Historians and scientists on religion.

Overall, historians are usually pretty tone-deaf when it comes to religion or the Bible - their studies usually never deal with it or leave it out, or they use a lot of crude Marxist 'false consciousness' explanations from the 70.

One time, a ph.d. student I know at another (really good) school emailed me on behalf of his friend. The friend had this conceit that the difference between now and the (whatever) century (the 17th? the 18th?) was that people wouldn't say "What would Jesus do", but rather "Who was Jesus", or some bullshitty thing like that. I told him that that did not make much sense, and it seemed like his friend did not only not have any knowledge of biblical interpretation, but probably also had never read the Bible at all.

(I said this nicely, by the way - probably something like, 'That doesn't quite work, he should work on other projects.')

Anyhow, later in reflecting back I realize that this was probably the way the ph.d. student thought:

1) Only simple people read the Bible.

2) Therefore, the Bible is simple.

3) Therefore, I can easily write about the Bible, having never read it or anything about it before.

And, I realize now that this is kind of how scientists think about religion:

1) The supernatural does not exist.

2) Therefore, people who think there is a supernatural are dumb.

3) Therefore, I am an expert on people who believe in the supernatural (i.e., are religious people).

So maybe their problem isn't science per se, but illogically projected condescension that happens in the absence of critcial thinking skills?