Seemingly trivial things that intrigue you

Have seen this argument before. "It's incredible! It must have been created!"

I have never seen any remotely (or even vaguely) compelling argument why this theory (Creationism) should be given more than a few nanoseconds of consideration as a valid one.

Well our existence is preposterously unlikely, and, so the anthropomorphic theory goes, only possible because of so many fundamental properties of the universe, which if any one of which were different would have precluded our existence. Some great hand must have put all of the building blocks into place to allow this to happen.

Even Hawking doesn't rule it out.

It isn't what I believe, incidentally, but it's not an unreasonable position to adopt if you are that way inclined.

My circles include a disprortionate number of science graduates, so I can't answer that really.

I would say if anything that a scientific training, or at least one of the physical sciences, causes people to attribute less to their god. In extremis, you would take on the one hand someone who thought man was created and has a literal understanding of Adam and Eve, versus someone with a basic understanding of evolution, carbon dating, planet formation or how chemical elements come about. Someone trained in that who "believes" the science cannot at the same time believe that God created Adam and Eve grew from a rib. Because it's less realistic than Harry Potter.

So the scientists I know who are religious do have a possibly more nuanced position than the average.

Besides, a good deal of participation in organised religion is as much about the moral framework and the societal benefits derived by the member as it is about rationalising the existence of an omnipotent being, at least in my experience.

The term Engineer is applied rather more broadly, I would say, and from working with SMEs a lot of engineer job titles are not really engineering as such.

There's not that many chemistry jobs in R&D, and it can be scientifically constraining and unfulfilling in comparison to academia. Academia is a slog and relatively few people get well paid. Industrial R&D, in addition to being unfulfilling is also something where you need to quite quickly decide not to do in order to get paid more.

Getting involved in a start up can be more exciting, but is high risk with the large carrot at the end of a very long stick.

All in all not a surprise we all do something else.

People can believe whatever the hell they want, but that's no substitute for evidence or facts.

Indeed. So how did the big bang come about, and what's the other 95% of the universe?

It is perfectly valid to want positive evidence of something rather than postulate unlikely things and seek proof they don't exist, but that's not quite what you are saying.

Assume they are in the biology department then.

You are seeing a distilled cross section of scientists though. So you don't know what relative proportion of scientists are religious unless you know how many scientists there are, compared to, say, historians. I suspect Cambridge has an above average number of scientists per capita. I suspect a church congregation has an above average proportion of religious scientists.

What's wrong with a simple "I. Don't. Know."?

As opposed to "I don't know, but I'll make some shit up instead."

They do know, though, that's the point. It's called faith.

I personally can't reconcile it, and I did go to a CofE school that tried very hard to make me. But lots of people can.

Faith, belief, whatever are fine. I really don't care if someone needs to "believe" or have "faith" that they have an explanation for something, instead of admitting they just don't know.

They're just not facts, or evidence. It's a simple distinction.

Stephen Hawking did not know for sure the cause of what killed him. Lots of possible factors, statistically more likely things like genetics, or "environment" or whatever, but not clear, unarguable, repeatable facts for the cause of MND. Was it a "God" therefore that killed him, slowly, over a 50 year period, for fun perhaps? Is that an acceptable explanation?

So, this intrigues me (and I am in no way religious)

The book of Genesis says:

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

All this was supposedly written centuries before we have the "science" and scientific knowledge that we do now.

However, apart from the day-by-day creation recounted in Genesis (as opposed to the billions of years we now take to be fact), the order of this is pretty much in line with our current thinking of the evolution of the universe and life. The Big Bang (let there be light etc."), formation of the earth "firmament", evolution of life in water, then vegetation, then animals, then man.

The intrigiung thing for me is how, centuries before science as we know it, the writer(s) go this all in the right order . . .

I also think that the sun came before the earth.

I'm going to also stick my neck out and say that the land came before the sea.

Not really. Religions - at least the more developed ones - aren't really very concerned with answering why gravity exists or the things science is interested in. They're more interested in how people should behave with regard to one another.

To be fair, it would be a very advanced religion that could explain why gravity exists.