It is one of the classic philosophical fallacies to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’.
Richard Dawkins. Interestingly, one of the great adversaries of secular humanism, Walker Percy, often complained that scientists make that precise mistake when they confuse the scientific method for a sound metaphysics.
For many serious scientists and serious believers, religion and science are indeed non-overlapping magisteria. Only culture warriors, or those who don’t understand religion or science, pursue a confrontation. Lately, I’ve found myself swinging between sympathy for those who believe in the devil as they are crudely attacked by men who don’t understand philosophy, religion, or humanity, and radical hostility to religion as it plunges the planet again into war and fraudulently dresses up as science to get into children’s minds.
Of course, deriding religion because of its worst practitioners is like hating atheism because of its worst practitioners; it has no relevance whatever to the actual meaning and value of either to humans in the world. See here, too.
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