Can natural scientists believe in the supernatural? Religious and theistic beliefs are lowest in the natural sciences like biology and physics, which suggests that there is indeed a contradiction here. Belief in supernatural causation would appear to contradict the methodological naturalism which is the foundation of the natural sciences. Nevertheless, some scientists manage to compartmentalize their beliefs so well that they maintain supernatural religion at home and naturalism on the job.
Albert Einstein didn't believe that these two positions should be held by natural scientists. In Science and Religion (1941), he argued that natural scientists cannot legitimately believe in the reality of supernatural causes behind natural events:
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exist as an independent cause of natural events.
To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with the natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal.
For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress.
It's probably not surprising that religious leaders have refused to heed Einstein's advice not to take refuge in the "dark" of what science has yet to illuminate. On the one hand, religion is indeed forced to constantly retreat and narrow its claims on behalf of its god, but on the other religion would have to explicitly abandon all of its traditional doctrines. Both are arguably fatal: the former will mean that religion is continually squeezed and forced to make excuses for its errors; the latter will eliminate much of what encourages religious passion and commitment.
Unfortunately, there are far too many religious believers in the world who would prefer a retreating religion that still tries to defend traditional doctrines than a religion which admits that the doctrines wrong to begin with. Conservatism requires that the alleged "truths" of the past be held to tightly because otherwise, there won't be anything to conserve. Holding on to the superstitions and falsehoods of the past does, however, accomplish exactly what Albert Einstein feared: incalculable harm to human progress.
