Meet an atheist ... who believes in God

[struggle4progress]

20. I'm no expert, but it's my understanding that quantum field theory

only partially reconciles relativity with quantum mechanics

Of course, "atheism" and "belief in god" are by definition inconsistent -- but that doesn't mean that one and the same person might not behave as an "atheist" for some purposes in some circumstances and as a "believer in god" for other purposes in other circumstances

Consider the situation of a physicist, whose professional task is to develop physics further. Now, the object of physics to provide usable explanations of certain "natural phenomena" in terms of "natural laws." Here "usable explanation" means something like "a conceptual scheme leading to computational methods that produce correct predictions of experimental results." Physics involves predictions we can make on the basis of conditions we can control. Notions about all-powerful personalities outside space and time cannot be helpful for progress in physics: beyond the obvious fact that we ourselves do everything in space and time, any all-powerful personalities would always be able to defeat our ability to make correct predictions about experiments. So when one looks for computational methods leading to correct predictions, there's absolutely no reason to attempt to take into account any possible all-powerful personalities, since there is absolutely no way we could take them into account. It doesn't matter whether the physicist thinks some god might exist, or doesn't know whether or not some god exists, or thinks it unlikely some god exists -- the issue simply won't appear in any professional paper detailing the work the physicist does

But I don't see how that prevents the physicist from holding certain religious views or from believing in some god. It's a separate matter.