The threat which such thinking posed to theistic beliefs was not lost on the Roman Catholic Church when Pope Pius IX convened the First Vatican Council of 1869.
As Alec Ryrie pointed out in his history of Doubt, “intellectuals and philosophers may think they make the weather, but they are more often driven by it.”
Fleeming Jenkin (the distinguished Scottish scientist who with Lord Kelvin spearheaded the laying of the transatlantic cable) was particularly scathing.