From Daniel Mallock at New English Review, a review of The Little Book of God, Mind, Cosmos and Truth by Kenneth Francis:
The problem of meaning and values is a central issue. Regarding the philosopher Nietzsche and his famous assertion that “God is dead,” Mr. Francis writes that this concept “… gave great comfort to psychopaths and those seeking moral autonomy. In other words, everything is permitted if God does not exist.”
The issue of meaning is one of the central issues of religion and of philosophy, too. If there is no God, then humanity itself and everything that we do is an accident—a galactic happenstance—that shatters human attempts to ascribe meaning and value to thoughts, actions, feelings, and to life itself. Mr. Francis colorfully describes the absence of God in this way: “Without God, we would be nothing more than evolved slime fighting for survival amongst a multitude of advanced apes dressed in skirts and suits with delusions of intellectual grandeur.”More.
Yes, and it is actually worse than that. In a meaningless universe, science has no defense against the advance of postmodernism. = Algebra is racist and all that.
Theism functions for science as a guarantor that some things could actually be true. Which means that algebra is true and therefore by definition not racist. People choose to spend time studying what they think will benefit them.
(Sometimes, one wants to shout back: Well, if those dead white males were so wrong, why are they still in charge after all this time? Their weapons aren’t secret, but 0ne must invest time and effort to learn how to use them.)
See also: Nature: Stuck with a battle it dare not fight, even for the soul of science. Excuse me guys but, as in so many looming strategic disasters, the guns are facing the wrong way.