US ambassador killed over a film

[kandrathe]

And breaking away from that is very very difficult.

Wow. It's not like they need to be deprogrammed.

That is why intelligent design is popular among these people......in their mind they know that what is written in the bible can't be true but they have to much 'god-fear'.....and being scientist they first try to support ID. One of Holland most distinguished scientists of the last few years was also into this, but a few years ago he also saw it didn't hold.

Science never really works when you try to make it fit and fill in the gaps with God, rather than allowing the science to reveal what it can (given it's limitations).

Most lay people hardly understand the barest of concepts of our reality, let alone the vast mystery of what is our universe(s).

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Indeed. It leads to stuff like this, which is absolute garbage.

You've gone right to the extreme -- formerly Bob Jones University press.

"A Beka Book is a publisher affiliated with Pensacola Christian College that produces K-12 curriculum materials that are used by Fundamentalist Conservative Christian schools and homeschooling families around the world. It is named after Rebekah Horton, wife of college president Arlin Horton. A Beka Book and BJU Press (formerly Bob Jones University Press) have been considered the two major publishers of Christian-based educational materials in America. A Beka Book is the largest Christian textbook publisher in the world." - wikipedia

Fundamentalist.

No credible scientist "combines" their work with religion. They do not mix.

I gave a few who are credible scientists (respected in their fields), and who also lecture on religious topics. So, yes, credible scientists do combine their work so far as it comes to their profession. I would say they don't point at experimental results and exclaim "there is God"... Which is a sure fire way to becoming not so credible, alienating them from the cadre of their peers who base their science on observable reality.

Those who maintain their religion while doing good science do so by either segregating their two classes of beliefs so thoroughly that they don't trouble one another, or by choosing religious beliefs so slippery and vague that they couldn't contradict anything at all.

This. But, anyone can have a belief system that posits the existence of polar bears, even if you have never seen one. I think it takes "slippery and vague" as you call it, to believe in something you cannot see, nor ever prove exists -- whether than be religion or cosmology, or quantum mechanics.

You didn't list the big fish, though, which is Freeman Dyson.

He is interesting philosophically, I like his ideas on metaphysics, but I'd say he's more agnostic.