The author evidently wants us to take away the idea that Maxwell's and Faraday's religious positions were causes of their scientific success. But nothing in the

The author evidently wants us to take away the idea that Maxwell's and Faraday's religious positions were causes of their scientific success. But nothing in the article (so it seems to me) actually suggests any such thing; the great majority of it is simply observing that Maxwell and Faraday were both (1) very good scientists and (2) devout Christians. Which, indeed, they were, but that's a far cry from saying -- as the author does at the end of the article, on the basis of pretty much no evidence at all -- "These men’s insights into physics were made possible by their religious commitments". The author claims that belief in God "encouraged analogy as an explanatory strategy" and "encouraged the idea of conservation as a fundamental unifying principle". You might think, from this, that Faraday or Maxwell had actually written something to support this. "What the Creator does in one domain, we may expect to find him doing in another", or "As all things are sustained in existence by Eternal Perfection, so we should find that certain of their qualities remain unchanging through time". But in fact he cites nothing from either scientist along such lines. The few connections he finds them actually making between their scientific and religious beliefs and attitudes are of quite a different sort (e.g., Maxwell suggesting that if all molecules have identical properties, this suggests they're manufactured by someone). One quite frequently encounters works like this one, arguing that religion somehow provides a particularly congenial basis for science to flourish. I would find them more plausible if I ever encountered a single one whose research and writing weren't funded by the Templeton Foundation. (Not because there's anything very terrible about the Templeton Foundation. But because if everyone they fund argues for this position and no one else does, it does slightly call into question what's going on. Not necessarily anything dishonest, but it's at least possible that the only reason we hear such ideas so often is that when the Templeton Foundation finds someone expressing them it reaches into its deep pockets and buys them a megaphone.)