Scientists and Atheists

A stone's throw from the tall building of the newly constucted Mount Sinai Medical center works a man almost as old as ancient as some of the textbooks that we have in our World History Classes. Although in the geological scale of time, that might be just a blink of an eye, in the rapidly evolving field of evolutionary biolgy, and genetics that time period is equivilent to a few eons. Dr. Levitan, one of the pioneers of his field, is a proffessor of Human Population Genetics at Mount Sinai School of Medacin. Although today his field has left him far behind, at one point his research was considered heretical. Yet still he goes, without fail, to the synagoge each week and never fails to celebrate any Jewish holiday, whether it be one as large as Hawnika or as small and insignificant as the Sabath. What leads him to be so devoted to god, despite his 60 years of expience in a field which teaches an idea completely condradictory to what religion teaches?

Throughout history, most scientists have been belivers in God. But during the past few centuries the scientific trend has been toward atheism. Up until now its had seemed that god's laws were so effective that the universe seemed to run itself. Yet as science makes new leaps and bounds in understanding the universe around us, it seems as if the trend toward atheism may be reversing.

All of the leading scientists of our day from Coperincous to Darwin, have been devote believers in god. Yet after the "darwinian revolution", with the idea of Evolution, our science's preception of nature, and god changed over the past 50 years. Gone where the dictates of the Roman Catholic chruch which forbidded scincists to publish ideas which went against the teachings of the bible. Without fear of retrebution and excomunication from the Chruch, or society, science was allowed to finally take flight, and research all go where it previously would never have dared. It is under these conditions that our understanding of the world was so greately changed. In less than a century we went from beliving that the world formed in seven days, to more like 70 billion, even that is a conservative estimate.

Yet as today science starts to tinker with the basic units of life, to extact its will upon nature. An amazing new trend has emerged amoungst scientists today. The smallest units of life, the cell functions in a stange way. While our textbooks and teachers would have us believe that everything that happens in life is a process, like flipping on a light switch, as you dwelve deeper into science you start to realize that everything that happens in due to chance. "Everything in life, from the basic process of moving you eyes to read this article, to comprehending is due to a random chain of events," said Junior Niel Mehra. "If just one of these events was to take place a different way than it usually does then you would have serious problems. Yet remarkably it always happens the same way. Time, and time again."

"Therecomes a point, in research, as you dwelve deeper and deeper into the mystery of life when you start to realize that there is no way this could have happend without an outside presence, " said Junior Jacob Berv. He continued, "then you come flying back to providence, and god to try and salvage what is left of your soul."