Christianity compatible with atheism

[Anomalocaris]

Well, I certainly understand being disenfranchised with religion, I'm pretty much there myself, but isn't it a tad harsh to say that an individual person can't believe in Jesus and appreciate science at the same time?

Not at all. A person can appreciate science at many levels just like a person can appreciate, say, an airplane, at many different levels. A person may not believe in the atomic theory of matter, yet appreciate the the beauty and performance of an airplane. A technician and engineer may even understand the high level empirical rules governing flight, say, center of life and center of mass, and possess the ability to refine and improve an air plane without mastering or even believing the atomic theory of air and how it effects fluid dynamic, and of aluminum and how it effects the behavior of the plane parts, and the stochiometry of engines. But such an technician or engineer, while capable of producing useful work, does not appreciate the whole of airplane, from the most fundamental level of why the plane works.

So to a person who believe in Jesus does not believe in the basis of why science works. He is cognitively dissonant in appreciating science while worshipping a view that, when stripped of is fluff, says science has no fundamental reason to work.

I'm a Christian and I ran a research lab and did published scientific research (published in regular scientific journals, not Christian ones).

I did not mince words.

I believe that the data is the data; regardless of what results you expected or hoped for what is important is what you're actually seeing. (This seems pretty basic, but there are people who would pool their variance just to be able to publish something.)

Science is the objective study of the universe we find ourselves in. It's just data, Science doesn't make any value judgments. Science has nothing to say on whether or not there is a deity that was behind what we see. Saying whether or not there's a God is philosophy. Science has data, which people then interpret as saying, "there's an order to this creation!" or "the universe resulted from natural causes completely apart from and fictional 'god'!" I've been a Christian and a scientist at the same time, and I really didn't feel any conflict. The universe is how it is, and I don't expect to be able to prove God exists with an objective measurement. Science is a tool, and it can't be used for everything. I really believe that meta-narrative is dead. You can certainly move the the debate about the existence of God into the personal or philosophical sphere, but science really just has nothing to say either way.

Of course science is about data, everything is about data. Fantasy is about data - data on what can be and has been dreamt up, and data on how does that intersect with what would amuse people. Lies are about data - data on what is true, and data on what one desires others to believe, and data on how others might be influenced to believe it. Religion is about data - data on what one is, for whatever reason, convinced to be true, and data on what one thinks would elevate oneself, in whatever way, by prevailing on others to believe in these things. Nothing is not about data, so both christianity, like lies and fantasy, is also strictly about data. Not high quality data, not having any good way to make quality use of the data, and not even necessarily real data about what it is talking about, but christianity is also all about data.

What sets science apart from fantasy, from lies, from christianity, is not whether one concerns data and the other concerns itself with presumable something else useful and yet involve no data, but how it evaluates data and what it does with the data. Science develop systematic ways to improve the quality of the data, and systematic ways to improve how data is used to discover things. Everything is data, science handles data in a way that is an improvement over the barbarous wish thinking and make belief of the paleolithic. In the order of decreasing concern for such improvements, fantasy, lies, and religion, do not. Science can be used for everything that uses data. That is to say religion can't ever devise anything that is in principle not susceptible to judgement by science.