Atheists hardly make good scientists... and that’s actually from a sample study itself.
Actually, theists can't be good scientists unless they do the same work an atheist would do. As soon as their faith based beliefs plays a part in their work, it ceases to be science. Just look at the work of Isaac Newton. He developed calculus, and he did work in optics, gravity, and the laws of motion. The parts that are still valid and useful are exactly what a reason and evidence based thinker would have come up with, and which reason and evidence based thinkers today still find valid.
At exactly the point that Newton injected religion into his work, it stopped being science. Newton couldn't conceive of how the solar system could be stable without periodic nudging from God. He thought that the tug of the larger planets like Jupiter and Saturn would destabilize earth's orbit and send the earth into the sun or out of the solar system. Newton didn't have a mathematical model that could represent multiple bodies having gravitational effects on one another, and so he turned to religion and his
In 1798 Laplace chose not to view the mysterious stability of the solar system as the unknowable work of God, Laplace pioneered a new kind of mathematics called perturbation theory, which enabled him to examine the cumulative effects of many small forces. Laplace demonstrates that the solar system is stable over periods of time longer than Newton could predict.
Interestingly, when Laplace shared his work with Napoleon, who is said to have been physics literate, Napoleon allegedly asked Laplace what role God played in the regulation of the solar system. "Sire," Laplace answered, "I have no need of that hypothesis."
The point here is that as long as we stick to reason and evidence, we can do good science, but that as soon as we inject faith, no more progress will be made.
The ID people confirm that for us as well. Some have been published in reputable journals, but not for their work in ID. When they are published in the mainstream literature, it is for doing ordinary science - science that any atheist could have done, and which peer review, which presumably includes some atheists, found adequate.
But when they look for their god, they generate nothing of value. They're not doing science properly any more. They don't begin with evidence and draw inferences from it. They begin with a faith based idea - that a god intelligently designed the universe, and then set out to find supporting evidence wearing a faith based confirmation bias, something good science labors to neutralize, as when medical studies are double blinded to reduce patient and doctor biases. Neither knows whether the patient got the study drug or placebo.
The result of the confirmation bias is that ID people keep seeing irreducible complexity where there is none. That's a problem for good science. We want to see what is out there, not what a confirmation bias is willing to show us.
The competent scientist who is also a theist has learned to compartmentalize his faith and leave it outside of the laboratory or observatory door when he comes to work. That is, he is emulating his atheist colleagues.
You were disparagingly commenting earlier about atheists disagreeing with theists on Internet sites: "Atheists simply pretend they don’t care for believing in God but spend most all their free time on forums discussing their non belief in God!!! Ironic." This would be one reason why we are here.
