Is it fair to describe him as the scientific analog of a religious fundamentalist? Probably not, the implications are totally unfair. But he was extreme. True to his dedication to the scientific method, he did engage religious questions, but unable to test answers and finding no consensus among the experts, he rejected them. This is my own extrapolation, not necessarily fact, mind you.
He would have been even less impressed by this website, arguing the validity of the Qur'an by using scientific discoveries!!. Don't go there, I'm only linking it to prove it exists.
First of all, validating Qur'anic scripture using science, or vice versa, is risky business, seeing as science will be the first to admit that it re-invents itself as more knowledge is gathered. Science understood the universe very differently exactly one hundred years ago, the year before Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity was published in 1905. A hundred years from now, who knows how much of the Einsteinian universe will remain unscathed?
Second, reverse-engineering validation of the Qur'an using science by saying the Qur'an told of these things 1400 years ago is hardly validating when modern scientific concepts can be interpreted in Buddhism 2500 years ago, and in Jewish scripture and Hinduism even further back than that.
Third, if the Qur'an has already said 1400 years ago what science is discovering now, why couldn't the Qur'an help science along sooner? We don't expect specifics, just point us in the direction where we might look.
When physicists draw connections between discoveries and concepts in quantum mechanics with ideas long promulgated by mystics of all religions, the mystics aren't impressed. Science has just found another way to get to what they already knew, but the only reason to be impressed by that is if you enhance the primacy of scientific thought over mystical thought, and fine mystics they would be if they did that!
Carl Sagan isn't even rolling over in his grave about that website, he's chuckling heartily.
*incomplete entry*
