Is there such a thing as a Christian scientist?

Question

Surely the qualification for being a scientist is that you only come to conclusions if there is evidence for an assumption. Also, religions spout loads of stuff that contravenes natural laws, like a man living in a whale and a woman concieving without having it off. Isnt it true that people who believe this can only be half-scientists?

Most of these scientists are 'passive' Christians. They look at people like Gallileo and the prevailing social conditions and dont want to ruffle feathers.

Answer 1

Many scientists do have a degree of religious belief in one form or another. Most of them are not Creationsts or arch-conservatives, though, particularly those in the biological sciences.

What a scientist must be able to do is set aside their prconceived ideas about the world and collect and analyze data objectively...something the conservative versions of the varoius faiths of the world actively discourage. If they are unable to do so, then the bias turns up in their work when it is examined by others.

That's one of the reasons "Creation Science" isn't taken seriously by real scientists: It has a heavy religious bias and asserts claims that are unprovable and untestable. When exposed to rigorous testing, the claims of Creationists fall by the wayside...at which point the Creationists scream "Persecution!", "Discrimination!", and even "Conspiracy!"

Stoning non-conformists is part of science. Stoning conformists is also part of science. Only those theories that can stand up to a merciless barrage of stones deserve consideration. It is the Creationist habit of throwing marshmallows that I find annoying.

Answer 2

Haha! Wrong!

There IS such a thing as a christian scientist! In fact, there are plenty of religious scientists.

The difference between a normal religious person and a religious scientist is that a religious scientist knows that there are a lot of things he doesn't know that his religion explains, and that there are a lot of things that his religion doesn't explain that science does. A scientist who has a religion can see, at least subconsciously, that the two may be allowed to support one another instead of conflict with each other.

I know science is right. Don't kid yourselves -- the fact that my computer is working now is pretty good proof that science is correct.

But nobody can prove that religion is wrong... not even science. Because there will always be things that even science cannot explain, and that is where religion may yet be correct on the matter. The two, religion and science, may be used by the open-minded individual to form a more complete worldview. That's why I believe there is a god even though I also know that atoms are real, evolution happened, etc.

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There have been stranger things.

Answer 3

This might be a problem, but not necessarily. One of the most important qualities a scientist must have is objectivity; he mustn't let his own opinions affect his conclusions. If a christian scientist can conduct experiments in an objective way, there really is no problem. The problem arises only if that scientist would use religion as a tool for scientific study.

Answer 4

I know there are some. In some ways Christianity and science can coincide. In earlier times many scientist were religious.

Answer 5

Most scientist I know are religious also, the idea of God is growing in the science community because there are things going on in the universe that can't be explained by science. Science tells us that somethings are impossible yet they exist.

Answer 6

I would question if you can call 'evolution' science, because it is not observable.

Also this modern 'science' by their rejection of God and everything supernatural in their examination of evidence, shows that they are not neutral (neutrality is a myth), but that they have a presupposition that God does not exists, no different then Christians have a presupposition that God does exists.

Answer 7

I know a couple of people that are pretty hardcore Christians and yet work in technical (science/engineering) jobs. I...don't...press them on their beliefs and they are the type of people (pragmatic) that probably wouldn't let their job and their beliefs conflict. Most people with two brain cells to rub together know that the bible is largely allegorical and that the benefits of church membership extend beyond that single book.

Edit: and I couldn't agree more on your amendment...It's a matter of where you want to make your mark, isn't it? Or are you begrudging tepid Christians *even* that meager couple of hours observance a week?

Answer 8

You can be religious and do science, as long as your religion accepts that there is a material world and that useful truths about it can be obtained by non-religious methods.

A lot of the people who gave us the major scientific discoveries of the nineteenth and twentieth century were religious. It's hardly a disqualification.

Answer 9

That is pure B.S. The Bible says over and over to look for truth and some scientists have found it.

Alister McGrath was an atheist and now speaks out as a Christian. He recently debated Richard Dawkins and that can be heard on www.rzim.org.

Prof. D. Barton, Nobel Prize Chemistry said "There is no incompatibility between science and religion... Science shows that God exists."

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Arno Penzias (Big Bang Theorist) said this about the Bible. "If I had no other data than the early chapters of Genesis, some of the Psalms and other passages of Scripture, I would have arrived at essentially the same picture of the origin of the universe, as is indicated by the scientific data."

"The principle of [divine] purpose ... stares the biologist in the face wherever he looks ... . The probability for such an event as the origin of DNA molecules to have occurred by sheer chance is just too small to be seriously considered ... ."Ernst Boris Chain - Nobel Prize in medicine

I won't keep going on but William D. Phillips was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics and I recently saw him in an interview and found this quote "So many of my colleagues are Christians that I can't walk across my church's fellowship hall without tripping over a dozen physicists."

Here are some resources you can start to learn on.
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-1680357583183645446
www.reasons.org
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=8810338236054922062

So perhaps it is the atheist that are the half-scientist because by there presuppositions they have already decided on the limitations before studying something to search for truth!

"Truth is absolute and knowable and must be searched for diligently, but many will try to hide it, deny it or muddy it." - annon.

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell

Answer 10

Many scientists are Christians. Not all Christians are narrow-minded and ignorant, though the majority of those who Yahoo Answers seem to prove otherwise. However, religion and science are completely unrelated, and should remain so.