Science and Faith/Religion are NOT Mutually Exclusive

Your argument is, "Look at all of these eminent scientists who were people of faith! Therefore, there is no conflict between faith/religion and science." I don't need to go through your list of religion scientists to refute your argument. Even if every scientist in history was a person of religious faith, faith would still be irrational and unscientific.Bertrand Russell said, "We may define 'faith' as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith". We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence."I know who Francis Collins is. I'm a fan of Kenneth Miller, a Catholic scientist who spoke against Intelligent Design in the Dover vs. Kitzmiller trial. I own his book, Finding Darwin's God. I understand that there are many good scientists who believe in God. But Christianity does not limit itself to "existential questions" about meaning, etc. It makes factual claims. When presented with a factual claim, a reasonable person examines the supporting evidence. Based on the evidence, he or she may accept the claim as probably true or dismiss the claim as probably false. Perhaps the claim is almost certainly true. Or, almost certainly false. Some claims are impossible to verify. There is no compelling reason to believe one way or the other; we just don't know. In that case, the person of science / reason acknowledges that they just don't know.In a person of faith, this system of evaluating claims is all screwed up when it comes to their religion. Here's an example:Did Jesus, in fact, walk on water? The truth is, we really don't know...but it's implausible. It's an extraordinary claim, and there is no extraordinarily good reason to believe that it's true. Yet a Christian would claim to be absolutely certain that Jesus did, in fact, walk on water. Why? What reason is there for this certainty? There is no reason; there is only faith. I didn't bring up the "rapist" analogy to insult Francis Collins or any other Christian scientist. I brought it up to illustrate my point: a rapist may be compassionate, but rape is not compassionate. A person of faith may be rational and/or scientific, but faith is not rational or scientific.Most scientists (especially eminent scientists) do not believe in God and are not people of faith:"In 1997, the British science journal Nature published the results of a random sampling of 1,000 scientists...approximately 40 percent of scientists proclaimed a belief in a personal God." (1)"...in a follow-up study [Edward] Larson and [Larry] Witham controlled for "eminance," or what their predecessor James Leuba called the "greater" scientists -- those who held 'superior knowledge, understanding, and experience.'" (1)"...Larson and Witham found...that when eminance is controlled for, disbelief in God rose to 69 percent among biologists, and 79 percent for physicists. When "doubt" or "agnosticism" is factored in, actual belief in God among eminent scientists (averaged over all fields) drops to a paltry 7 percent." (1)"It should be emphasized that these figures are for Americans. The United Kingdom, Europe, and other developed nations of the world show lower levels of belief for both the general population and among scientists..." (1)A few more things:-- I'm not an expert on the evolution of language. So I'll assume that everything you're saying here is true. If it's true that "language exiisted for hundreds and thousands of years" before there was any written texts, then there must have been some other type of evidence of language. Otherwise, we'd have no reason to infer that it existed.-- Yes, there is a plethora of miraculous claims. Skeptics don't waste their time debunking all of them. As for your claim that we "could disprove the church once and for all!" No, we couldn't. Here's the thing: "Anecdotes are unreliable for various reasons. Stories are prone to contamination by beliefs, later experiences, feedback, selective attention to details, and so on. Most stories get distorted in the telling and the retelling. Events get exaggerated. Time sequences get confused. Details get muddled. Memories are imperfect and selective; they are often filled in after the fact. People misinterpret their experiences. Experiences are conditioned by biases, memories, and beliefs, so people's perceptions might not be accurate. Most people aren't expecting to be deceived, so they may not be aware of deceptions that others might engage in. Some people make up stories. Some stories are delusions...Thus, stories of personal experience with paranormal or supernatural events have little scientific value. If others cannot experience the same thing under the same conditions, then there will be no way to verify the experience. If there is no way to test the claim made, then there will be no way to tell if the experience was interpreted correctly. If others can experience the same thing, then it is possible to make a test of the testimonial and determine whether the claim based on it is worthy of belief." (2)Sources(1) Michael Shermer, How We Believe (2) http://skepdic.com...