Well that goes to show that even Galileo and Copernicus could be idiots too on their off-days.

Unfortunately for religion, it is severely affected by science, ever more so as more and more of the ancient sacred myths are debunked by new evidence (and my, how religion squeals). The planets going round the sun provoked huge resistance from religion even in the face of insurmountable evidence. Evolution, likewise. Fortunately for Darwin, he lived slightly after the period when he might have been chucked into a dungeon, but the Christians (ordinary ones, not just fundamentalists, people conceivably just like you), didn't half give the poor bugger some stick, so much so that he went around at times worrying more about diplomacy than being able freely to communicate the science. We're nanoseconds away from the Big Bang, and guess what: not a trace of the supernatural in sight. Because Christianity doesn't understand science, there are frequent manifestations of absurdity that, if we let them, make nonsense of the whole thing. The vain attempts to reconcile God and evolution spring to mind, with well-meaning but ignorant believers telling us that God kicked off evolution, or that he runs it from the background like a well-oiled machine, or is some kind of driving force. Science is strong enough to be invulnerable from being made a mockery of in this manner, as honesty, evidence and reason will always prevail in the end, characteristics egregiously missing from religious faith. A century and a half after Darwin, religion's unwilling great nemesis, we still have to endure these dismal pseudoscientific notions, even from several of you in this thread. And after millennia of Christianity we get pete. Who you defend!!

Having said all that, of course, it isn't impossible for a fellow to be a good scientist and still go to mass on Sunday. He isn't thinking straight in the case of the latter, of course, but as long as he keeps them apart... He would struggle if his science ever took him to the point where it meets with serious philosophy, but, mostly, he'd manage all right. We can all do things that seem incongruous side by side. In a matter of hours, I can listen to a Beethoven late quartet, score in hand, and then watch Liverpool on the telly with a big bag of pork scratchings and a bottle of Peroni. I get by.