"You may say I'm a dreamer..."

[Aractus]

Aractus, thank you for your input as well. I have heard such a stance before. As with the handful of the leading American scientists, 83% of them are atheist or strongly agnostic, which leaves 17% of them with a personal god Of sorts. While I can appreciate freedom of religion, within my own search I have found absolutely no place for especially the Christian Bible's depiction of a God. Which leads me to pose the difficult question, not why 83% of leading physicists and biologists are atheist, but why 17% aren't, including your Australian fellow's example?

Now without a detailed personal background and psychological evaluation I can only infer a few theories. But I consider it largely to be a remnant of social tendency/cultural tradition. I mean of course there is the rather tired idea that if the gentleman were a physicist reigning from India, yet were still a leading astrophysicist, he would be incredibly likely to believe a quite seperate creed (and I've witnessed many leaders in feilds of science to be spiritual Hindus).

Now I appreciate the attempted connection between science and faith, but a lengthly scientific resume and great track record for producing leaders and their advisors does nothing to prove the faith based creed itself. Quite honestly to me it demonstrates what is wrong with our way of thinking perfectly.

That isn't the point that I was trying to make.

In fact, there's a range of people at our church. For instance, there's a couple that are both doctors - yet I don't think either of them have in their entire lives seen the inside of a Mercedes or BMW, they live more simply than I do, and although they've never - ever - said anything, it is clear to me that they must practise philanthropy because their "wealth" certainly doesn't go towards their lifestyle.