Defamation is the communication of a false statement that harms the reputation of an individual or a group. With the rise of materialism comes the decline of morality. 19th century naturalists spread lies in order to promote their belief in naturalism and attack all other worldviews. For example ideas like a supposed conflict between science and religion or the flat earth myth gained in popularity in the 19th century. At the same time when naturalists seized power within the world of mainstream science. This was no coincidence because powerful leading naturalists invented this lie and spread it into the world.

Wikipedia - Conflict thesis The conflict thesis is a historiographical approach in the history of science that originated in the 19th century with John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White. It maintains that there is an intrinsic intellectual conflict between religion and science, and that it inevitably leads to hostility. The consensus among historians of science is that the thesis has long been discredited.*

This idea has long been discredited. John William Draper was the first president of the American Chemical Society (1876–77) and a founder of the New York University School of Medicine. One of Draper's books, the History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, popularised the conflict thesis proposing intrinsic hostility in the relationship between religion and science.** That's funny, writing a complete book to prove to the world how wrong he was. He also wrote: What can be better than absolute truth? Are mysteries, miracles, lying impostures, better? It was these that stood in the way!* Draper was a dirty liar and hypocrite and he is venerated among the same kind of lying naturalists.

Andrew Dickson White is also known because he exhaustively documented the battle between science and religion in matters of creation versus evolution in his book The Warfare of Science with Theology.* Here's what honest and true historians wrote about dirty fraudsters like White...

David Lindberg, Ronald Numbers - God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science White's Warfare apparently did not sell as briskly as Draper's Conflict, but in the end it proved more influential, partly, it seems, because Draper's strident anti-Catholicism soon dated his work and because White's impressive documentation gave the appearance of sound scholarship.

White's impressive documentation gave the "appearance" of sound scholarship. It wasn't sound scholarship, it was disinformation. And it was not stupidity, it was malice. Although much criticism of Catholicism and organized religion is justified, they clearly fabricated falsehoods and spread those with their books in their universities.

Freedom From Religion Foundation - Andrew Dickson White Upon founding Cornell, White announced that he wanted the college to be “an asylum for Science — where truth shall be sought for truth’s sake, not stretched or cut exactly to fit Revealed Religion.” (God and Nature by David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers, 1986) He strongly supported science and secularism, lecturing about “The Battle-Fields of Science,” which he describes in his autobiography as a lecture about “how, in the supposed interest of religion, earnest and excellent men, for many ages and in many countries, had bitterly opposed various advances in science and in education.”*

James Hannam wrote about White's book A History of the Warfare of Science With Theology in Christendom * that it has become something of a running joke among historians of science and it is dutifully mentioned as a prime example of misinformation in the preface of most modern works on science and religion.** In this book White also wrote: Nothing can be more comical than the suppressions of truth, evasions of facts, jugglery with phrases, and perversions of history.* White, who is venerated by naturalists and humanists alike, was nothing but a hypocrite. Mark A. Noll said that the idea of "warfare" between Science and Theology is based on a poor understanding of the history of both.** But it's also based on malice.

James Hannam - The Myth of the Flat earth The flat earth is discussed in chapter 2 and one can almost sense White's confusion that hardly any of the sources support his hypothesis that Christians widely believed in it. He finds himself grudgingly admitting that Clement, Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, Isodore, Albertus Magnus and Aquinas all accepted the earth was a globe - in other words none of the great doctors of the church had considered the matter in doubt.*

Another lie they invented was the flat earth myth which is the modern misconception that the prevailing cosmological view during the Middle Ages saw the earth as flat, instead of spherical. But for example historian Jeffrey Burton Russell said: No one before the 1830s believed that medieval people thought that the earth was flat.** Also David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers wrote that there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [earth's] sphericity.**

These liars and hypocrites occupied powerful positions within the world of mainstream science and had a lot of influence. The fact that these people are still venerated in the world of mainstream science shows that this same breed of naturalists still runs the world of mainstream science today...

Jeffrey Burton Russell - The Myth of the Flat earth But now, why did the false accounts of Letronne and Irving become melded and then, as early as the 1860s, begin to be served up in schools and in schoolbooks as the solemn truth? The answer is that the falsehood about the spherical earth became a colorful and unforgettable part of a larger falsehood: the falsehood of the eternal war between science (good) and religion (bad) throughout Western history. This vast web of falsehood was invented and propagandized by the influential historian John William Draper (1811-1882) and many prestigious followers, such as Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), the president of Cornell University, who made sure that the false account was perpetrated in texts, encyclopedias, and even allegedly serious scholarship, down to the present day. A lively current version of the lie can be found in Daniel Boorstin's The Discoverers, found in any bookshop or library. ... The reason for promoting both the specific lie about the sphericity of the earth and the general lie that religion and science are in natural and eternal conflict in Western society, is to defend Darwinism.*

Jeffrey Burton Russell wrote a book called Inventing the Flat earth: Columbus and Modern Historians in which he looks for the reason why we allow this error to persist. Do we prefer to languish in a comfortable and familiar error rather than exert the effort necessary to discover the truth?* James Hannam said that despite a developing consensus among scholars that science and Christianity have not been at war, the notion of conflict has refused to die.** Although these ideas have been rejected, they remain popular among many ignorants until this day. The error persists because the same kind of naturalists and atheists still dominate the world of mainstream science today. These kind of fanatics of evolution disguise as scientists and deliberately miseducate the world.

Jon H. Roberts - The Idea that Wouldn't Die, The Warfare between Science and Christianity Robert Wilde - Did Medieval People Believe in a Flat earth? Jonathan Wells - Not The Flat earth Myth Again! Valerie Strauss - Busting a myth about Columbus and a flat earth Matt J. Rossano - How the Myth of the Flat-earth Dogma Started the Religion-Science War Alex Berezow - Jerry Coyne's Twisted History of Science and Religion