First Antony Flew now other skeptics; scientists taking leaps of faith

The New York Times has a very fascinating question of several prominent scientists recently. The newspaper asked the following question: "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" Naturally the responses gravitated around the question of religious faith and the existence of God. Most of the answers were insigthful revealing a diversity of opinion among the men and women of the test tube. The neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University and author of "A Primate's Memoir" gives a tough but reasonable answer that in my mind agitates the existential angst of human life

Mine would be a fairly simple, straightforward case of an unjustifiable belief, namely that there is no god(s) or such a thing as a soul (whatever the religiously inclined of the right persuasion mean by that word). ...I'm taken with religious folks who argue that you not only can, but should believe without requiring proof. Mine is to not believe without requiring proof. Mind you, it would be perfectly fine with me if there were a proof that there is no god. Some might view this as a potential public health problem, given the number of people who would then run damagingly amok. But it's obvious that there's no shortage of folks running amok thanks to their belief. So that wouldn't be a problem and, all things considered, such a proof would be a relief - many physicists, especially astrophysicists, seem weirdly willing to go on about their communing with god about the Big Bang, but in my world of biologists, the god concept gets mighty infuriating when you spend your time thinking about, say, untreatably aggressive childhood leukemia.

Liberty Corner has additional comments on the "Limits of Science."