I'd suggest that, actually, the other fields are where the evidence and scientific conclusions are no so deeply set that the religious don't bother trying to pick those fights;
Being of a mainstream british church background via agnostic atheism I would say that by and large we had made our peace with science a long time ago. Of course new people come along. So from my point of view it is in fact the Dawkinses and the Krausses who have stoked up the fires of the war between religion and science.
However, there are still believers out there trying to make claims about the origins of the universe and the nature of consciousness because they feel, for whatever reason, that scientific accounts without god written into them are the antithesis of their faith/spritituality/religion.
There are but I see that as a North American phenomenon rather than necessarily religious. On the other hand I find the exaggeration of the war between science and religion to be heavily influenced by people like Harris and Dillahunty but chiefly by transatlantics such as Hitchens and Dawkins. In other words Dawkins carried his Gospel to the states and brought it's fruitfulness back here''
It's not science that's picking these battlegrounds, it's that the religious/spiritual are still contesting in those areas whereas they're more inclined, these days, to leave the likes of evolution alone.
Again we cannot ignore the deliberate achievements of Dawkins, Krauss etc stoking this up in fact Dawkins apparently encouraged Harris into neuroscience. I recall someone at the New Scientist calling him the Father of Religious Neuroscience. If that doesn't sound like a ''parachuting in of New atheism'' I don't know what does. So I guess it's not science or religion picking battles picking a battle it's both religious experts saying they don't have to know about science to
attack it because they have scripture and atheists who say we can do without religion because we have science.
Indeed, some of them are likely almost as agitated about it as you are - as soon as we see some scientismists blowing themselves up for the cause I'll start to worry.
I'm interested in whether you arrived at the Alf Garnett like conclusion that all religious people are swivel eyed maniacs or were influenced by Richard Dawkins now noted for his Garnettian attitudes to religion?
Pretty effective, or believers wouldn't be worried about it enough to keep attacking it?
So you feel that questioning atheists about the scope and utility of science is an attack on science? I'm not afraid of it. as I said I made my peace with science a while back and as a Christian where I believe God wanted me to explore new avenues but ignoring what i'd learned in science was not on the menu. I have the confidence therefore to allow myself to discuss science with people of a different persuasion and hopefully learn about science from them and since they are modern atheists ask them how science in regards to cosmology supports atheism.
Not that the science itself rules it out, obviously, but some religious people appear to feel as though it does.
O.
