From Lawrence Krauss, director of the Origins Initiative and co-director of the Cosmology Initiative at Arizona State University:

I have appeared on numerous panels on science and religion, most recently on one at the World Science Festival in June. These appearances have validated for me, a scientist who finds no evidence for God and also finds the whole question irrelevant, various central concerns about public discussions of this topic:

1. There is really nothing of interest to say about science and religion. God or no God, it doesn’t make any difference to science, and science or no science, those who choose to believe will find a reason to.

2. Those people who claim to be members of a religious denomination, when pinned down on specific doctrinal issues or decrees that supposedly define their faith, inevitably retreat to vague generalizations, validating the notion that people want to believe in believing, and that the so-called sacred texts represent for most of them books from which they can pick and choose those things that appeal to them and discard those things that they find unappealing, validating their own a priori interpretation of the divine.

3. All sensible people of “faith” accept that science describes the physical world, and their religious faith needs to conform to the evidence science provides about nature. Their religious faith, in turn, is based on subjective impressions that usually revert to the statement that the remarkable nature of physical reality points for them to the need for a creator.

4. The supposed “faith” of scientists in the fact that the physical world is governed by well-defined laws bears nothing in common with religious faith. The former is validated by objective evidence, the latter validated by the lack of objective evidence.

5. Whatever people believe is irrelevant. The world is the way it is, and we need to understand that if we are to try and improve it.