Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by stephen_g 3257 days ago

    I profoundly belive that people who do science must be atheists
That is simply false. Just look at the history of science - just a few examples being Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Newton, Kepler, Leibniz, Euler, Faraday, Maxwell, etc. who were all Christian. A far greater proportion of scientists are religious than one might think (see http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/).
1 comments

A contemporary scientist (hard science, say physics) who belives in god is a fraud. One cannot from 9 to 5 think scientifically and then in the afternoon just push this aside and state that god is behind everything anyway. This is pure hypocrisy, fraud and betrayal of science.

What was "god" yesterday is science today.

Science and religion have exactly zero common points, they function in fundamentally different ways. One way is to invent our of the blue some kind of superior entity (because why not), the other is to take the risk to say "this is how it works, and this is how you can prove it does not".

I have a PhD in physics and attended a fair share of "discussions between physicists and priests" - complete loss of time. Our world works on science, if someone does not agree I purpose to move back to middle age comfort, propelled by religion and not science. This until winter comes, when suddenly electricity is no longer the effect of the wrath of Zeus but something explained by science.

Hey, I don't mind - you can believe what ever you want. I'm just pointing out that the surveys showing a decent proportion of contemporary scientists (including physicists) have deistic or theistic beliefs renders much of what you are saying empirically incorrect.
You mentioned people who lived in times she religion was the basis of the society. I am talking about contemporary physicists (or other hard science scientists).

And this is not a matter of belief : if someone states that he is a scientist, it is not possible to be religious. Simply because these two postures are not compatible. You can be one of the other but not both.