“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
Robert Jastrow.
Yes, Jastrow, atheist, is an honest atheist. Hoyle, Eddington, even Einstein (though he said he became a theist, his was a pantheistic worldview) were honest about their analysis of their findings. The newer neodarwinists are more militant in their presuppositional beliefs than those scientists of previous years. Gould created the fiction of punctuated equilibrium. Hoyle proffered panspermia. Einstein proffered what he came to declare was the biggest scientific blunder of his life with his conjoured cosmological constant. He later recanted to Edwin Hubble when he visited him at Mt. Wilson observatory, just outside of Los Angeles. Many other fictions, in the name of promulgating darwinism, have been offered. The twentieth century was largely an era in science of trying to prove Big Bang Cosmology (moment of creation) was not the case. All of the scientific evidence pointed toward a beginning despite their deep seated desire that that not be the case.