I have spent literally 8 days on and off trying to think of how to answer this without snark

Why would you do that, though? cgod's response was snark. He said "tell me more" and the closest you could get was "tell me what else AIPAC is." What part of that exchange warranted eight days of linked paragraphs?

There's an extra dumb column in the Washington Post this week in which a trained evolutionary biologist beats up liberals for not respecting her pig-headed tribalism, therefore it's liberals' fault that (waves hands).

But what I really want is to be proof that if we allow science to become just another tribe, we will be asking people to choose between their loved ones and abstract principles.

FKN THE PROBLEM IS TRIBALISTS SEE EVERYTHING AS "JUST ANOTHER TRIBE"

You've mentioned your upbringing again and again and again. You've definitely got the ex-mormon song'n'dance down pat. But what you and everyone else from a conservative background just can't get is that the rest of us change our minds. We get uncomfortable when we see information that might make us change our minds, sure. But the difference between liberal and conservative thought is liberals go "are we sure about this?" while conservatives go "we are sure about this."

How much of your personal journey has been enlightenment and how much of it has been dogma substitution? Dogma generally requires a grand unifying theory. QAnon was a bunch of fringe beliefs until somebody started pretending to be a government agent. Why can't Jeffrey Epstein be a rich grifter scumbag, period? Why does it have to extend to "Pedocon theory?" I mean, look - the halcyon times conservatives want to return to also involve an era where they could bang side pieces and nobody would say shit, an era where deviancy was wrong so you didn't talk about it (unless you need to drive someone out of the tribe). The grand unifying theory is that liberals tear each others' ideas apart to make the ideas stronger, conservatives tear each other apart to make the adherence to ideas stronger.

That's all it is, man. "Can our way of life be derived from first principles" vs "our way of life is dictated to us by our elders." Do you question your assumptions or do you defend them. That's the whole ballgame.

So when someone questions your assumptions, you either successfully defend them or you (uncomfortably) reconsider until your worldview feels comfy again. You don't spend eight days compiling a list of dogma to silence dissent about your rejoinder.