Brent got asked a question by Vox Day: to list Christianity’s 10 greatest sins against science. He expands a little bit:

I’m reading all of these New Atheist books, I keep reading these condemnations of Christians being anti-science, but no one ever bothers to explain exactly what they mean by that. I mean, what the Hell does Galileo’s trial have to do with Christian attitudes today, except as some sort of analogy for… something current? But what?

I mean, if the worst thing people have done is put someone on trial 500 years ago, is it really such a huge deal? Now, I’m assuming that there are other things, such as opposing Federal stem cell funding and pushing for ID in the public schools, but there has got to be more. So, in what other specific ways are Christians endangering science? Is Galileo still a top ten grievance? What else is there?

Bleh. Day is looking for some specific list of incidents, like Galileo’s persecution by the church, or perhaps George Deutch’s arrogant attempts to hide scientific conclusions at NASA. That’s typically superficial of him; that’s not the objection at all. The problem is that religion instills odious patterns of thinking in large numbers of people, ideas about how the world works that actually get in the way of improving our culture. The problem isn’t Galileo specifically, but that religion provides institutions and a rationale for Galileo-like situations, and inculcates support for such decisions in the populace.

Here’s my quick list of objections to religion. Please note that I understand there will be individual variation, both between people in a sect and between sects themselves (Calvinists and Unitarians will have different views of destiny, for instance, and Buddhists seem less prone to the tyranny of authoritarianism). Also, the general public will embrace these sins a little less fervently than creationists and fundamentalists, but they’re all there to some extent—while sometimes I’ll mention creationists as extreme examples, that does not mean I am implying that all religious people are creationists.

Oh, and forget 10; this dial goes up to twelve.

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You can’t trust that tyrant Terwilliger. He’s an awful, awful man, and once he made school principal, he used his vast autocratic powers to make every Christian suffer. He threw them to the lions. He crucified them upside down. He beheaded them and shot them with arrows. He tied them to stakes and set them afire. He lashed them and flayed them. He burned their bibles and slapped them when they dared to pray in the lunchroom. He made them stop wearing offensive t-shirts that said other members of the student body were going to hell.

Oh, wait. He didn’t do any of those things, except the last one. What kind of pathetic despot is he if he doesn’t even try to oppress people? And what kind of crybaby Christians are these picketers? Their only hardship is that they aren’t allowed to pretend to be the Reverend Phelps in the school.

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