Science and religion

[Creed of Heresy]

No, strodel that entirely depends on whether you're claiming that fallacy based on the number of scientists or the fact that they are scientists at all.

Yes. The former would be ad populum, the latter would be appeals to authority. The latter wouldn't exactly be a fallacy if the scientists being cited had qualifications in some form of religious study, and qualifications in whatever field of science they were saying was or was not compatible with the religion they were talking about that they also were qualified in. The problem we also must take into account is bias, both of the atheistic variety and of the theistic as well. One must look at the circumstances that led the individual to believe or not believe as well to make a qualified judgment on fallacy or not. For example, Richard Dawkins was a follower of the Church of England starting at the age of 13 but later when he was studying evolution he began to lose faith which inevitably led him to atheism. He lacks formal education in Christianity but I can at least suppose that he is at least learned in some respects of it, since he would have needed to know rather certain elements about Christian doctrines in order to actually have his faith affected so heavily by his studies into biology. Otherwise were he not aware of them he probably would have stayed as a lip-service scientist. (This I largely suspect is why there are many scientists who say that science and religion are not incompatible, except in the field of biology where atheists are VERY prevalent; something about the study of biology itself seems to lead people to ask questions of the bible that the bible fails to answer.)

That all said I can't exactly claim him as a man who is "qualified" to speak on matters of theism in comparison to science; HOWEVER, I also can't really see why he would be so rabidly atheistic for any other reason than reasonable conclusions he has come to; he is well-known as a very reasonable man, quick-witted, and undeniably pleasant to speak to, even when he is speaking to theists. He gains nothing from openly supporting atheism, and I can't even say he's doing it to try to fit in and be more accepted in the biological field of study since he was one of the first openly atheistic biologists in this time. Something about biology has him very convinced of his stance regarding religion, and given that biology is one the many scientific fields in which evidence and studies and tests and results are all made publicly accessible, I can probably go looking around and start finding quite a few examples; hell, I already have in the recent past. The theories of abiogenesis, evolution, and genetics have their incredibly heavy share of the responsibility for ultimately becoming a complete non-believer, and the "devil is in the details" if I may hijack a phrase.

Now, if you can provide an example man who is learned of religion and qualified in scientific studies without a pre-conceived bias towards either direction, I would accept that appeal to authority is valid but I am pretty sure you actually will not. Even more difficult is in which field of study you have to go for, too, since it'd probably have to include a natural scientist of some kind since these are often the sciences most relating to claims the bible makes.

I do not envy you this task, since few indeed are the accomplished scientists who can actually square away certain aspects of the bible with their own studies, or the studies of others. But such is the life of the religious apologist, isn't it? Always the struggle to square the circle, to wrestle with the ever-shrinking domain of god that science has not yet dynamited into obsolescence, the endless marathon of running the goal posts further and further back, away from the inexorable juggernaut of understanding that is scientific explanation.

Really, the effort would be quite noble if it wasn't wasted on such a lost and, frankly, unworthy cause.