When the government announced in the 1960s that smoking caused cancer, all sorts of denial arose. Instead of just healthy skepticism about method and science, there was a sort of undermining of the whole idea of science out forth by industry. Of course, tobacco was big business (and still is) but it suffered from flying in the face of America's puritanical instincts. Yet the model was made clear for future concepts that scientists might put forth that industry or Big Religion didn't like. I'm sure you've all heard the refrain, "evolution is just a theory."
Enter global warming. This was a bit lower stakes gamble for the deniers. They knew that even if the most pessimistic estimates were correct, they still had years to get their way, sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the loss of freedumb. These parallels have been well documented. Just like with cigarettes, reality is caving in on them.
So, what's next? Life on Mars.
There is already evidence of it from the Viking landers that has stood up to a number of counter hypotheses. Without delving deeply, we can say that there is evidence, but not proof, of life present or past on Mars. Gil Levin has reinstated his claim from Viking. The jury may still be out, but it's more complicated than most people realize. Proving there was not would be tough work, naturally. And for many reasons, no one is going to announce this as a fact until the data are far less ambiguous.
But it may only be a matter of days before another chip is put on the positive side of the scale by Curiousity. My guess is that unless we get a pretty clear color photo of something moving around that looks like an amoeba, people are going to argue. The huge grey area that we've only inched into on this issue has more than "50 shades" left before its bright white.
Some of those arguments will be scientific and reasonable, just like the ones against the Viking result. But some will feel that this somehow rocks the theological ground even deeper than Darwin, even though most systematic theologies regardless of religion are capable of handling it. The kind of people who believe in a 5,000 year old planet don't think that way.
They will attack the space program as an atheistic enterprise. They will deny the results which could take decades to really really check out or get a conclusion to. And they will do it the same damn way they have with the rest.
TL;DR - they're going to ratfuck any discovery of life off of Earth.