Sunday Ponderance: Are Science and Christianity antithetical?

Conventional wisdom, as we are told ad nauseum, dictates a sacrosanct separation between science and religion. Except, I note, when certain scientists desire to meddle in metaphysical affairs. Anyway, how does this conventional wisdom fall out in practice? Would not the "abolition of ignorance" resulting from close scientific study virtually guarantee a large majority of atheistic scientists? Reality does not bear out this theory. In fact, many scientists find that naturalistic study deepens their faith, rather than dispelling it. Of course the intricate wonder of creation inspires faith. Would God create a universe that leads us away from Himself, or one which draws people to Him?

...since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1

The fact is that, despite an overtly hostile academic environment geared toward anti-religious indoctrination, faith continues to thrive among a significant number of scientists.

On a parting note, the most famous and respected scientist in modern history, Albert Einstein, was convinced that God created the universe. Einstein was aware that the unbelievable complexity of our world demands a designer.

One of the most interesting surveys in this regard is that conducted in 1996 by Edward Larsen and Larry Witham and reported in Nature." For their survey was a repeat of a survey done in 1916 by Professor Leuba in which 1,000 scientists (chosen at random from the 1910 edition of American Men of Science) were asked whether they believed both in a God who answered prayer and in personal immortality - which is, be it noted, much more specific than believing in some kind of divine being. The response rate was 70 per cent of whom 41.8 per cent said yes, 41.5 per cent no and 16.7 per cent were agnostic. In 1996, the response was 60 per cent of whom 39.6 per cent said yes, 45.5 per cent no and 14.9 per cent" were agnostic. These statistics were given differing interpretations in the press on the half-full, half-empty principle. Some used them as evidence of the survival of belief, others of the constancy of unbelief. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that there has been relatively little change in the proportion of believers to unbelievers during those eighty years of enormous growth in scientific knowledge. God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? by John C. Lennox