Francis Crick and James Watson are famous and infamous. They are famous for having discerned DNA’s double helix structure and are infamous for being activist Atheists.
The late Stephen Jay Gould (who was an agnostic and teacher of biology, geology and history of science at Harvard University) noted:
The stereotype of a fully rational and objective ‘scientific method,’ with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots, is self-serving mythology… The myth of a separate mode based on rigorous objectivity and arcane, largely mathematical knowledge, vouchsafed only to the initiated, may provide some immediate benefits in bamboozling a public to regard us as a new priesthood, but must ultimately prove harmful in erecting barriers to truly friendly understanding and in falsely persuading so many students that science lies beyond their capabilities… the myth of an arcane and enlightened priesthood of scientists…*
[find fuller quote at Scientific Cenobites, part 6 of 9]
Indeed, Sam Harris, the Buddhist Atheist mystic (who does not like the terms Buddhist, Atheist or mystic) is now known as a neuroscientist but he is, in reality, a neuro-speudo-scientist. This is because he admits to have gotten into the field of science in order to find evidence to back his Atheistic worldview (see “The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief” – Sam Harris’ Neuroscientific Escapades).
Another pseudo-scientist is Richard Dawkins who has built a career upon weaving Victorian Era tall tales, Darwinian stories. He adheres to the sect of Atheism which turns Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution into a worldview when it is supposed to be a theory about biology.
Consider the following discussion:
Jonathan Miller: “So when, at the age of 16, you became acquainted with Darwin, was it because you were taught about Darwin, or you began reading The Origin of Species?”
Richard Dawkins: “No, it was because I was taught”…and realised that yes, that is a candidate explanation for doing this job but I still don’t think it’s a big enough one…it was only later that I decided yes – it is big enough.” [second ellipses in original]
So, he was taught it, he believed it and he turned it into a worldview. And where has the worldview lead him? To celebrity status, for one, but also to become a man of “faith.” He was asked, “So there isn’t a process as it were going on in the cell saying, ‘Look, be patient. It’s going to be a feather, believe me.’” To this, he retorted:
Um, there’s got to be a series of advantages all the way in the feather. If you can’t think of one then that’s your problem, not natural selection’s problem. Natural selection, um, well, I suppose that is a sort of matter of faith on my, on my part since the theory is so coherent and so powerful.
[From The Atheism Tapes, see The Gap Filler]
Voluminous likewise examples could be provided, within out context, here is one more from Francis Crick who admitted the following after asserting that “The god hypothesis is rather discredited”:
I went into science because of these religious reasons, there’s no doubt about that. I asked myself what were the two things that appear inexplicable and are used to support religious beliefs: the difference between living and nonliving things, and the phenomenon of consciousness.**
Now, he went into science in order to, materialistically, mechanistically, naturalistically, Atheistically, explain 1) the difference between living and nonliving things and that which appears to be the difference 2) the phenomenon of consciousness. Well, he seems to have gotten nowhere with this but did get a clear picture at the incredible information storage, correction, copying, etc. system with is DNA. Now, life the universe and everything is based on information and the only known source of information is mind—and this mind is what we call God.
Now, since Francis Crick’s worldview was Atheistic and Darwinian, upon being confronted with DNA he realized that it was intelligently designed but identified the intelligent designers as aliens (for details on this, see Atheism and Science : John Horgan, “In the Beginning…” – Scientific American).
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* Stephen Jay Gould, “In the Mind of the Beholder,” Natural History, 103(2): 14, Feb. 1994, pp. 14-16
** Roger Highfield, “Do our genes reveal the hand of God?,” The Telegraph, 20 Mar 2003 AD