Christianity compatible with atheism

[coffeeveritas]

I don't mince words. When science has been developed to a certain level as it has now, procedures and frameworks are in place such that people who don't understand the fundamental principles can do useful work. But having done useful work, in some cases ground breaking work, they still really don't understand the basic principle that made the whole thing work. They still don't understand that their work in based on principles which would find christianity false.

This post is a little too long for anyone to actually want to read, so I summarized and hid the full explanation of each point behind its summary.

1: Science is about measurable, testable, repeatable explanations. Someone who can expound their field's knowledge in this way is a good scientist, Christian or not, and there is no set of "principles" that they have to subscribe to beyond this.

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Well, a good measure of any scientist's understanding of their field would be their publications and their contributions to that field in the form of new data, experiments, or discoveries. In this way the ability to do "ground breaking work" would seem like a good, objective measurement of whether or not someone understands their field. This measure is observable and repeatable, very good scientifically. What is not a good measure of judging someone as a scientist is their agreement with an unspecified set of "basic principles" which make everything work. These "principles which would find christianity false" sound more like a mystery religion than science. What empirical method does science have for studying the supernatural? How does one find scientific data that disproves philosophical claims?

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2. What you are imply sounds like scientism + atheism. Extreme postivism has long been abandoned, science is not a system for explaining everything.

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Perhaps these "principles" of yours refer to, "the belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other inquiry," with the added belief that a few random discoveries (for example: evolution) and the lack of scientific evidence for philosophical and supernatural ideas means that there is no possibility of Christianity being true. That is, scientism + atheism. I could argue against extreme positivism at length, but suffice it to say that this view has largely been abandoned in light of the contributions of postmodernism.

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3. Science is concerned with measurable results.

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So even Christians who are able to make contributions to scientific knowledge, and even do ground breaking research somehow fail to grasp some "basic principles." Science as an objective field should be results driven, not concerned with a person's beliefs. What does it matter to science if the person who cures cancer is a Christian or an atheist? The results are what matter in an objective field.

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4. Insisting that someone must believe some "principle" to be a true scientist is philosophy. There is no objective way to measure belief systems. Science has no way of proving or disproving religious beliefs, they are outside of science's purview. Therefore, a person's worldview, Christian or otherwise, is always subjective and has no bearing on their career as a scientist.

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So if the "basic principles" are not about anything objective, like results, then the real concern is for the belief system of the person doing science. Whether or not someone believes in some "principles" is not measurable or repeatable. It is a philosophical matter, there is nothing objective about wanting someone to share your belief system. Of course one could make philosophical arguments about the matter, but these have no scientific validity. There is no empirical way to examine whether someone "grasps" the right principles to be a good scientist in his or her field other than examining their work in that field. Being a Christian has no bearing on this because religious belief is not a scientific field, science has no way to prove or disprove claims that it has no way of measuring. Any value judgements or worldview beliefs drawn from objective data are by nature subjective and therefore non-binding in any scientific sense. Ergo, a person's worldview is a matter of their bias and has nothing to do with their vocation as a scientist.

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After this I do have a few questions.
1. What are these "principles" you speak of?
2. If science had a way of conclusively disproving all forms of Christianity then why hasn't the world completely de-Christianized by now? It's been a long time.
3. If you would claim that Christians have some sort of bias, wouldn't you also have to admit that atheists are biased as well? Psychology has shown that everyone interprets data towards their own bias.

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At certain times in the past, when the framework of science is in its infancy, and the body of knowledge derived by science is small, it was not known how the earth evolved, it is not known how life evolved, It had seen enough of the world to know shabby malcontented and mentally disturbed prophets like Jesus is dime a dozen, it has not study enough of the world history to see mundane nature of the psychosis that allowed Christianity, and other cults grow to totalitarian religions, and it had not studied the real roots of human behavior, Therefore if could afford few opportunities to contradict the bullshit of christianity, it seemed acceptable to consult christianity for guidance. So it is to be expected that even at the fore front of 17th century science, even those who are working on the fundamental principles, such as Newton with his concept of necessary and sufficient condition, can imagine that somehow christianity is fundamentally reconcilable to the firmer discoveries being made, and that it's revelations are not mostly manifestly false. 4 centuries later, it is clear that all of christianity's defining value are so unlikely to be true as to be natural to deem it false based on accumulated discoveries. To believe Jesus and science require cognitive dissonance, or self deceptive mental contortions, on the same caliber as knowing the nature of wood and believing the story of Pinocchure.

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So Isaac Newton not only leaning on theism, but being downright obsessed with it was somehow excusable because there wasn't enough science yet? What has happened since then to not only overturn Descartes' idea of a separation of science from religion, but completely nullify religious belief?

It seems like you are saying someone cannot be a true scientist who believes something unlikely, because they are living with cognitive dissonance. However, cognitive dissonance is universal, everyone has some. A majority of nurses and doctors drink and smoke, does that mean they are not true medical personnel. Any given hospital's cardiologist or nutritionist can be overweight, does that make them hacks? They may have cognitive dissonance related to deeply knowing something to be bad and justifying doing it anyway, but they are still qualified medical personnel.