more argy-bargy

John Adams, early Unamerican President

One Karl Giberson, sometime physicist and now heavily involved in the Biologos website discussed earlier, has been trying to defend an accommodationist view of science and religion with some energy round the traps of late. Jerry Coyne has rebutted a recent Giberson offering here.
A Giberson statement that's getting a lot of stick is this:

There is something profoundly un-American about demanding that people give up cherished, or even uncherished beliefs just because they don't comport with science.

One commentator on the Coyne site countered with this bit from a letter to Thomas Jefferson, by US founding father John Adams:

They all believe that great Principle which has produced this boundless universe, Newton's universe and Herschell's universe, came down to this little ball, to be spit on by the Jews; And until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.

With due consideration for the context [the science is a bit outmoded, there might be a hint of anti-Semitism, and the term 'blasphemy' presupposes religious belief] it's a great response.