• Question: Are you religious and if so does it affect your work and ideas??

    Asked by ltgclr12 to Ben, Clare, Ezzy, Mario, Sam on 14 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by thandi12, 10amihayb3, dyaskelly.
    • Photo: Clare Burrage

      Clare Burrage answered on 14 Mar 2012:


      I’m not religious, although I know many scientists who are. To do science well you need to keep an open mind, and question everything about the subject you are studying. Lots of people can do this and still be religious.
      As I’m not religious I don’t have any expectations about how the universe should be, and so I keep a very open mind when I’m trying to study how it’s behaving!

    • Photo: Mario Campanelli

      Mario Campanelli answered on 14 Mar 2012:


      no, I am an atheist. There is no direct connection between what you study and things like the existence of god (so, forget about things like the god particle), but there is a difference in mentality. In science you need to accept the results of new discoveries, and be ready to change your point of view continuously, and this way of thinking is difficult to reconcile with dogmatic religion, but some scientists are religious and there’s nothing bad about that. Many others have a “cosmological view”, with some spirituality, but do not belong to any organised religion.

    • Photo: Elizabeth Pearson

      Elizabeth Pearson answered on 19 Mar 2012:


      No I’m not religious. Any beliefes I do have on that front I make sure to keep out of my work as it’s really unscientific to go into anything thinking you know the answer already.

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