About a year ago I had an argument with a creationist about how to understand a particular sentence in an evolutionary biology paper. After a heated back and forth, I finally decided to just write one of the authors to get clarification on how to understand the sentence. To my great surprise the author was very defensive when I first inquired, and demanded to know who I was, my background, my purpose for asking these questions etc. etc.
After explaining who I was and why I was asking and this had satisfied the author, I was explained that the reason for this inquiry was that, after publication of their paper, the authors of the paper, the journal in which it had been published, the reviewers and handling editor, and various type of pop-sci news-outlets that had advertised it, had all been attacked by some irate creationist. I suspect their defensiveness is because they’d been threatened with a lawsuit or something by this religious lunatic.
Richard Lenski has been contacted by creationists who demand his research stop and be defunded.
PZ Meyers has been threatened by some religious crackpot for his defense of evolutionary biology. IIRC so has biochemistry professor Larry Moran.
James Tour is calling for an end to funding of origin of life research. This is basic research, that some are demanding defunded and stopped because apparently it’s without basis and (in their opinion) has zero practical utility.
We hear similar types of arguments from people who demand to know what use it is to a medical doctor, or surgeon about to conduct surgery, that we share common ancestry with the other great apes (a utilitarian argument). As if that knowledge has to have direct utility in surgery, otherwise it has none, or isn’t worth knowing for it’s own sake.
These stories are not unusual. While some religious people can find inspiration in their religion that motivates them to pursue a career in science, others find it to do the opposite.