Science shouldn't be seen as a threat.

[BridgeTheGap]

As any high school student knows, Christianity and science have sniped at each other for 500 years, since at least the days of Copernicus. The battle is still going on, on both sides.

In 2009, when President Barack Obama chose geneticist Francis Collins as director of the National Institutes of Health, Collins' scientific colleagues were aghast.

Some charged that Collins was a "clown" or suffered from "dementia," to quote a recent profile of Collins in The New Yorker magazine.

No one argued with Collins' professional credentials. As the magazine reported, he "long ago secured his place in the first rank of international scientists."

Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/09/25/1449830/paul-prather-evangelicals-can.html#ixzz10Yj63HEv

[Jim__]

1. I agree that science and religion can and should get along. - n/t

[skepticscott]

7. They certainly could

if so much of organized religion didn't find it necessary to base itself on truth claims about the physical world that are completely at odds with established science, and if religious fundamentalists weren't obsessed with suppressing any knowledge and denying any facts that don't comport with their worldview.

[Odin2005]

2. I agree with his colleges, Collins has become a crank.

[rug]

3. It isn't.

[struggle4progress]

4. I myself will not choose to base much of my thinking on what "any high school student knows"

[ironbark]

5. Perhaps religion shouldn't be seen as a threat to science.

Theist scientists-
(Three lists combined, please excuse any duplication)

Arthur Eddington
Georges Lemaître
William Phillips
Francis Collins
Rustum Roy
Jonas Salk
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Claude Levi-Strauss
Alexander Fleming
Jean Piaget
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
Gregor Mendel
Johannes Kepler
Anton van Leeuwenhoek
James Clerk Maxwell
John von Neumann
Franz Boas
Karl Friedrich Gauss
Werner Heisenberg
Christiaan Huygens
Martin Buber
Erwin Schrodinger
Linus Pauling
Andreas Vesalius
Tycho Brahe
Max Planck
William Herschel
Enrico Fermi
Leonard Euler
Arthur Eddington
Marcello Malpighi
Theodosius Dobzhansky
John Dalton
Carl Linnaeus
Andre Marie Ampere (Catholic)
Thomas Aquinas (Catholic)
Roger Bacon (Catholic)
Antoine Henri Becquerel (Catholic)
Georges Buffon (Catholic)
Nicolaus Copernicus (Catholic Priest)
Charles Augustin de Coulomb (Catholic)
John Dalton (Quaker)
Charles Darwin (Anglican)
Leonhard Euler (Calvinist)
Michael Faraday (Sandemanian)
Alexander Fleming (Catholic)
Galileo Galilei (Catholic)
Luigi Galvani (Catholic)
Lord Kelvin (William Thomson)
Johannes Kepler (Lutheran)
Antoine Lavoisier (Catholic)
Anton van Leeuwenhoek (Dutch Reformed)
Joseph Lister (Quaker)
Guglielmo Marconi (born Catholic, converted to Anglicanism)
James Clerk Maxwell (born Presbyterian, converted to Baptist faith)
Isaac Newton (born Anglican, converted to Arianism)
Nicholas Oresme (Catholic)
Louis Pasteur (Catholic)
Wright brothers (Brethren)

[skepticscott]

6. Has anyone ever said that

it is impossible to do good science if you believe in a god? If not, what exactly is the point of the list, other than to demonstrate that, for most of the history of science, a person would be very unlikely to get any scientific patronage or even work a decent job (let alone teach at a university) without being religious, at least superficially. How do you think it would have worked out for Galileo if he had been as outspoken an athiest and anti-theist as Richard Dawkins? House arrest and the threat of torture would have been the least of his problems.

Yet, nowadays, when that stigma no longer attaches to any significant degree, at least 90% of the membership in the National Academy of Sciences do not believe in a personal god, while at least 90% of the general public does. Discuss.

[ironbark]

8. The OP suggests-

"As any high school student knows, Christianity and science have sniped at each other for 500 years, since at least the days of Copernicus. The battle is still going on, on both sides"

Two sides engaged in sniping battle over 500 years suggest to me the impression of an ongoing conflict/war between Christianity and science.

"what exactly is the point of the list"

To provide evidence concrete that for a good number of important scientists no such sniping/battle between religion and science existed.

"...unlikely to get any scientific patronage or even work a decent job (let alone teach at a university) without being religious..."

Ah yes skepticscott...that is all such a list of theist scientists could "demonstrate"...that these scientists held a faith so as to get and/or retain employment.

Good one Sherlock.

[frogmarch]

9. I don't want them to get along.

I want science to kick, instead of kiss, religion's butt.

I'm sick of reading news stories about how science has shown that the Red Sea could have parted like the Bible says it did, and other such drivel. Science needs to stop making nice with the loonies.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. "Christianity and science have sniped at each other for 500 years"

Has science really sniped at Christianity? Or was that just Christianity tripping itself up over its own falsehoods?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

11. Truman, Hell, Truth etc.