Could a good scientist believe in God
My answer is YES…. why not?
Do you believe in your mother when she says everything is going to be OK, even though you know it might not be? Of course you do, because there is faith in that being that gave you life.
God is inherently the creator of life, the father of all things, and the universe around us, the way those things work and how do they interact with is each other is how science interprets them.
The behavior of things is simply a close explanation or an approximate answer to the WHY? For instance, Why do this electron bounced differently than this electron at the same speed? Could it be that there is a probabilistic pattern or a distribution of bouncing effects? Of course, we pick an approximate equation e^-x let’s say, and then we run with it. A different scientis with find later that temperature is algo a factor so maybe K*e^-xT should be the equation to be used, not the previous one. Closer to reality, still an approximation. Some of those approximations are incredible accurate, but we know as scientists that there are +/- levels of accuracy and uncertainty in our calculations.
God on the other hand, does not need an explanation, God does not need an approximate equation. If you belive in him, God is just there, as God. Why is he there? We think it’s because He loves us? That’s a question I am going to ask the day I die…. until then, I will try to answer the questions I can answer with facts and reality.
I am totally against people preaching one extreme or the other, the Bible is the book of books, but it cannot explain evolution, relativity, quantum mechanics. The Bible does not have engineering or scientific answers to many questions. The Bible and religion in general, can give you answers for your own personal Life, for your spiritual growth.
I don’t think Theologians should be telling science how things work and why? Do I try to answer my tribulations reading any of Knuth’s works? Probably not… I may make some analogies but I don’t think they quite fit in my daily life.