[My first attempt to respond to this post was blocked by moderation, so I am now rigidly self-censoring to avoid any mention of Patterson’s needling of me, or my opinion of the ethical status of his claims about prominent atheists.]
Both Dennett and Coyne may mention Flat Earth and Creationism (“rejection of Evolution” in Coyne’s words) in the same paragraph, as examples of less-than-credible views. Neither of them however links Flat Earth to religion, nor do either of them make explicit mention of Christianity in this context, nor anything even remotely similar to the implication that this, let alone more general rejection of science, is a “majority” Christian view, let alone that this is one that this majority “always” held.
Equating:
they mentioned both Creationism and Flat Earth
with
they “perpetuate the idea that Christians because of the flat earth, and now six-day creationism, have always opposed science in the majority”
is an absurd exaggeration.
Juxtaposing those two is neither unusual nor some illegitimate “rhetorical” linkage, as this widely-used NCSE chart demonstrates:
