Scientists have practical reasons for wishing that religion and science be kept separate. They can see nothing but trouble ... if they venture into the deeply divisive issue of religion - especially when their results tend to support a highly unpopular, atheistic conclusion.

Debating is not an honest intellectual exercise. It's like a trial in which the goal is not to get to the truth but to win.

While science continually uncovers new mysteries, it has removed much of what was once regarded as deeply mysterious. Although we certainly do not know the exact nature of every component of the universe, the basic principles of physics seem to apply out to the farthest horizon visible to us today.

Any strategy that attempts to reinforce faith by undermining science is also doomed to failure. Showing that some scientific theory is wrong will not prove that the religious alternative is correct by default. When the sun was shown not to be the center of the universe, as Copernicus had proposed, the Earth was not moved back to that singular position in the cosmos. If Darwinian evolution is proved wrong, biologists will not develop a new theory based on the hypothesis that each species was created separately by God 6,000years ago.

I have characterized Ross as exemplifying an extreme position among theistic scientists. However, he is not so extreme as to promote the scientifically unsound notions of the young-Earth creationists and other anti-evolutionists ... They are so far off the scale that their scientific claims need not be taken seriously. Their distortions and misrepresentations of the scientific facts are not consistent with their self-righteous claims of acting to protect all that is good and moral.

But, as we have seen, movement does not require a mover, and modern quantum mechanics has shown that not all effects require a cause. And even if they did, why would the Prime Mover need to be a supernatural anthropomorphic deity such as the Judeo - Christian God? Why could it not just as well be the material universe itself?

The battle over the validity of evolution has been publicly posed as a scientific one. However, you will find little sign of it in scientific journals, where such quarrels as exist are over details, not the basic concept... Evolution has proved so useful as a paradigm for the origin and structure of life that it constitutes the foundation of the sciences of biology and medicine.