students, which was pretty much the precursor of my book. I recently found, in some old papers, that I taught a similar course at The King’s College, in my first faculty job. King’s was and is a fundamentalist Christian college. Soon after I left, it also became a fundamentalist Republican college and, today, is probably a fundamentalist Trump college. When I taught the scientific method, I taught it pretty much the standard way, although technology was different back then (no internet). But that was because my department chair, although he was a leading creationist, was open to free scientific inquiry. He believed that open inquiry would lead a person to accept creationism. He did not, unlike almost all other fundamentalists, impose his views on other people.

But here is what research is usually like at fundamentalist institutions. First, instead of reaching a conclusion, you impose one. For example, you will stipulate up front that there can be no evidence that is consistent with evolution. Next, you selectively gather information that agrees with your conclusion. Last, you draw your “conclusion” from the selectively-gathered information. This is the exact opposite of the scientific method.

The result was predictable. The scientific value of creationist research is nil, for two reasons other than the above. First, creationists used this method to defend not only the Bible but their sometimes highly imaginary interpretations of it. Second, their misuse of the scientific method made their work sloppy even when it had nothing to do with evolution. Their habit of mind was that, no matter what they did, they had to be right. I documented these two things in a pair of articles I wrote a long time ago: in 1988 and  in 1989.

Today we must add another dimension. Not just in creationist or fundamentalist camps, but in all publicly-funded research, the researchers must begin with the conclusion: they must begin with whatever belief the Republican party holds upon the question. For example, is global warming happening, and are humans contributing to it? The answer, fundamentalists think, must be no, even though the Bible does not mention it. The answer must be no because the fossil fuel industry says it is no. This, then, is the conclusion they reach. Are vaccines effective? Again, the required answer is no. Has gun violence reached epidemic proportions? The answer again must be no. Science, then, becomes just a propaganda arm of the Republican Party.

It has been this way for a long time, to various degrees, starting mainly with the George W. Bush administration. But now, under Donald Trump, there is yet a new version of science. You begin with the conclusion that Donald Trump is always right. Science has now become a propaganda arm of Donald Trump, and of his chosen spokespeople, such as RFK Jr. who says that vaccination is not necessary. The conclusion is that vaccination is not effective, because Donald Trump, who used to champion vaccination, says so.

For example, even under Republican presidents in the past, the website climate.gov existed. As of 2025, that URL redirects to NOAA where global warming is hidden, although at this point they still admit that today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide level (421 ppm) is comparable to the atmospheric level four million years ago, and much higher than any time during 6000 years of human civilization. But they are not allowed to draw the obvious conclusion that the Earth is getting hotter, only that it happens to be hot right now; certainly they do not blame our use of fossil fuels.

Modern Republicans place Trump in exactly the same position as medieval theologians placed God. Republicans worship Trump. I realize that this is blasphemy, but it is what they are doing, and we might as well say so.

I am glad that I taught and wrote about science before Donald Trump became the sole standard of truth. I am not sure, however, that I am safe. My most recent book, Forgotten Landscapes, provides evidence that Native Americans were civilized and had a significant effect on the North American landscape. This is not the picture of Native Americans that Republicans prefer. They want to claim that Natives were savages and did not deserve to keep the land that was taken from them. Republican opposition did not prevent the publication of my book. But what will happen next?

By Their Fruits

Jesus famously said that “by their fruits you shall know them.” He made it clear that what he meant was that good people do good things, bad people do bad things, and that is how you tell them apart. You cannot be good by just saying good and doctrinally correct things; you have to actually do them. Nothing in religion could seem more fundamental than this.

But right-wing American Christians do not believe this. They reject what Jesus said. The most obvious place to see this is in politics.

Right-wing fundamentalist Christians are almost all Republicans. Many Republican politicians do evil things. The most prominent example is Donald Trump, who has had repeated, well-documented scandals, both sexual and financial, in addition to encouraging a revolt against the United States government. He has publicly called on Putin to “do whatever the hell he wants” to NATO countries.

But it is not just Trump. Many Republican politicians have had scandals, such as Mark Sanford, who disappeared from the state of which he was governor, claiming to be hiking on the Appalachian Trail but actually in Argentina visiting his mistress; and George Santos, who was ousted from Congress after multiple financial scandals and misrepresentations.

Nor is it just Republican politicians. Jerry Falwell, Jr., then president of Liberty University, which his father founded, was spectacularly scandalous in arranging not for an actual affair but for arranging to watch someone else have sex with his (Falwell’s) wife. He resigned after a ten million dollar severance was offered to him. Ted Haggard, a megachurch pastor, had scandals related to sexual acts and to misrepresenting his book as a best-seller when actually his church had bought most of the copies. Both Falwell’s and Haggard’s churches proclaimed openly that the Republican Party, and specifically Donald Trump, were God’s choices for moral leadership in America.

And it just keeps going on. As I write, Liberty University has been fined $14 million for its failure to report, and sometimes to even acknowledge, incidents of sexual violence toward female students and staff. To Liberty University, as to the Southern Baptist church, a woman’s proper place is to let men do what they want with them and keep silence. And Steve Garvey, former baseball star with a history of sexual and financial scandal, was the Republican winner in the Super Tuesday election in 2024, running for a California U.S. Senate seat.

Of course, Democrats have scandals also. Some of us are old enough to remember the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewensky affair. I’ll let you look for other examples. But it appears to me that neither Republicans nor Democrats have a moral high ground over the other party.

And there is one outstanding example of truly good Democrats: Barack and Michelle Obama. For eight years, Republicans searched desperately for any scandal with the Obamas, and they didn’t find a single one. I read Michelle’s autobiography, Becoming, and I was astonished that such good people could actually rise to positions of leadership in our society.

Most evangelical Christians believe everything Trump says, approves of everything He has ever done, and appear to adore Him with religious fervor. They refuse to even consider that He might be wrong. To them, He is no mere human being. Sarah Posner wrote a book about it in 2020 (Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump; Random House) and the white evangelical devotion to Trump has only gotten stronger each year since then.

If Christians obeyed Jesus’ command to evaluate people on the basis of what they do, rather than what they say, the result would be clear. Neither Democrats nor Republicans consistently have the moral high ground. One should judge candidates individually, not on the basis of their devotion to Donald Trump, and Trump must be subject to the same laws as the rest of us.

In some cases, the blasphemy is open. One Georgia billboard had a photo of Trump and a quote from the Bible: “and the government shall be upon his shoulders,” an Old Testament reference always attributed to Jesus. I would show you, but the image cannot be copied. You can, however, find it at the Ministry Watch wehsite. I also saw a billboard in Missouri, as I drove on I44, in 2023, which said that Trump, like Jesus, was being crucified; the poster showed a cross on a hill. The billboard was on a side road which I could not find. Christian responses to these billboards ranged from support to disturbance, but few if any evangelical Christians declared it to be blasphemy.

But most evangelical Christians totally reject Jesus’ authority in this matter. They worship Donald Trump.

They Will Never Have Enough

So, the Trump Republicans have control over virtually everything except the courts. The path is now clear before them to chop down every policy and law that might impede their conquest of nation and Earth for their private gain. They have not been able, as of this writing, to destroy the Affordable Care Act, but Trump has already singlehandedly disabled its implementation. And they have negated nearly every environmental policy that existed prior to the current administration, even rules that date back to previous Republican presidents. Sure, some kinds of pollution remain illegal, but the Executive Branch will simply not execute those laws.

You would think these would be the Halcyon Days when everything is going their way, sort of like what the Democrats had in 1993-1994 and the Republicans had in 2001-2006: single-party rule. You would think that they could just relax and enjoy their hegemony.

But instead, the Trump supporters have become even more fierce. They need not bother to attack Democrats, who have no power. Despite this, they still do so. Right-wing Republicans continue to insult Hillary Clinton on social media. What? What is the point? Hillary has no more political clout. There is no reason to attack her except to continue wallowing in hatred of her.

But the Trump Republicans also attack moderate Republicans, Bipartisanship is now considered treason. Trump even attacks His own hand-picked cabinet. Just recently, Trump has openly insulted retiring Senate Republicans Bob Corker and Jeff Flake.

The Trump Republicans do not just want to be in sole control of the nation. They want to be the only voices that are heard. Already, nobody listens to Democrats. The Trump Republicans want moderate Republicans, as well, to simply bow and obey.

One vivid recent example of this is the October 29 white supremacist rally in Shelbyville, TN. They shouted, marched, wore Confederate insignia, and some of them declared that “the Jews will not take our place.” While not all Trump supporters are Nazis, we are still waiting to see if any Trump supporters speak out against them. Why don’t the neo-Nazis just sit back and enjoy the far-right domination of all of American life? They will never have a Nazi in the White House, at least by legitimate means; they have it as good as they ever will. But they cannot enjoy the Trump victory which has created a golden space for them. The white supremacists have tasted blood and they are on a roll.

White rage is happening not just in politics but in general society. Where I live, in rural Oklahoma, most of the people are Trump Republicans, not moderate Republicans. They have the whole arena of public space under their control. But what do they do? The people of rural Oklahoma are even more militant in their hatred of non-supporters of Trump than they were before the election of 2016. They overtly demonstrate their hatred of their neighbors even more than before. If you are out in public in rural Oklahoma, it feels like a theater of war. At least for people like me who look like liberals; I wear science T-shirts rather than camo. It is now hostility that I encounter, not the quiet dislike such as I experienced before.

Already, Trump Republicans can accumulate all the automatic weapons they want, at least in Oklahoma. But they have redoubled their efforts to build up their stockpiles since the beginning of the Trump administration. I know this because one of them told me. Who are they building up their weapons against? Is it against the remaining minority of progressives such as myself, progressives who do not dare to speak out? My car has no bumper stickers on it, but the fact that it is a Prius calls attention to the fact that I am not a Trump supporter. I might, for all anyone knows when they see me in my car, be a moderate Republican who sees energy efficiency as a great investment (which it is). I feel as afraid to speak my mind in public as do the people in the Zoroastrian or Christian minorities in countries ruled by Muslim strongmen. I am less likely to get killed than a religious minority in a Muslim country, but, I wonder, for how long? How long will Trump Republicans keep accumulating weapons before they decide it is time to use them, perhaps not just against progressives but against moderates within their own party?

They will never be satisfied, so long as those of us who do not agree with them exist in even barely noticeable numbers.

An Easter Message

Happy Easter, everybody, believer and skeptic alike. To Christians, Easter is a time to proclaim the victory of specific doctrinal beliefs. To those of us of a more general spirituality, it is a time to reaffirm the (at least temporary) victory of life over death.

But let me tell you one thing the Easter story is not. It is not a time to proclaim the unassailable rectitude of the Republican Party. If Jesus rose, it was His victory, not that of Republicans.

This seems so obvious that you may wonder why I need to say it. Let me tell you a memory from about 1973. I was a high school kid reading the Letters to the Editor section of the Fresno Bee newspaper. One letter told the story of how the crowds praised Jesus as he entered Jerusalem, and within a few days they were calling for His death. The writer then drew a comparison between Jesus and Richard Nixon. Americans, the writer said, praised Nixon when he won his 1972 election as president. Then, within a little more than a year, they were turning against him because of the Watergate scandal. The writer said that people turning against Nixon was just as unreasonable and unholy as people turning against Jesus.

This really happened. You can’t make stuff like this up.

Emails from Hell, Part One

As C. S. Lewis said at the beginning of The Screwtape Letters, I have no intention of telling how these communications fell into my hands.

A person who recently arrived in Hell has had the unique opportunity to send back a series of emails describing what he or she (identity unknown) saw. This information is so valuable that I cannot withhold it from you.

{Beginning of email}

            When I woke up from my coma, I found myself in a place with lots of people rushing around, jostling each other, yelling at each other, jumping ahead of each other. I watched for a while, and finally realized that I saw the same people going over the same path over and over mindlessly. Only after some reflection did I realize that I was in Hell.

            I approached someone who was clearly one of the demons in charge.

            “Is this Hell?” I asked.

            “You must be new here,” he answered. “What the blazes do you think this is?”

            “Well,” I said, “I was expecting Hell to be a place where every second of every minute of every hour of every day is exquisite, unimaginable pain and torture in hot flames forever and ever.”

            “Oh, you been listening to those TV and radio evangelists?”

            “Why, yes. Aren’t they supposed to be the ones who know what hell is like?”

            The demon had himself been very busy, but seemed relieved to have a chance to put his work down and talk with me. “No. They just made all that stuff up. It’s easy enough for them to say stuff like that, to scare the shit out of you humans so that you will give them money. It’s a natural selection process, see.”

            “You mean, like Darwin?”

            “Yeah, you got it. Any evangelist who made Hell seem more painful, or hotter, would get more money from frightened parishioners than the other evangelists whose visions of Hell were just a little bit less extreme. It was a race to the top, my friend. But those stories are just a pack of lies.”

            “Lies? So, I guess those evangelists, like the late Jerry Falwell, are here in hell?”

            “I’m not permitted to discuss individual cases. But you can just look around you and see that nobody is suffering anything they are not bringing on themselves. Oh, by the way, some of the early Christian theologians were even worse. St. Jerome said that in Heaven there was a special balcony where the saved ones could stand and look down into Hell forever and watch the suffering of the damned. That was his idea of Heavenly bliss! See, it’s like this. They say God is going to inflict infinite torture on souls forever. But then it’s us demons who have to actually put it into action, see. And I speak for all the other demons here, we just can’t bring ourselves to inflict such torture. A little, now and then, for fun. But I get tired of seeing people suffer.”

            “Even demons?”

            “Look, pal, I’m a demon, but I’m not insane. St. Jerome, see, he was fucking insane. But not me. Enjoying infinite torture forever is incompatible with mental function.”

            “I guess that makes sense,” I said. “But now I have to ask, what am I doing here?”

            The demon pulled out a portable scanner and aimed it at me. He looked at a computer screen. “Well, says here, you were a Democrat.”

            “What’s that got to do with…”

            “To go to heaven, you have to be a Republican. Or else a jihadist. They get to go also.”

            “But I thought Hell was for souls who had not repented of their sins.”

            “See, it’s like this,” he sighed as he explained it to me. “If you are a Republican, you can download a special app in your brain that will automatically keep you repenting of your sins. You don’t have to think about it. Sort of like those automatic virus scanners on your computer. They keep zapping viruses you don’t know you have. Well, the Republican app sends in a forgiveness request every 10 picoseconds, and God is obligated to forgive any Republican sin upon request. This way, the Republicans can keep on sinning—having wild sex, screwing the poor, fucking up the Earth—and they are almost instantly forgiven.”

            “And Democrats can’t do this?”

            “Sorry, pal. Republicans have the patent on it. It is an app called CheapGrace. It’s named after a concept invented by the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book The Cost of Discipleship. Bonhoeffer was executed for resisting the Nazis. He said that simply reciting some words is not really repentance. Grace and forgiveness have to be costly enough to make you actually change the way you live.”

            “Is Bonhoeffer here?”

            “Again, I can’t discuss individual cases, but he wasn’t conservative enough, you know, to meet the rules. Now, as for that app, It’s a sweet deal. You can hate, rape, lie, pillage, and steal all you want to, and your record is clean. Now, Democrats, like you, I feel kind of sorry for you. Because the very fact of being a Democrat means that you have to come here to Hell. You can repent, but the very next picosecond you are a Democrat again and as guilty as Hell. So, get used to it, pal. You’re going to be here a long, long time.”

            And so I decided to spend my time (since I had been a scientist back on Earth) exploring Hell. I will send back dispatches whenever I get a chance.

{End of email}

Watch this blog for future reports from Our Man in Hell.

Bold Comments about Organized Religion

I do not often post strong comments on Facebook, since my friends are from all over the gamut on religion and politics. But I decided I had to say these things:

Many large religious organizations use their power and influence for political ends, and to guilt-trip money out of their followers. These organizations are not satisfied if a person says, “I will love God and love humans collectively and individually and love the earth that I share with them.” Instead they say, “No! That’s not enough! God also wants you to give us your money and believe every doctrine we proclaim!” The result is organized religion, which throughout history has been a scourge upon humankind.

When Isaiah wrote words that he attributed to God (chapter 1 verse 14), “Your…feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them,” Isaiah was referring to organized religion, not to individual religious people who loved their neighbors.

When Jon Stewart and associates wrote (in the 2010 book “Earth: The Book”) that it is difficult to kill a person, but easy to kill an infidel; and that “religion helped overcome man’s catastrophic tendency toward neighborliness,” he was talking about organized religion, not individual religious people who loved their neighbors.

I am repulsed by the big religious organizations that want to make Jesus merely an appendage of the Republican Party (or the Democratic Party; but you don’t hear much from them) and want nothing to do with organized religion. Pat Robertson’s gospel was, when I heard his show a few years ago, “Send money send money send money bomb Iran send money.” My religion is a private relationship with God. It is, as I said above, I will love God and love humans collectively and individually and love the earth that I share with them.

It's Official: Republicans Reject Altruism

Now for some late-breaking news about altruism. (By late-breaking I mean less than a week old. I usually get month or year old news to you.)


President Barack Obama made a statement that sounds like a completely non-controversial, common sense description of altruism as it plays out in our communities and in our nation. Here is the original quote. Obama was talking to small business owners: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

I cannot imagine that anyone would object to this. Businesses do not teach their employees how to read and write and add and subtract. Some businesses build their own private roads, but those roads connect to highways that are built by counties, states, and the federal government. If you’ve got a business, you did not build the schools and roads. (I plan to operate a small business myself soon, so I can say soon that Obama’s statement reflects the common sense beliefs of a small business owner.) Businesses and families can thrive only within stable communities, bound together by altruism, which is facilitated by reasonable regulations and reasonable taxes.

Altruism, as I have written several times previously, is doing well by doing good. One animal (such as a human) does good things to and for another animal of the same species, and both of the animals prosper as a result. There are innumerable examples of altruism, confirmed by observation and (thanks to people like Martin Nowak) mathematics. It is one of the clearest components of evolutionary theory. And it is intuitively obvious to all of us.

Mitt Romney, however, had to attack Barack Obama for this statement. Obama clarified that he meant that if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build the schools, roads, and bridges. On August 13, Romney attacked even more vigorously, saying that this context was even worse than the original statement. Perhaps Romney, and therefore the mainstream of the Republican Party, envision a future in which America consists of individuals who do not help one another out but just fight and struggle with one another for dominance. Gated communities that are entirely self-contained? I cannot believe that Republicans are stupid enough to believe this. I suspect that Romney simply attacks anything Obama says without even thinking about it. If Obama said the sky is blue, Romney would say that this is Obama’s Democratic bias, and that the sky is really Republican red. Long ago John Donne wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself,” and until now pretty much everyone accepted this as true. Welcome to the Republican vision of what America should be like. Or not; as I said, I think Mitt spoke without thinking.

Mitt Romney is not the only one to speak without thinking. When Joe Biden said, this week, that the Republicans want to put people (he was speaking to a largely black audience) back in chains, he easily won the Stupidest Statement Award. Where did Obama find this clown anyway? Biden is the same one who emailed all of Obama’s supporters and said that if Obama did not win the election it was their fault for not giving more money. As one of those followers, I emailed my response: that this was an offensive statement. But while Joe Biden is destroying altruism by clownish incompetence, it appears that Republicans are destroying it deliberately.

If Mitt Romney makes a big deal about attacking Obama on the issue (previously, non-issue) of altruism, I can only wonder if he has any ideas of his own. Perhaps American businesses can prosper by investing their money in overseas banks the way he does? If Romney makes the rich richer, will this automatically lift up the middle class? The rich have been getting richer, and the middle class has been getting poorer (especially by debt burden). Raising up the rich has not raised up the middle class in recent years, and there is no reason to expect that it would in the future.

This is just one more example of Republicans taking on what should be a non-partisan topic—something confirmed by science—and attacking it. Evolution, global warming, stem cells, and now altruism. As a biology instructor, what can I do? Do I need to ask the Republican Party whether carbon atoms really exist before I teach about molecular structure? The Bible does not, after all, say that carbon atoms exist. I can only hope that this example is extreme; but I would never have guessed that altruism would be treated as a dangerous theory either.

Good luck to all of you altruists.

A similar essay appears on my evolution blog.