Sri Lumpa said:
Make that 1000BC to the 19th century and restrict it to theists and I would agree. A lot of deist of the time were more like closeted atheists in a time period were atheism was not considered to be intellectually acceptable (it's really Darwin that made it acceptable). For the 20th and 21st century I would argue that while there are important scientists that believe in god, they were important because they manage to mostly separate their personal beliefs with their religious beliefs (though they will have some infuence on each other of course). Those people that cannot separate the two are unlikely to become great scientists as if their experimental data contradict their belief they are likely to do the human thing of ignoring it (though it is definitely not restricted to religious beliefs, as nonreligious beliefs can lead to the same bad science behaviour). Take Newton for example. He did his best work on optics and gravity by following the evidence he had, though inspired by his beliefs in alchemy (especially the action at a distance bit). But when his work was based mostly on his beliefs in alchemy it had no scientific merit. |
I beleive you have no evidence to say that they were closet atheists. They clearly believed in higher power or in some form of God.
As for the rest of the post my only point was that a person can believe in God and follow science, and even be a great scientist himself.
