Science takes effort. It makes you question all your inherited belief systems. Everything that you considered truth a lie. Religion in the other hand, is like a cook book. It has measurements, volume, quantities, ingredients...If you follow every thing as stated your dinner will come out perfect! You don´t have to experiment. You don´t have to take risk. You don´t have to question your parents or your neighbors. Religion is the way to go if you need comfort and lack courage and mental flexibility to maybe tell yourself that you don´t have an absolute truth. Climate change is scary. Tell it to an islander like me that sees the effects of climate change every day. Evolution can be as well. It implies everything changes. Some of us adapt and evolve. Others don´t. And there are economic reasons for many of these arguments against climate change. Renewable energies and industries don´t necessarily favor the continued existence of old economic industries that are in the process of dying anyways. Coal, petroleum and other dirty fossil fuel industries are trying to hold on to the last vestiges of their contaminating glory! Many of the families that depend on fossil fuel industries have christian upbringing like many families here in the US. Renewables hurt their bottom line. They tie their prosperity with god, I guess.

The fear is God will be left out completely as we discover more and more. Many believers feel that the more you know the more questions should be asked, thus keeping the idea of God in the forefront. Many conservative Christians believe in the absolute truth of the Bible and that only God has the ability to change the ecology and environment of the planet. That somehow we are special on this little blue dot on the outer edge of our galaxy. They are afraid that those "proofs" of evolution, of environment change, of ecological disaster will only contradict their belief systems. Thusly the reject the science and hold on to their faith in their holy books.

Whenever I have a discussion with a theist, these five questions come up in one form or another pretty much every time:

1.) Why are we here?
2.) What’s our purpose in life?
3.) Why is there pain and suffering in the world?
4.) When and how will it all end?
5.) What happens after we die?

The "bible" answers those questions in such a way that gives them comfort. There's an answer to each one of those. If they accept science, particularly evolution, then those answer go away. I think that ultimately, those questions/answers lie at the heart of their resistance.

Religion is all about controlling knowledge, and keeping people ignorant... at least in some areas. Their attacks on science nd knowledge is not new. They pushed most of Europe into the dark ages for 1000 years. Now they are trying to do it again. although for different reasons. We have reached a point in knowledge acquisition where the bible looks more and more like the fairy tales that it actually is. Most well educated people don't take religion seriously.

So, they are pushing back by wanting to teach religion in schools and have the government provide tax money to pay for religious private schools to control how people will view ideas which will create doubts. They way there is a war on Christianity, when all that is happening is that people are learning better.

Too be fair, there are hot headed people on both sides.

Not that I think the decliners are correct.