Coyne attacks Christian discoverer of Big Bang

Leftist-atheist-evolution Jerry Coyne attacks Michael Coren, a Christian scholar:

He even argues that secularism has held back science, because the Big Bang theory, proposed by the priest Georges Lemaître,

was opposed by the secular, scientific world when it was first discussed, because it sounded too Christian. Who, then, had the open minds and who the closed?

That’s bogus. Hubble had already produced evidence for an expanding universe around the time Lemaître proposed the Big Bang, and the physics community was divided for a few decades between the steady-state and Big Bang theories.  Fred Hoyle, who coined the name “big bang” as a derisive phrase, may have disliked it partly because of his atheism, but it’s simply not true that the “secular, scientific world” opposed Lemaître’s theory because it implied a creator.

Coyne should stick to biology. There is overwhelming evidence that Lemaitre discovered the Big Bang, with both theory and data, as explained here, here, here, and in my book. Lemaitre's data was inaccurate, but so was Hubble's. I would comment on Coyne's blog, but I have been banned there for correcting him previously.

Coyne is particularly upset at Coren for saying:

The science aspect of all this is particularly nauseating, not only because it is fundamentally untrue, but that it is thrown at Christianity at a time when society is arguably experiencing one of its most credulous and naïve stages and is only too willing to embrace any and every kind of non-scientific or anti-scientific nonsense, from alien invasion stories to ghost myths, and from conspiracy theories to supernatural animals. To paraphrase the great Christian writer G.K. Chesterton, when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in something else, they believe in anything else.

There is something to this. Almost everyone believes in things that are contrary to the teachings of science. Including Coyne.

Christians usually believe in miracles, and they are, by definition, contrary to the teachings of science. Christians are not anti-science like the people who will believe in anything. Even the Pope considers scientific evidence when deciding whether something was a miracle. Christianity has always encouraged science.

I do not know whether Hubble is popularly credited out of some anti-Christian prejudice. Maybe Hubble got better press because he was an American. But what is Coyne's excuse? He is uncomfortable with the fact that many famous scientists have been Christians.