One thing that I seem to have noticed is that, within the field of science, the recent greatest minds to contribute to our understanding of the universe were believers. Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and many others all don’t believe in God. Many have even taken a hostile approach towards those who do. Even Albert Einstein, arguably the greatest scientist to ever live, had his own theory of God and thought the Bible to be foolish. As someone who is only building up my knowledge of theology and science, I don’t feel like I have any right to try and tell them (figuratively, that is. Again, this is just for how I reconcile it in my mind, not actually hunt these people down to scold them for their beliefs) that they are wrong. How am I to make sense of my faith in their absence of faith. Why do they see science as disproving God, and most of us here at Biologos do not?
Scientists are ordinary people, some believe, some not. As a former academic scientist, I observed that most of my colleagues were agnostics, some even close to atheists. That is the same situation as in the surrounding culture - most are or behave like agnostics, some (a minority) are even atheists.
Many of the believing scientists I know have made a decision to invest in something else in addition to science. As the agnostic/atheist scientists invest more time and energy to advancing their careers, the top positions tend to be manned by such people. Even at the top positions, some are believers. They just tend to be modest persons, not so blatant boasters as some others.
In our country, there have been made occasionally questionaries about who are the most famous scientists in this country. The lists tend to include such active persons who have made much PR - written popular books and articles, given interviews, been in TV shows. Some of them are active atheists. However, if we inspect the real merits and international fame of those people within the academic circles, they tend to be closer to average than top. They have just marketed themselves to the public in a very efficient way.