I do something still today that used to really piss my ex-wife off. I would find a subject and start thinking about it heavily. I have been reading a few old blogs I used to read often until they quit publishing. The one I was reading that led to this post was about how religious people claim it takes faith to believe in science. It seems to me that this type of statement requires you to redefine the word faith. We know that faith is believing something without the evidence to support that view. I know of no science that is based on no evidence.
I have conducted no studies nor do I plan to about this topic. The points I plan on making here are my opinions and mine alone. Some of the differences I see between these two types of people are scientist tend to avoid saying they are 100% sure and always welcome challenges. I have met a few theist that seem to welcome challenges but once you start showing the evidence against their view they tend to get less and less willing to accept anything but their own words. Most that believe in any religion tend to be 100% sure of their views and will throw any evidence out with the bathwater if it doesn't fit their views. Yes a scientist will have some faith in his/her new hypothesis but will tend to have more trust in his/her abilities. A scientist might not like it but if their idea is proven wrong to them, they will accept it and modify their views to fit the new evidence. Many religious people will ignore any evidence or throw the devil into the mix to avoid admitting they are wrong. Most scientist will keep up with any advances in their fields and those that are related to it. I can't say that i know of any people who are religious that keep up with advances other religions make other then the methods which will get them more followers.
Do both scientist and theist use fear to advance their views? Is money the main reason either of these groups attempt to advance their views? I know theist use fear as a tool to advance their religion but I don't think it is used by most scientist. There are some but most people who use fear to advance science aren't actually scientist. The problem is that most non-scientist see the fear invoked by these other none scientist as coming from scientist. Yes money is always a factor in both fields. The difference I see is that most scientist use the money they struggle to get to help all of mankind while religions tend to use it to just advance their own views and could care less about the harm done to others. I have no way of knowing the full numbers but I would be willing to bet all I have that less then 50% of the money given to churches actually helps anyone outside of that church. I would be about 75% willing to bet less then 25% goes to those in need outside the churches.