Sturgeon on science & religion

SF Gospel has an interesting quotation from an essay Theodore Sturgeon wrote on science and religion, in 1964. Here's a snippet:

Man's hands are God's work; the work of man's hands is God's work. (I spoke—and speak—for myself, of course.) .... The recurring suggestion that there's some sort of Armageddon going on between Science and Religion is, I think, a straw man for bigots. That Science has at one time or another dealt certain kinds of Religion a heavy blow, I do not argue. I do believe, however, that what received the blow was this or that set of fixed convictions, and not Religion itself. And I think that the idea that Science and Religion must of necessity be opposed to one another is a throwback at least to the 19th Century—perhaps farther—and that to engage in this battle any more is equivalent to, and as quaint as, re-fighting the War of the Roses...

I know personally a good many scientists. Being people, they present a cross-section of convictions and attitudes quite as varied as those of any people. In the area of religion, I have met scientists far more devout than I could ever want to be. I've met unmoved, habitual, Sunday-best churchgoers, backslid Orthodoxers; agnostics, atheists, and people who just don't care one way or another.

There is no secret sect of guys with test-tubes out to destroy the temples. There are more anti-religionists outside Science than in it... and if God thinks about this at all, He probably feels that He made a cosmos quite roomy enough to contain them all."

Read more here!

Sturgeon was a great author, and I'm a big fan of his work (particularly his short stories), which displays a fine mixture of intelligence and compassion.

His father was a Methodist minister, but as an adult Sturgeon doesn't seem to have belonged to any sort of clearly defined religion or irreligion. One site says he was a vocal atheist, while Adherents, which normally gets its facts straight, has him down as "Christian (denomination unknown)." I've also seen him described as a Taoist. He could be quite critical of organized religion. My sense, from reading his work, is that he blended some Taoist ideas with some Christian ideas, while remaining wary of any set creed.