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A few people have giving other Einstein quotes that don't go in the same direction. And they exist for a really simple reason: Einstein was a person, and like most people, his views changed over time. His early beliefs were close to deism, and over time he became more agnostic and in some of the comments made in his last few years (such as the quote given by langeljm below) closer to outright atheism (although his views were always complicated and changing enough that even this narrative is a simplification).

But none of this is really that relevant. There are clearly some very bright people who do very good science who are religious. Ken Miller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_R._Miller is a prominent biologist and religious Catholic. Similarly, Robert Aumann is an Orthodox Jew who won a Nobel Prize for his work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Aumann. While it is true that successful scientists are in general much less likely to be religious than the general population (see discussion here http://news.discovery.com/tech/are-scientists-atheists.html), some people are able to do very good work while still believing. The problem with ID proponents in a nutshell is that they can't keep straight which of of their beliefs fall into science and which fall into religion, and indeed by and large, they don't wan to.

But even this isn't that relevant to the matter at hand. In this particular case, the individual wasn't a scientist but a computer technician. And according to NASA he was fired for being disruptive, not for his actual beliefs. If it turns out that he was fired solely for his beliefs that will be a problem, but it is not likely. The ID people have a long history of claiming persecution where none exists. A very good example of this is how Expelled, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_Intelligence_Allowed Ben Stein's movie about ID being mistreated by the "scientific establishment", claimed that many people interviewed were fired or blacklisted for their pro-ID views, yet every case when actually examined turned out to be baseless. http://www.expelledexposed.com/ The same thing will probably happen here.

they are doing this to combat the abuses that Ben Stine discusses in his documentary, "Expelled".

The abuses were all Ben Stine's. All the horror stories of brave creationists standing up to a massive, evil, illogical conspiracy to preach evolution, who got fired as a result were actually all people whose careers were dead-ending for unrelated reasons. After all, it's less damaging to the ego to claim you were a victim rather than incompetent. I suppose the two might not be completely unrelated: if you're so dumb as to ignore all the evidence for evolution in favor of a simpleton's interpretation of your holy book, you probably aren't a very good scientist...

Anyway, the movie should have been called "Excused" rather than "Expelled" and if the great state of texas wanted to combat abuses related to that movie, they should be investigating Ben Stine for lying.

You MUST waste time dealing with bullshit claims from retards if you want people to accept your system of peer review for things you claim are true.

1. Evolutionary biologists HAVE for over a hundred and fifty years, since before "On the Origin of Species" was published.

2. There is nothing that says "Scientists must take all contrary claims, regardless of credibility or evidence, seriously." The creationist scientists saying they were discriminated against generally seem to be making excuses for their failures, or were otherwise unconvincing.

3. You're calling bullshit on the wrong side. Creationists/IDers are the ones trying to bypass the scientific debate (since they've lost for the last hundred years) to go directly into textbooks.

http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth

You should watch the movie Expelled, which covers exactly these topics, but dealing with Intelligent Design. It documents all the people who have lost their jobs or otherwise been punished for teaching ID... Except for one little detail: The movie lies throughout*. One of my favorite examples was when a was "forced" to remove his Intelligent design website from his university's web server. A shocking infringement of academic freedom! Except the professor taught electrical engineering, not evolutionary biology or anything remotely related. Oh, and he still has his job there, and continues to host the website, just on a different server. Maybe not so shocking after all.

Most of the Global Warming deniers have similar stories... They either didn't really suffer the fate that they claim, or the disciplinary act happened for other legitimate reasons but they use their belief to make a shitstorm for their being disciplined. Finally, in a few rare cases like that of George Taylor noted above, their beliefs truly do make them unable to adequately do the job that they were hired to do. You wouldn't hire someone who doesn't believe in evolution to teach a class on evolutionary theory, you wouldn't hire a communist to teach a class on stock trading, and you wouldn't hire someone who doesn't believe in abortion to teach a class on abortion procedures... Why would you hire someone who doesn't believe in global warming to educate the Governor on climate issues effecting his state?

* See Expelled Exposed for a full refutation of the topics covered in the movie. And to be honest, unless you want to study the techniques of how to (very badly) make a utterly dishonest documentary, I really can't recommend the movie... It doesn't even have much of Stein's normal wit.

All I see in these comments are anti-religious statements without much fact. You all should watch "Expelled", It is available on netflix and then talk with some facts.

Only a moronic religious nut job would consider that movie hard science or fact. Don't expect everyone to swallow that Judeo-Christian doodoo piecemeal just because you find it delicious.

Maybe you should read http://www.expelledexposed.com/ before calling them facts.

You've bought into the premise of Ben Stein's movie hook, line, and sinker, haven't you? You might want to check out Expelled Exposed to get the real story.

To get started learning about skepticism read blogs and listen to podcasts such as these:

http://www.skeptic.com/index.html
http://www.badastronomy.com/
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
http://whatstheharm.net/index.html
http://www.expelledexposed.com/

Then when you find a science topic you are interested in, read a lot of books about it so that you can be comfortable enough with the topic to think critically about new discoveries and claims and to explain it to others.

The blogs I listed tend to recommend more good books than I can keep up with.

Be warned though. Skepticism and science are addictive and fun and tend to piss off the intellectually lazy.

There's a word for what they're doing:

Stein actually told the people he interviewed for the movie that he was making a completely different film (philosophy, I think)

How do you know this? (I don't know any different, but that's a pretty strong statement to make.)

Expelled Exposed rules.

The comments here are basically taking the movie at it's word -- that Intelligent Designers are being "expelled" from academia.

This is a lie. The whole movie is a lie. The irony of both invoking Nazis, yet so successfully implementing the "Big Lie" strategy has to set some kind of reprehensible high water mark.

The three "expelled" people presented in the movie -- these are the worst stories the filmmakers could find -- involved a professor who failed to get tenure because he wasn't good enough, a woman who had her contract run out and didn't have it renewed, and them someone who said he was "fired" from the Smithsonian, despite actually being an unpaid research assistant whose term ran out.

Compare and contrast.

This movie makes utterly baseless claims that the academic freedom of ID proponents is under attack.

This is a lie.

Yet, they tell the lie, and then you look at comments about the movie, and you have people assuming that the truth is "somewhere in the middle", or that "both sides need to be considered", or some other trite cliche.

Why do they get a free pass here? Seriously, the production of this movie has been filled with lies by the makers -- these allegedly religious people -- and yet, people still take the movie at face value.

They lied to the interviewees, they attempted to pirate animations used in the movie, after being humiliated during the pre-release screenings they lied to cover it up, they lied to the people who wanted to see screenings -- they're liars.

And then you look at comments here, and people talk like the movie makes valid arguments -- it does not. Aside from lies about academic suppression, it's just one long Godwin -- "there's a very tenuous link between social Darwinism and the philosophy of the Nazis, therefore believing in Evolution leads to the Holocaust".

If, in an argument, someone tells baseless, reprehensible lies about a subject, the truth isn't "somewhere in the middle". The liars are really just lying.

Excellent, they released them just in time, that Expelled movie comes out tomorrow. Hopefully someone can convince Ben Stein that evolution isn't lightning striking a mud puddle.

http://www.expelledexposed.com/

Truth is truth regardless of points of view. Open discussions are great but science still places a large emphasis on empirical evidence. When it comes to evolution you can find the evidence everywhere. Half the time the evidence is found lying on he ground.

...but it's interesting that this "documentary" opens tomorrow.