As if the activists trying to claim the Founding Fathers were Christian weren’t obnoxious enough, now the faith of early Renaissance scientists has to be retroactively revised?
Galileo probably was somewhat religious, but we’ll never know because his public statements were, um, coerced. Conversely, most of the leading New Atheists aren’t scientists. (Of the big four, only Dawkins is one.)
If great scientists have been religious in the past, that doesn’t make modern atheists wrong. Isaac Newton believed in God, but he also thought he could turn lead into gold and that menstrual fluid had magical properties. As a result of those beliefs he died a poisoned virgin. Perhaps I am a prisoner of my time, but if I am going to be advised by scientists on non-scientific matters I’d rather hear from my contemporaries, even about religion. And I’d rather be advised by just about anybody than Ben Stein.
