One acts like a 'Know it all' and the other 'wants to learn it all'

I've met scientists who say God exists and the universe is billions of years old. Their perspective is definitely a bit different. They see themselves as discoverers of God's work but their academic work was just as valid as their atheist colleagues. Most often they were the first to criticize their church and continued to believe. Blew my mind.

Their academic work is only valid if it doesn't incorporate their religion. Because faith has no value in science.
- lol, actually, good science would be on the left side of the image, at least after giving an answer to a question. Good science will actually prove something, then give the answer, then have no reason to continue to find another answer for it (whatever the issue is.) If you are giving a different answer year after year (like say for the age of the earth), then aren't you admitting that so far you haven't known the answer?
  That's not really the take of the modern philosophy of science. All modern schools of thought when it comes to science have the acceptance of falsehoods embedded into their nodels. I'll give a few examples:
  Karl Popper famously stated that science cannot prove that anything is true, only that something is false. Thus, any scientific theory that's still accepted is regarded as not yet being proven wrong. Science is just a cycle of giving theories, proving them wrong, giving new ones to account for the problem of the old one and so on, ever getting closer to the truth, but never arriving.
  Thomas Kuhn wrote about scientific paradigms, which are models of the field in question that every scientist uses (for example Aristotelian motion, which was surpassed by Newtonian mechanics, which were surpassed by Einstein's relativity). During the period of "normal science", scientists are using their established methods until they end up with too many problems they cannot resolve, at which point it is accepted that the paradigm cannot hold up, and a scientific revolution needs to bring forth a new paradigm, that is incomparable with the old one. Some knowledge is lost in this process, but we move on until the next crisis.
  Paul Feyerabend wrote about countet-induction, which prevents science becoming a dogma. An example he gives is Copernicus going completely against the science of his time with his heliocentric system. The Ptolemaic system was as cutting edge science back then as quantum mechanics is today.
  All in all, findings being continuously disproven and replaced by new ones is not bad science, it is science. Achieving actual, "true", positive knowledge of the world, documenting it and saying "that's it, we solved this problem, we're done" is not something modern science event attempts at.
- We pretty confident in the age of the Earth and have been pretty confident in its age for quite some time if you asked 20 scientists they will all give you pretty much the same answer. I don't know where you're getting this belief that the age of the Earth is in debate.
  
  I cannot speak to the quality of the documentaries you're watching since you don't actually list them.
  But I can assure you we are extremely confident we know the age of the Earth. In fact we have known the age of the Earth with high confidence longer than we've known age of the universe that contains it.
  The ages of various life forms on the earth are much more nebulous but the age of the actual rock that makes the planet up, is known.
  
  Go look it up. This is known stuff. It isn't a guess it's based on evidence.
  
  Oh well if you're "pretty sure" then I won't argue with you.
  After all, you have a feeling on the subject. Don't bother to look it up or anything. Remaining deliberately uninformed is so much more appealing doing a quick Google search.
- then aren’t you admitting that so far you haven’t known the answer?
  That's the point of science. Humility and requestioning yourself everytime someone gives new input, instead of sticking to some old text that some human wrote and multiple other humans over a long period of time, translated; all using lossy translation techniques.
  This mentality is similar to what you will see from many people in places of power (no matter how small), trying to evade criticism using the same social power that they need to be responsible about. Just that in case of religion, one has found a scapegoat, so unassailable that it can be reused indefinitely.
  You can see, which approach is more desirable by simply considering the following facet of the result that we have when we have a science majority vs a religion majority...
  In times when religious organisations were in power, those who criticised them were killed and their works destroyed to as much of an extent as possible
  In times when scientific thought was prevalent (scientific organisations don't get social power owing to their lack of charisma, which stems from the very basic attribute of the modern philosophy of science - that one can be wrong) the religious organisations criticising science are not destroyed until almost extinction, but are allowed to question all results and have the opportunity to aggregate their views.
  You will always see some kind of religion vs another
  You might see "science-ism" vs some other religion
  You will see political orgs (which represent one of the peaks of social power in the current age) vs some politico-religional orgs trying to destroy and silence the other
  You will not see science trying to silence a religion
  You will see businessmen trying to use scientific results as a stepladder to social power. You will also see them fail in the long term, simply due to the nature of science.
  
  I think modern science has disregarded the scientific method as not required anymore to make claims about what we “know”.
  Yeah, that's one of the pretty big problems I see happening in the current scenario.
  People becoming way more hand-wavy about having been proven wrong, which sometimes seems (we can't know whether it actually is) outright disingenuous.
  The religion related scenario I painted was probably possible due to how long it lasted. Maybe we will have to wait for this one to last long enough to know whether what it yields is as undesirable or more.
  For now, at least I don't see it going in the same direction as the religion power, simply because it's not the science people that are holding power, but other politics oriented ones. So if it were to go in an undesirable direction in the far future, it would have to be in some other direction.
  
  The science guys will always do science.
  Even if the patronages stop.
  Even if other's start killing them for it.
  Even if the whole society calls them a heretic.
  The quest for truth defines them.
  Just don't mistake them for science bros

I've seen a lot of conservative (the American Republican model) Christians but I have also seen what I consider to be "true" Christians, with a strong faith and love for everyone, and part of that faith often involves confronting reality, thinking about solutions to problems, helping the poor and weak. I agree with you that it's not all black and white. A lot of Christians don't believe in the literal text of the Bible for its supernatural claims, but instead they read it (and other religious texts, there are a lot of religious people who do some multi-track drifting) for its morals and guiding principles, which can all be interpreted in different ways, and there is a lot of discourse in religious circles about the meaning and morals of texts, about finding ancient wisdom or reinterpreting old texts to better suit modern standards. It can be a very research intensive way of life to be religious and have faith. I'd argue that if you have any principles at all that you stick to, that counts as faith.

- You have to accept that religions can be wrong about some things to have the view that they're all different paths to God.
  Plus everyone should turn a critical eye to their own religion, every holy text and every doctrine has both wheat and chaff.
  
  If you reduce an entire religion down to a single axiom, then sure, they can be entirely contradictory.
  But religions aren't like that, they are each a thousand different beliefs, rituals, and directives. There are enough similarities in message to see a commonality between them.
  Like you said, it's all the same path to God, some paths are a bit more meandering than others, and some claim that there are no other paths.
  
  Religions are a single axiom and nothing else? Which ones?
- I don't think you need to be so black and white. you can pick and choose what goes into your faith, and still remain 95% christian. I guess to me the label just doesn't matter very much. also if the Pope claims that to accept all faith is christian, then that is very much what Catholic Christianity is. the Pope also plays a guiding and interpreting role, and you can choose to go with his interpretation or not.
I agree. Western Christianity is a perversion of the religion imo. To be fair a large part of biblical text has absolutely nothing to do with the teachings of Christ and that confuses a lot of people. A lot of them seem to be quite contradictory to what he was saying.
If anyone is into reading interesting books these helped to clarify Christianity for me. I do not consider myself a Christian ( maybe in my next life) but Jesus was a radical cat and what he did at that point in history was revolutionary .
Leo Tolstoy , The Kingdom Of God Is Within You. This one may turn you into a Vegan Anarchist so watch out
Swami Sri Yukteswar, The Holy Science
Tao Te Ching , Lao Tzu ...this one has nothing to do with Christianity but helped me understand what God ( the Supreme Being , God Head, Jah, Allah or whatever you want to call the source) was in simple terms. It's a quick read
Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of A Yogi.
- That Tolstoy book sounds interesting, I'll have to check it out.
  There are versions of the Bible where Big J's words are written in red text, that's what I would recommend to people so they focus on the part that matters (for Christians)
  
  Tolstoy was an interesting individual...and a great writer. Enjoy
  
  I finished The Kingdom of God is Within You, I really enjoyed it. The book aligned with many of my prior beliefs about Christianity and the Church, which was very validating. I appreciated the insight into the state of eighteenth century Russia, which I never want to visit. And lastly it made me deeply consider how much my current job makes me a party to violence. You're right about it potentially making someone an anarchist.
  Thank you again for mentioning it.
  
  I have given physical copys to a few people over the years and not a damn one read it. They claimed they were " true Christians " , I fear it would have gone over their heads anyhow.
  I actually did quit a job that I was previously planning on retireing from after some deep reflection caused by Tolstoy's writing.
  As a kid I was under the impression that was how a Christian would behave and then I became jaded as I grew older. When I read it I thought "that is how they should behave" and it was refreshing to hear someone talk like that.
  I personally do not consider myself Christian, I agree with Nitzsche that "there was but only one Christian and he died on the cross" (i can't remember the exact quote, it was from the book " the Anti-Christ") but reading The Kingdom Of God is Within You sparked a genuine curiosity about Christ and religion in general.
  Glad you enjoyed it ✌️

That's how you know to not take them seriously