[xtiansimon]

"...but these people haven't actually checked "the facts"."

It sounds like a hard line, but science is not like that. I don't think science leads to smugness. Science helps us make decisions, now. Ideology, on the otherhand, is quick to judgment, undermines, subverts, misleads, and is a general problem across all of society.

I knew a biologist who, believed their scientific findings, loved animals and nature, but found humans lacking. That general disdain was eveident in scarcastic jokes, and subversive attitudes towards society. They had to delete their Facebook page for all the crap they would say, which people would jump on. That's ideology, a secret belief in the way the world works.