[B]"Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." —Albert Einstein[/B] And Einstein wasn't particularly religious, nor would I classify him as ignorant.
I found this statement of martin's to be quite perplexing, so I did some more research when I got home from the gym. All these guys (except Einstein) were supposedly Christians. You can click on the link for a brief bio and their contributions to science. http://www.geocities.com/davidjayjordan/FamousChristianScientists.html Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Rene Descartes (1596-1650) Isaac Newton (1642-1727) Robert Boyle (1791-1867) Michael Faraday (1791-1867) Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) Kelvin (William Thompson) (1824-1907) Max Planck (1858-1947) Albert Einstein (1879-1955) - Not a Christian, but did believe there was some sort of "creator" or God
right, and all the best scientists from the time where greek gods ruled were probably into that stuff too. where are the living scientists on your list? over time less and less scientists are believers. not one guy on your list was born within the last 120 years, and the most recent was definitely NOT christian. einstein believes in a generic creator of no description. what he believes is night/day different than christianity. surely if we lived 200 years ago i would have conceded that plenty of the great minds alive were religious. but see, over time, we can ditch the myths. now we know the world isnt flat, we know the earth isnt 5k years old, we know snakes in a garden dont convince people to eat from trees of knowledge. what about the great scientists of this era? richard feynman, richard dawkins, einstein, hawking, roger penrose, where are the christians among these guys?
nature magazine did a survery, they found that only around 7% of top modern scientists were believers, and i would guess a much smaller number than that considered themselves christians, if any: Nature, Vol. 394, No. 6691, p. 313 (1998) © Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Sir — The question of religious belief among US scientists has been debated since early in the century. Our latest survey finds that, among the top natural scientists, disbelief is greater than ever — almost total. Research on this topic began with the eminent US psychologist James H. Leuba and his landmark survey of 1914. He found that 58% of 1,000 randomly selected US scientists expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of God, and that this figure rose to near 70% among the 400 "greater" scientists within his sample [1]. Leuba repeated his survey in somewhat different form 20 years later, and found that these percentages had increased to 67 and 85, respectively [2]. In 1996, we repeated Leuba's 1914 survey and reported our results in Nature [3]. We found little change from 1914 for American scientists generally, with 60.7% expressing disbelief or doubt. This year, we closely imitated the second phase of Leuba's 1914 survey to gauge belief among "greater" scientists, and find the rate of belief lower than ever — a mere 7% of respondents. Leuba attributed the higher level of disbelief and doubt among "greater" scientists to their "superior knowledge, understanding, and experience" [3]. Similarly, Oxford University scientist Peter Atkins commented on our 1996 survey, "You clearly can be a scientist and have religious beliefs. But I don't think you can be a real scientist in the deepest sense of the word because they are such alien categories of knowledge." [4] Such comments led us to repeat the second phase of Leuba's study for an up-to-date comparison of the religious beliefs of "greater" and "lesser" scientists. Our chosen group of "greater" scientists were members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Our survey found near universal rejection of the transcendent by NAS natural scientists. Disbelief in God and immortality among NAS biological scientists was 65.2% and 69.0%, respectively, and among NAS physical scientists it was 79.0% and 76.3%. Most of the rest were agnostics on both issues, with few believers. We found the highest percentage of belief among NAS mathematicians (14.3% in God, 15.0% in immortality). Biological scientists had the lowest rate of belief (5.5% in God, 7.1% in immortality), with physicists and astronomers slightly higher (7.5% in God, 7.5% in immortality).
Rustum Roy Francis Collins Henry "Fritz" Schaefer William D. Phillips There is quite a list. You are more than welcome to look up some of the other modern day scientists in your free time.
Strange you would make such a broad statement concerning Christians and science. It looks like your dislike for Christianity has overtaken your common sense and logical thinking. If you are attempting to dispute the competency and work of world-renowned scientists simply to discredit Christianity, well, I'd say that is pretty ignorant of you.
like i said before, christians are like astrologers and wiccans and palm readers. i dunno why i would expect them to be respected in the scientific community. it isnt just christians, i dont expect muslims or jews or buddhists to be real scientists either. the general pupulace of america is what, 80% christian? and the scientists, less than 5% if you are generous? and i would never consider any really religious person to be a truly elite scientist, that is just ridiculous. look, you either have faith in magic or you do not. if you do, it makes it hard to be taken seriously as a rational man of science. i dont see how you could deny that. a scientist that explains anything with "i have faith", is not a real scientist.
So, are these men I have listed "real" scientists or not in your opinion? Is there work any less valuable because they are professing Christians? I would say winning a Nobel Prize would mean they are taken seriously in their field. Wouldn't you?
i am sure they have done some fine work, but i wouldnt trust them on subjects that christians tend to inject magic into. like i will believe a christian if he tells me some math concepts, but i have trouble trusting his research on the origins of the universe. well, in my mind they are certainly less credible. i find it harder to trust people who are delusional, which christians are. let me guess, you are about to let me know of some christian scientist who won a nobel prize. fine, i never said christians were not smart, and i have gone over this lots and lots of times, but here i go again: i know there are smart christians, much much smarter than me, and they are capable of great things. it is a testament to how powerful the indoctrinating and guilt and fear that makes people christian is. but again, to answer your question, i cant really take christians seriously to some extent. i showed you how among the contemporary scientific community, the overwhelming majority do not believe. if you want to list your tiny minority of guys and pretend you have made a point, be my guest.
Jim Trafficant may have been a crook or a mobster, but he summed up the scientific community beutiful in this one minute speech. I had the priveledge of seeing him make about 60 of his infamous one minute speeches when I was a Page for the US House. (Mr. TRAFICANT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. Speaker, a new report says only 7 percent of scientists believe in God. That is right. And the reason they gave was that the scientists are ``super smart.'' Unbelievable. Most of these absent-minded professors cannot find the toilet. Mr. Speaker, I have one question for these wise guys to constipate over: How can some thing come from no thing? And while they digest that, Mr. Speaker, let us tell it like it is. Put these super-cerebral master debaters in some foxhole with bombs bursting all around them, and I guarantee they will not be praying to Frankenstein. Beam me up here. My colleagues, all the education in the world is worthless without God and a little bit of common sense. And I yield back whatever we have left. I miss ole Iron Jim.
