Literary Discussions

I am not certain what your personal view is from your above comment about "debating tricks." Are you agreeing with the Atheist that someone with religious practices is unsuited for science or math work, or do you agree with me that there is no connection between religious practice and math/science ability. During my searches I found one P.E.W. survey that showed religious scientists or scientists who believe in "a higher power" are a minority but still a sizable minority.  Anyway, a recent counter example I found is 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins  

and then I chose Ramanujan 

  ... I also pointed out that Kurt Godel was a brilliant mathematician who was quite eccentric (wrote an ontological proof for the existence of God) and died of starvation from his paranoia of being poisoned. An extreme example would be some idiot-savant or autistic person (like Rain Man the movie) who has an uncanny ability for figures. I suppose Tesla might be another example although the bio speaks of his superstitions rather than religion 

I read articles to the effect that scientists today are prejudiced against anyone who openly practices some religion feeling that they are not scientific which I think is a form of illegal discrimination. 

Anyway I am very interested to hear the reactions of various people in the sciences to this entire issue.  It seems to me that only the Agnostic is in a sound logical position since the Agnostic admits that nothing can be known or proved about the existence or non-existence of a higher problem. The Atheist of conviction has a challenge in the sense that Carl Sagan pointed out that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.