Facts Don't Dispel Belief in Creation Myths...

James Chastek's post on Science and Creation Myths on his ever interesting Just Thomism blog has been picked up by some of the big guns in the philosophy of science and religion blogs that I read (for example, Mike Flynn has a nice response here).  Something quite interesting happened in the comments of the original article: we were treated to a number of rather scientifically-questionable assertions by one overreaching commentator (... population genetics has proved the story of Adam and Eve to be false, original sin, etc, etc, etc) which is the standard, if mathematically illiterate, response of certain so-called gnu-atheists, as well as the usual disclaimer that scientism is a straw-man because no-one holds those views. This was followed by a very entertaining take-down of these views by one of Ed Feser's regularly commentators, a (Mr?) Crude.

Basically, it is a call-out of atheistic psychological projection and I can't do better than to quote some of it:

"Now, here’s where things really get interesting. Everything I just told you absolutely undercuts one myth – the one you’re propagating. It does so demonstrably, and it’s not even an exhaustive list of why you’re wrong. No, population genetics does not undercut a literal, historical fall. Not of Adam and Eve, and not generally. No, there are a variety of reasons that you’re utterly wrong about your claims on this topic, and a variety of ways to maintain a real and literal fall given our scientific knowledge.

But I have a prediction: You will not sacrifice your myth.

It’s too important to you, and really, that importance is just one facet of the scientism you claim does not exist, and is not actually a problem. You need, absolutely need, science to have put a stake through the heart of this religious claim – or, at the very least, it has to be capable of doing it in principle (preferably ‘any year now!’). Because if it doesn’t – if science really is not just limited, but limited in such a way that makes it incapable of giving you the intellectual certainty (and with it, authority) you desperately want it to… well, what a tremendous disappointment that would be. It’s so disappointing, that it’s an understanding that simply cannot be accepted."

This seems to me to be the underlying motivation for a lot of the new atheist rant about religion.

Update: Brandon Watson from Siris performs a clinical dismantling of the argument here and here.

What to say...in the subsequent posts, our new atheist friend retreats to an implicit fideism characterised by a refusal to engage with the arguments or withdraw statements which are shown to be false. I presume this is what geologists get when they talk to Young Earth Creationists. There's a curious symmetry about it. In any case, the rest of the commentary follows exactly the progression presicted by Crude who also gives a nice summary of the situation here.