Isaac Newton was a devout Christian. Werner Heisenberg took inspiration for his noble prize winning uncertainty principle from the Vedic scriptures. Nikola Tesla also unashamedly proclaimed inspiration from the Vedas. Oppenheimer was fluent in sanskrit and thus studied the Vedas in the original language. He quoted Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita as the first nuclear explosion was detonated saying "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds". Shall I go on??
There is a vast difference between a genius and a really really smart guy. The word genius has the same origins as the word genesis with the idea of creating something from nothing. The difference between a genius and a very intelligent person is inspiration. Often (but not always) the inspired person realizes that their discoveries come from something greater than themselves.
This realization is probably more common with artists than it is with scientists. Two of the most prolific songwriters of the 20th century would be Jim Webb and Carol King (artistic geniuses in their own right). Years ago I heard Webb say that he didn't write his songs and that they already existed in the cosmos. He simply plucked them out of the ether like one might pick an apple from a tree. Last year I heard Carol King say that her songs did not come from her but rather through her. These statements may not be religion in the conventional sense as we are taught to understand it but it was certainly an acknowledgement of something greater than themselves. Sir Isaac Newton was no different in the acknowledging the source of his inspiration. Despite his mind boggling set of mathematical equations that define the universe (in the Newtonian sense) he still believed that it was the hand of God that caused the planets to orbit as they do. It was after his death that the hoards of non genius albeit very bright mathematicians and scientists came behind and stripped away Newton's references to the divine and reduced the universe to a clockwork like machine that only functioned because of the set of mathematical principles that Newton had defined.
