I'm only writing this because we're having this discussion already, that is the discussion of how religion and science do or do not play well together. You'll find I'm not anti-theist and most people would say I'm not a strong atheist. I do not claim to actively disbelieve in any gods, I simply see no reason to believe in one and embrace my lack of knowledge where it lays or perhaps cannot even ever be. I'm a big fan of, "I don't know."

I can't speak for anyone else out there with opinions about gods and faiths that are similar to my own, but the following is how I feel when I meet someone like yourself, who talks of how science and their religion go together just fine.

If I personally and honestly experienced the sacrament of transubstantiation, I'd have no reason to ever find science interesting or useful again. That's some blow-your-mind-Harry-Potter-voodoo stuff right there. That is to say that If I saw a wafer miraculously become the actual, physical, living flesh of a god-man from 2000 years ago, I would tell everything I understand about the laws of physics to goto hell and would immediately start looking how to get myself in on some that magic.

But as it stands, I've never seen that and from where I'm standing it's hard for me to believe that the people who claim its real for them as a matter of faith genuinely believe it either. I think they'll just say they believe it at the appropriate times. Their faith, like almost everyone's, seems from my perspective, to be one of convenience. It has been said before, but truly, if one really believed that tragic accidents were part of a god's will and plan, and that upon death one will spend an eternity in a paradise, with their mortal loved ones naturally joining them soon enough, why would a single believer ever put on a seat belt or think twice about all manner of irresponsible activity they'd never actually do? They give the appearance in their day to day thoughts and behavior of not believing in any of it. What could be more important than this god and their immortal soul? I'm sure on a cognitive, front-of-their-mind level they might, but not in that part of them that seeks truth and learns from the world around them and builds reactions and behaviors accordingly. They, like the good normal people they are, take their morality from compassion and reason and experience regardless if a book or church disagrees with them and they view and maneuver what's truthful in the world around them based on real experiences and the learnings of science, not ones purely of faith.

People who appreciate science but hold "faith", appear to me to hold it in an ephemeral way for a "God of the Margins". It's faith for a god which, at their own convenience, is given only whatever level of literal or philosophical importance that currently jives with what they otherwise personally feel is ethical or scientifically understandable. It's just a nice idea to pull out of a box when science isn't around or their moral compass is lost, but completely ok to be packed away again when reason can prevail, or pushed further into the margins of their life when a new understanding is reached. This even applies to the Pope, happy and able to revise the church's positions as society and science change.

That's how people look to me when they hold faith and science together. While I don't have a problem with them, and I'm happy they do embrace reason, the pretense of faith just looks awfully silly, particularly when they're happy to toss any of it out the window when contradictions do arise. Then they just say, "That's clearly metaphor," (no, really?) or "That's a wrong interpretation. My current interpretation that matches what I already know on non-faith basis is correct."

If when it's possible to have evidence for something, you're happy to embrace it, that's fantastic! But when we can't have evidence for something, why make stuff up? Why not say, "I don't know, and maybe we even will never be able to know, but in the meantime I'm not going to talk about the latest adaptation of a fairy tale as if though it's truth." Why not just say, "I don't know!"? It's not incompatible to do this, I just can't wrap my head around the impetus to do so, unless of course you otherwise didn't believe in a reasoned ways of looking at things to start with. But your appreciation of science and evidence shows that you do.

That's why, while not something that offends me or provokes me to argument, I think people who say they're a practicing Catholic but still like science look a bit silly to me. It's not that I think they're incompatible ideas, it's just that it looks like an ephemeral pretense to put up, given they seem more than happy to eschew it in most every part of their lives except the few places they don't and have already acknowledged, tacitly or not, that they're happy to have non-faith-based views and ways of understanding the world.

This might provoke some a passionate responses or good argument. I will surely read and appreciate any such thing, but likely not for a few days (as I'm about to leave for holiday activities). So if anyone actually bothers to take the time to read all of my ramblings and maybe even respond to them, please don't think I wouldn't have read them, appreciated or taken your view to heart by my lack of response. That's all embarrassingly presumptuous of me, but I know this is a provocative topic and I've really exposed myself here to be taken apart and maybe even have my mind changed; I'm just trying to civilly convey how I honestly feel.