I knew a few semi-religious scientists in the past.
They were all in line with what we'd probably accept as scientific reasoning behind natural phenomena, but deferred to religion on more philosophical (and not physical) questions: "Why are we here?" "What's the meaning of life?" "Why should I be good towards other people?"
(I know part of these are at least touched on by some of the humanities sciences - moral philosophy and psychology, but the scientists I've experience with were biologists & chemists and not as well versed in those fields as their own)
if they're willing to ignore huge swaths of divine text what makes the existential statements special?
if someone made a list of statements, most of which were false but some of which were unverifiable why would anyone accept, as truth, the unverified claims?
if anything accept part of the Bible, cherry picking, is worse (logically) than accepting all of it.
- How can you vote for or otherwise support a politician if you don't agree 100% on everything with that politician?
- If your friend enjoys the same music that you do, but not the same food, would that necessarily make you not go to a concert with that friend?
- How can you enjoy a book written by an author if you strongly disagree with that author's personal beliefs? Do those beliefs necessarily invalidate anything and everything that this hypothetical author writes? As a real life example, take Orson Scott Card: do his personal views about homosexuality make his Ender books any worse?
if anything accept part of the Bible, cherry picking, is worse (logically) than accepting all of it.
I'm not sure I follow this... Why is this so bad. Let's say that my view of the bible is a set of self-replicating instructions that were carried through time as culture. Today I deem some ideas helpful parts of my culture, and some not to so helpful. I choose to follow the former. Is this logically inconsistent?
> if they're willing to ignore huge swaths of divine text what makes the existential statements special?
The idea that divine texts are a particularly privileged source of factual information is not universal among religions (or even among religions which have divine texts, or even among major branches of, e.g., Christianity.)
As I understood it, they were asking about religious scientists. Religious != take-given-entire-scripture-literally. It just means they believe in the existence of a higher power (if you can forgive my paraphrasing).
If they did mean scientists who take all of scripture literally, then no I don't actually know any of those.
I know religious scientists who are among my smart Christian friends: intelligent and nuanced people who are familiar with the atheist arguments and have actually read Dawkins and Hitchens and have actually read the Bible and know its history, and still believe. They're really nice people, and as an atheist and humanist that's what I do respect. (I like our local Church of England priest for the same reason: he really cares, and does actual work himself to make the world a better place - the local soup kitchen and so forth - and Anglicanism at its best is basically humanism with Jesus up front.)
That said, I've seen these sophisticated theists' faces when they walk into a local church (London E17) and realise that the congregation is basically one step up from the Pentecostals and sincerely believe that good things happen to good people, if bad things happen to you then you must be a bad person, and the world is probably 6,000 years old and flat, and that these are actually the people Dawkins was talking about in The God Delusion. I successfully refrained from smirking, 'cos I didn't want to be rude.
They were all in line with what we'd probably accept as scientific reasoning behind natural phenomena, but deferred to religion on more philosophical (and not physical) questions: "Why are we here?" "What's the meaning of life?" "Why should I be good towards other people?"
(I know part of these are at least touched on by some of the humanities sciences - moral philosophy and psychology, but the scientists I've experience with were biologists & chemists and not as well versed in those fields as their own)