Chris Mooney is morally bankrupt.

It's madness. M and K and Stover are right in describing the attitudes of many people, but that is an argument for ramping up our criticism of religion. If the problem is that dopey religious ideas are standing in the way of good science education, the solution is to scream and yell with enough vigor that non-religious views become part of the conversation. The contribution of the New Atheists is to make atheism visible as a viable way of life. Do this long enough and it becomes demystified, to the point where the younger generation no longer thinks there is anything sordid or illegitimate about it. We do not have to just sit back and accept that religion will always be a dominant social force. We can take steps to increase the likelihood of that not being the case for those future generations, even if that means bruising some feelings in the present.

Throughout the book the emphasis gets put in the wrong places. Sure, there are entrenched and powerful interests determined to keep everyone ignorant about global warming, but the real problem is that some academics turn up their nose at science popularization. Yes, granted, many people hold religious views that close their minds and make them unwilling even to consider challenging ideas, but can you blame them what with Richard Dawkins being snotty and all? The media is sensationalist and uncritical and happily parrots any dubious claim it thinks will attract a few viewers, so the solution is to have more scientists trained in the art of framing and sound bite construction.

While Myers and others may advance the argument that religious faith is the arch-enemy of scientific rationalism, this doesn't imply that insult and ridicule are appropriate tools with which to defend science.

This problem [the problem of bad pseudoscience blogs not going away] was on full display in the 2008 Weblog Awards, a popularity contest that featured a tight race for Best Science Blog. The two leading contestants: PZ Myers's Pharyngula (scienceblogs.com/pharyngula), the online clearinghouse for confrontational atheism, and Watts Up With That (wattsupwiththat.com), written by former TV meteorologist Anthony Watts, a skeptic of the scientific conclusion that human activities have caused global warming. Both sites are polemical: one assaults religious faith; the other constantly attacks mainstream understanding of climate change.

In the end, Watts Up With That defeated Pharyngula, 14,150 votes to 12,238. The "science" contest came down to the religion-basher versus the misinformation-machine, and the misinformation-machine won. That speaks volumes about the form science commentary takes on the Internet.

Mooney and Kirshenbaum also fail to support their contention that the knowledge gap between scientists and the public is increasing. In fact, the only relevant statistic they provide shows no such thing: the proportion of Americans who believe that humans were created instead of evolved has not budged for three decades. This constancy undermines the authors' claim that scientific illiteracy once was ameliorated by people like Carl Sagan and Stephen Gould but is now exacerbated by the "new atheists." Instead of data, Mooney and Kirshenbaum rely on anecdotes.

The public's reluctance to accept scientific facts may reflect not just a lack of exposure but a willful evasion of facts due to conflicting economic agendas (e.g., the case of global warming), personal agendas (vaccines), or religious agendas. A recent Pew survey, for instance, found that 55% of Americans see science and religion as often in conflict, and 64% said that if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, they would reject the scientific facts in favor of their faith. One could argue, in fact, that overcoming America's resistance to evolution could be accomplished more effectively by weakening religion than by teaching Darwinism.

Published quickly on the heels of their book on public scientific literacy, Unscientific America, Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum have released their newest book Unartistic America, which tackles the low art literacy in America, it's consequences, and what should be done to change the situation.

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But even worse for art literacy in America, assert Mooney and Kirshenbaum, are the neorealists, who criticize the "crap that my 5-year old could have painted" on their blogs. By criticizing crap that could be painted by a 5-year old, according to the authors, the neorealists turn off hipster doofuses who like crap that could be painted by a 5-year-old. For the greater good of increasing art literacy in America, according to Mooney and Kirshenbaum, neorealists should accommodate the hipster doofuses by pretending to like and respect crap that could be painted by a 5-year-old.

You already know how you feel about that issue, and if you're an enthusiastic New Atheist, you're certainly not going to have your mind changed by this book, so let's lay that to rest now!