...of genetics and the author of the heliocentric view of the solar system were both monks, Mendel and Copernicus respectively.
I worked with a post doc, an excellent chemist, once who was a catholic priest, and another excellent chemist who was a fundamentalist. The latter was great at organic synthesis, very creative. (He didn't "believe" in evolution, even though the reality of evolution is not subject to "belief." It exists and is easily explained on a molecular level. One either accepts science or one doesn't. The universe operates independently of any book, particularly one written thousands of years ago by sheep herders.) The former, the priest, was an excellent interpreter of bioinorganic chemistry, protein metallomics.
People can, and do, compartmentalize.
We are lucky, given the important work of Dr. Lynch, that she had a science teacher, a nun, who taught her in such a way as to be cognizant of reality.
I fully concede that religion is a problem, but as I noted over in the atheist forum here, the atheist Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffman expressed a certain toleration for religious faith, more, perhaps, than I do, but his commentary was quite rational:
Roald Hoffmann, basically an Ann Frank who lived, on his atheism, and some ruminations on the question of ethics.
From the text from the part of the interview that turned toward philosophy and Hoffmann's atheism, again, with a twist:
A final and more personal question: You defined yourself as “an atheist who is moved by religion” (6). Looking at the tenor of your life and the many goals you have achieved, one wonders where your inner force comes from.
The atheism and the respect for religion come form the same source. I observe that in every culture on Earth, absolutely every one, human beings have constructed religious systems. There is a need in us to try to understand, to see that there is something that unites us spiritually. So scientists who do not respect religion fail in their most basic task—observation. Human beings need the spiritual. The same observation reveals to me a multitude of religious constructions—gods of nature, spirits, the great monotheistic religions. It seems to me there can’t be a God or gods; there are just manifestations of a human-constructed spirituality.
I added the bold in this case.
= new reply since forum marked as read