ABC News reported yesterday that 17% of scientists claiming to be atheists go to church, “although not too often, and not because they feel a spiritual yearning to join the faithful.”

A survey conducted by researchers at Rice University found that unbelieving scientists go to church not for themselves, but for their kids, and not because they think their kids need God, but just so they can “make up their own minds on what to believe.”

Researcher Elaine Howard Ecklund explained that some of the scientists who take their kids to church “actually see it as part of their scientific identity…They want to teach their children to be free thinkers, to give them religious choices, and so they take their children to religious organizations just to give them exposure to religion.”

Now it would be easy to smirk and snort over such a thing, thinking – if not actually muttering under our breath – “Hypocrites!” That would be easy.

I prefer to applaud such open-mindedness and to take it as an indicator that the wall between religion and science is perhaps a bit more porous than some of us might think.

It is a characteristic of a scientific mind to be open to possibilities not yet known or experienced. The scientist who has simply written off religion is not acting in a very scientific manner. The one who takes his kids to church so that they can have all the information they need to make up their own minds about such questions is acting out of a true scientific frame of reference.

Now if we could just see more of that mindset when it comes to introducing religious perspectives into the work of science.

Just because a secular scientist has not yet experienced spiritual reality doesn’t mean such realities don’t exist. But if he rules them out on the basis of his own experience, and that of other trusted colleagues, how does he account for the fact that many scientists confess to regularly experiencing such phenomena, and that such phenomena affect the way they do their work?

A scientific mind would be open to discussing that, I would think. Surely if an unbelieving scientist wants his children to think about such matters, he might be more open than we think – given the right conditions and conversation partner – to considering them for himself?

Christians who work in the sciences bear the burden for pursuing this question within their disciplines and among their colleagues. If they do, they may be surprised to discover other scientists – perhaps even some atheists – who are willing to engage in serious conversation about beings and experiences, the reality of which their discipline and methods are ill-suited to resolve.