Science is a method of posing questions to nature (and the theories and facts derived by that method) and not a belief system. Science and belief systems can coexist peacefully if they know their limitations. Science will never tell you something about 'shoulds' (individual scientists may tell you but that is a completely different thing), you have to turn somewhere else to get responses to such questions. Belief systems, on the other hand, should keep their mouths shut about facts and theory testing, for the very nature of a belief system precludes effective testing of the basic tenets.

A god in a deistic sense is easily reconcilable with the scientific approach, a god in a theistic sense leads to bad science and therefore a theistic god has no place in a scientific theory. In that sense, no valid scientific theory will ever postulate a god as part of the theory whatever the scientists believe privately. The way a god's properties are described in belief systems there exists no possibility to prove the nonexistence of a god starting from a scientific approach. All they ever can hope for (or, perhaps, fear) is that the existence and interference of a god turns out to be an unnessessary hypothesis in the sense of Laplace.

'There is a probably apocryphal story, that when Laplace was asked by Napoleon, how God fitted into this system, he replied, 'Sire, I have not needed that hypothesis.' I don't think that Laplace was claiming that God didn't exist. It is just that He doesn't intervene, to break the laws of Science. That must be the position of every scientist. A scientific law, is not a scientific law, if it only holds when some supernatural being, decides to let things run, and not intervene.' (S. Hawkins)

Wolfgang