America's fastest-growing brand of belief is non-belief, says biologist (and guest columnist here) Jerry Coyne in a USA Today editorial.
The religious approach to understanding inevitably results in different faiths holding incompatible "truths" about the world...Because there's no way to decide, religions have duked it out for centuries, spawning humanity's miserable history of religious warfare and persecution.

In contrast, scientists don't kill each other over matters such as continental drift. We have better ways to settle our differences.
Not sure on his math - 6% atheism has been the number for decades - but he is on target when he says efforts to reconcile the two are pointless - science is about explaining the world according to natural laws and religion is another thing entirely.    Thus it is not confusing (to anyone but atheists) why 44% of scientists are also religious.