Research Scientists who are Christian

Great Debates
1

As suggested by a poster from this thread I started:

Are you a Christian and a scientist who is willing to explain your beliefs?

Note that in that thread, I’m looking for someone who does high level research in the hard sciences, who is also a Christian (believes in the absolute divinity of Jesus). I’d like them to help me understand how they think, as I’m having trouble understanding it. I didn’t want a debate there on the relative merits or intelligence of anyone involved, I just wanted an explanation that I could understand from those who are both Christian and Research Scientists.

As that thread starts to devolve into a debate, I’ve been motivated to start this thread. So this thread is for debating…that other thread is for someone to identify themselves as such so they can help me clear up my confusion.

2

It would be insane for a scientist to take any point of religious doctrine as a scientific fact. That does not mean they can’t believe it.

3

James Tour at Rice university (chemist by training but works quite widely in nano-science) is a Christian who has chosen to share his thoughts on scripture, creation etc on his website.

Appreciate it’s not directly related to the purpose of the thread (he doesn’t post on the SDMB as far as I know), but may be interesting for some to read the views of a devoutly religious person working right at the frontier of current science [his h-index of 99 is massive - (usually) indicative of a scientist at the pinnacle of their field].

4

I suppose some scientists accept the notion of Non-Overlapping Magisteria.

5

True.

One interesting and famous example of a recent religious (albeit non-Christian) scientist is Jack Parsons, who was a friend and colleague of L. Ron Hubbard.

6

Some of my colleagues would tell you that faith is not based on empiricism but belief. They would also tell you that faith isn’t incompatible with science, but that biblical literalism is.

7

Yeah, you would think a good research scientist would be naturally skeptical of outlandish data or results. The fact that they wouldn’t apply this skepticism to their religious beliefs is hard to comprehend. But we aren’t completely rational beings, and some believe humans have a natural inclination to be religious so it doesn’t surprise me.

8

As much to the point if not a good deal more, a good research scientist would understand that anything “miraculous” or “supernatural” would by definition be not subject to the normal operation of the laws of nature, nor prejudicial to said normal operation. That would mean, for instance, that the account of Christ walking on the water was not to be understood as implying that “in certain natural circumstances, the laws of buoyancy cease applying for no reason at all”.

He’d probably reason further that “God, if He exists, is perfectly capable of refusing to cooperate with any experiment I might seek to perform to try to establish anything about Him” and get on with, say, some experiments on quantum tunnelling instead which he would expect to operate according to principles which were entirely rational and discoverable, and not normally subject to the interference of supernatural agencies.

9

Kenneth Miller is a very highly respected evolutionary biologist and a devout Catholic. He wrote a book called “Finding Darwin’s God”. The first half of the book demolishes creationism from top to bottom. The second half of the book explains how and why he feels that his religion is compatible with science.

10

There was recently an NPR interview with Katherine Kayhoe, an atmospheric scientist and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She is also a devout Christian.

A Christian Climate Scientist’s Mission To Convert Nonbelievers

The interview gets into some of her beliefs, both Christian and Science.

11

I love the story of Samuel, Saul, and David but it would never occur to me to worship the God depicted in that story. I don’t understand how highly intelligent rational people can read the Bible and not come away with the impression that the God described in it is only better than Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot and H because he’s even more powerful and more cruel. And then you have to mix in the meek and loving Jesus and the Holy Ghost and the basic doctrine that God is the same forever and find that it all makes sense, I don’t think anybody ever really sits down and reads The Damn Bible, which is too bad because it has these great stories like the life of Moses, the intellectual challenge of understanding Job, the adventures of Saul of Tarsus, and the comedy of Revelations.

12

Sort of a circuitous argument because “faith” and “belief” mean essentially the same thing. But you do have a good point about Biblical literalism.

My own resolution to this is that I regard religion as the basis of important cultural practices like weddings and funerals, the markers of watershed moments in our lives, as I said in another post. Biblical literalism is complete bullshit, but the existence of God is the subject of so many semantic and philosophical quibbles that I wonder if the question has any meaning at all.

13

It has only become at all common for scientists to be atheists in the last 50 years or so, and even today, I would not be at all surprised if the vast majority (or, if not that, certainly a very large minority) of practicing scientists hold religious beliefs of some kind. As I pointed out in the other thread, almost all the great names of science from the past were Christians, often very devout ones, with most of the exceptions being either Jews or Muslims. Many of them also clearly thought deeply about their religion; they were not just just unthinkingly conforming to cultural norms.

Thus, the empirical evidence clearly points to the conclusion that there is absolutely no inconsistency between being a scientist, even a very great one, and being religious. I think the burden of proof here is entirely on the OP to explain why she thinks otherwise. Given that there is no overt contradiction between “I am a scientist,” and “I believe in God,” it is, frankly, intellectually dishonest insistently state that you do not understand how both cold be true (of the same person) without providing a detailed account of why you think so.

In fact, though very little to spell out her argument, either in this thread or the other. I am reasonably confident that, if she tried to do so, it would soon become apparent that either her conception of what science is, or of what religious faith commits someone to (or, most likely both), are false and highly simplistic. In the absence of such a spelling out, however, the only reasonable answer is to say that there is no inconsistency and thus nothing to be explained here, and if you insist, without argument and in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, that there is one, you are being irrational.

I speak here as someone who is both a long-time atheist and (on an expansive definition of the term, anyway) a scientist. However, my atheism does not arise from, of follow from, my work in science, and, so far as I can see, nothing about the existence or otherwise of a God follows from my scientific views or the principles that guide my work.

To repeat. The burden of proof (or explanation) here is on the OP. To just say “I can’t see how someone can be both,” is not any sort of argument. Without more to go on, the only sensible reply to it is “Well, you must be dumb, then, because clearly many people, many of them very smart and reflective, are both.”

14

Newton was famously devout. He spent more time worrying and writing about theology then he did working out the laws of motion.

Dawkins says that about 40 percent of modern scientists are religious, and I think we can assume he is quoting reliable polls. Nobody is going to let him get away with fudging the data. What he also says is that when scientists say they are “religious”, they aren’t talking about mainstream religion. Scientists who identify as religious generally have a much fuzzier concept of the divine than what most churchgoers understand.

While I’m a devout atheist, I have no problem imagining any number of credible arguments that might reconcile scripture with the current body of scientific knowledge. The fact that I think these arguments are crap does not preclude other scientists from thinking that I am wrong.

15

I’m confused, is this the thread to identify yourself, or to have a debate?

I’m a biologist and a Christian, for what it’s worth . whey do you want to debate, exactly? I believe that the Old Testament is almost entirely myth, some of which is useful to cast light on / foretell Jesus, but I accept most of the New Testament as literal historical truth. (I was raised atheist in a mixed family of Hindus, Christians and atheists, and converted when I was about 20 or so).

16

I thought I had made that clear, before…but maybe not. I’m interested in Christianity specifically and the ideas that are defined by it (i.e. the divinity of Jesus).

17

Newton was religious, but he wasn’t in any sense an orthodox Christian. He was an Arian, and believed that Jesus Christ was a created being.

18

Does marine biology count as a hard science? The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, holds a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Stanford University, and Masters degree and PhD in oceanography from Oregon State University.

Unfortunately I don’t expect she is a member of the SDMB.

19

It might be interesting to look at research scientists who changed their religious viewpoints. For example, Isaac Asimov was raised as an Orthodox Jew but became an atheist, and publicly admitted so. While he is more famous as an SF writer than a research scientist, he clearly qualifies as one since he had a PhD in Biochemistry, which requires original research.

For those scientists who are devout believers, how many of them are following the faith of their parents and how many found their own path later in life, either as a convert from one religion to another or by adopting a religion after having been raised without one?

20

He also spent a lot of time on alchemy and astrology also, I believe.
In reading original papers by famous scientists from Copernicus to 1800, it is striking that the earlier ones credited God for all that they saw, while God disappears in later work. That does not mean that the scientists were atheists, just that they saw no need to explain things with God any more.