Publication claims nearly 50% of top scientists religious

[Lagmonster]

There's a bit of buzz about a new book being published on a survey and study of the personal beliefs of a selection of some of America's top scientists, partially in an effort to dispel the frequently-touted claim (from Hollywood to the religious right) that all scientists are anti-religious atheists. She states that nearly 50% of those she interviewed self-described as religious, and discusses some of the barriers, tensions, and misconceptions about religious belief among the scientific profession.

You can read more about the book here (Oxford University Press store link); unfortunately, I haven't got a copy yet as the book hasn't quite been released, but I'll be curious to see how reasonable her conclusions are.

To be honest, my own feelings - sight unseen - amount to, "...but she only seems to have talked to Americans", but just as it could be asinine to expect the same results in, say, China, I understand that it is America that has the huge stick up its public ass about those evil atheist scientists.

[PeZook]

I'm not sure. During the funeral of the Polish president, the Archbishop Of Poland (or whatever the fuck his official title is) made a little speech praising him, and he said (on air, in prime time, in front of dozens of delegates from the entire world) that he put a stop to "decades of institutionalized atheization".

Of course, it's not a blow against a study to say that it restricts itself to national boundaries, as long as it doesn't try to draw conclusions outside those boundaries. Studies exist to examine a particular question, after all.

[Darth Wong]

I could believe that 50% of scientists are religious. The word "religious", after all, encompasses everything from "I just believe in some kind of vague supernatural thing out there" and "Earth only 6000 years old, Flintstones frolicked with dinosaurs, Great Flood is geologic fact, raaaarrrr" lunatics.

It's still far less than the religious proportion in the general population.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I could believe that 50% of scientists are religious. The word "religious", after all, encompasses everything from "I just believe in some kind of vague supernatural thing out there" and "Earth only 6000 years old, Flintstones frolicked with dinosaurs, Great Flood is geologic fact, raaaarrrr" lunatics.

It's still far less than the religious proportion in the general population.

And when it gets broken down, there will be a LOT of jews. A massively disproportionate number of them. A hafty chunk of deists and pantheists will be present. There will be more religious physicists and (if she includes them) mathematicians and engineers. These will be followed by geologists, and finally, biologists. I can count the number of theists in any biology department I have ever been inside on maybe both hands, and most of those were jews.

[adam_grif]

Last I heard, ~90% of Americans were Christian, so ignoring all other religions, that's a 40% drop for "top scientists".

[Lagmonster]

I'm not sure. During the funeral of the Polish president, the Archbishop Of Poland (or whatever the fuck his official title is) made a little speech praising him, and he said (on air, in prime time, in front of dozens of delegates from the entire world) that he put a stop to "decades of institutionalized atheization".

I'd expect that kind of a response from an Archbishop; that makes sense. In America, the phrases 'scientists were playing God' and 'ignored Nature/God/The Supernatural at their peril' are so commonplace they turn up as standard cliches in just about every Hollywood movie ever made about scientists.

You hear it from the average Joes on the street, on talk shows, everywhere - not just from the leading religious authorities that you'd expect it from. That isn't to say that the average person in Poland doesn't act that way, but it's hard to ignore the clamour Americans make about scientists.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Dawkins already addressed this in the God Delusion, and added some very interesting additional information for context; while religiosity among most scientists was around 40% and the general public was 90%, the most distinguished and skilled scientists who were elected to the National Academy of Sciences reported in at being only 7% religious, shedding light on a most interesting trend.

[Liberty]

Dawkins already addressed this in the God Delusion, and added some very interesting additional information for context; while religiosity among most scientists was around 40% and the general public was 90%, the most distinguished and skilled scientists who were elected to the National Academy of Sciences reported in at being only 7% religious, shedding light on a most interesting trend.

Clearly, science is an evil invented by Satan to lure true Christians away from God. Or wait! Perhaps it's that there is so much bias and prejudice among scientists that only those who endorse the scientific religion "atheism" are actually allowed to succeed.

It's kind of funny that fundies who say there is a war between science and religion are partly right...after all, science has made "god" obsolete.

[Darth Wong]

Dawkins already addressed this in the God Delusion, and added some very interesting additional information for context; while religiosity among most scientists was around 40% and the general public was 90%, the most distinguished and skilled scientists who were elected to the National Academy of Sciences reported in at being only 7% religious, shedding light on a most interesting trend.

Clearly, science is an evil invented by Satan to lure true Christians away from God. Or wait! Perhaps it's that there is so much bias and prejudice among scientists that only those who endorse the scientific religion "atheism" are actually allowed to succeed.

It's kind of funny that fundies who say there is a war between science and religion are partly right...after all, science has made "god" obsolete.

Or at least pointed out that he's useless, which is better since "obsolete" implies that he was useful at one time.

Mind you, I'm still fond of my mathematical proof that the probability of a monotheistic God approaches zero. All you need to do is get the religious person to admit that all religions have equal claim on the truth: something most moderates will cop to easily. Hardcore fundies won't, of course, but they're beyond any kind of reason anyway.

[TithonusSyndrome]

I don't like it for the simple reason that it will embolden theosophists and other "progressive" religionists; they need only to claim that each and every God is merely a different cultural manifestation of the same single divine universal power, and will take your argument as further proof of their claim.

[Darth Wong]

I don't like it for the simple reason that it will embolden theosophists and other "progressive" religionists; they need only to claim that each and every God is merely a different cultural manifestation of the same single divine universal power, and will take your argument as further proof of their claim.

If they're going to be that massively dishonest, they can simply deny that all religions have equal claim on validity. Obviously, they're suppressing the fact that not all religions are sufficiently similar enough for such a declaration.

[TithonusSyndrome]

I don't like it for the simple reason that it will embolden theosophists and other "progressive" religionists; they need only to claim that each and every God is merely a different cultural manifestation of the same single divine universal power, and will take your argument as further proof of their claim.

If they're going to be that massively dishonest, they can simply deny that all religions have equal claim on validity. Obviously, they're suppressing the fact that not all religions are sufficiently similar enough for such a declaration.

"Massively dishonest" is apt enough a way to describe it, but they are kind of getting off on a technicality; they're not arguing on behalf of any religion of any kind and concede readily that they're all equally wrong, what they're arguing on behalf of is something more non-denominational or vaguely spiritual. They grant lip service along the lines of "oh they made some valuable observations once but are all totally corrupt by now" and insist that the true divine creator of the universe is merely "glimpsed" in each of them, and that a new way forward of some kind is the answer.

I've probably argued with more of these fucks than I've argued with fundies, no lie, and each and every time they just come across as slimy little weasels who are making little concessions to atheistic arguments here and there, but jumping ship from traditional religion to their more evasive progressive movements all for pitiful egotistical reasons and fear of admitting that they were wrong - not even that God may not exist, but just plain old pride and stubborn inability to admit defeat for reasons of personal image.

[Darth Wong]

I don't like it for the simple reason that it will embolden theosophists and other "progressive" religionists; they need only to claim that each and every God is merely a different cultural manifestation of the same single divine universal power, and will take your argument as further proof of their claim.

If they're going to be that massively dishonest, they can simply deny that all religions have equal claim on validity. Obviously, they're suppressing the fact that not all religions are sufficiently similar enough for such a declaration.

"Massively dishonest" is apt enough a way to describe it, but they are kind of getting off on a technicality; they're not arguing on behalf of any religion of any kind and concede readily that they're all equally wrong, what they're arguing on behalf of is something more non-denominational or vaguely spiritual.

That's why I make a clear point of specifying "monotheistic God". I can knock down the monotheistic God using that proof. What you're talking about is not a monotheistic God: it's just the Vague Unknown.

They grant lip service along the lines of "oh they made some valuable observations once but are all totally corrupt by now" and insist that the true divine creator of the universe is merely "glimpsed" in each of them, and that a new way forward of some kind is the answer.

I've probably argued with more of these fucks than I've argued with fundies, no lie, and each and every time they just come across as slimy little weasels who are making little concessions to atheistic arguments here and there, but jumping ship from traditional religion to their more evasive progressive movements all for pitiful egotistical reasons and fear of admitting that they were wrong - not even that God may not exist, but just plain old pride and stubborn inability to admit defeat for reasons of personal image.

Against those people I switch to science, and harp on the terms "utterly useless" and "nonsense", which are the only appropriate descriptions of such a concept when viewed in a scientific context. I also like to bring up the possibility that the universe was actually produced by the flatulence of a giant turtle, and ask them to disprove my Cosmic Turtle theory. It doesn't change their minds, but the ridicule can amuse onlookers. In any case, the mathematical proof is useful specifically against people who believe in a monotheistic God.

[TithonusSyndrome]

They grant lip service along the lines of "oh they made some valuable observations once but are all totally corrupt by now" and insist that the true divine creator of the universe is merely "glimpsed" in each of them, and that a new way forward of some kind is the answer.

I've probably argued with more of these fucks than I've argued with fundies, no lie, and each and every time they just come across as slimy little weasels who are making little concessions to atheistic arguments here and there, but jumping ship from traditional religion to their more evasive progressive movements all for pitiful egotistical reasons and fear of admitting that they were wrong - not even that God may not exist, but just plain old pride and stubborn inability to admit defeat for reasons of personal image.

Against those people I switch to science, and harp on the terms "utterly useless" and "nonsense", which are the only appropriate descriptions of such a concept when viewed in a scientific context. I also like to bring up the possibility that the universe was actually produced by the flatulence of a giant turtle, and ask them to disprove my Cosmic Turtle theory. It doesn't change their minds, but the ridicule can amuse onlookers. In any case, the mathematical proof is useful specifically against people who believe in a monotheistic God.

I guess what I'm saying is that I dislike the kind of arguments that could be seen as a lead-in to jump ship from traditional religion to vague new age horseshit, because then it feels like they missed the whole point. The American Religious Identification Survey suggests approximately about a 25% apostasy rate among Americans, but rather frustratingly, it doesn't really offer much data on whether or not these people get the point and become non-believers, or whether they merely sign on with a more slippery movement like the kind of new age crap that fewer people are versed in how to criticize and are all too eager to ape scientific jargon to serve their cause. I'd rather just go whole hog and stick to arguments that strike broadly across all supernatural beliefs, because while arguments that target a specific kind may not endorse any others, that's not how people who are intent on remaining religious with their pride intact see it.

[Darth Wong]

They grant lip service along the lines of "oh they made some valuable observations once but are all totally corrupt by now" and insist that the true divine creator of the universe is merely "glimpsed" in each of them, and that a new way forward of some kind is the answer.

I've probably argued with more of these fucks than I've argued with fundies, no lie, and each and every time they just come across as slimy little weasels who are making little concessions to atheistic arguments here and there, but jumping ship from traditional religion to their more evasive progressive movements all for pitiful egotistical reasons and fear of admitting that they were wrong - not even that God may not exist, but just plain old pride and stubborn inability to admit defeat for reasons of personal image.

Against those people I switch to science, and harp on the terms "utterly useless" and "nonsense", which are the only appropriate descriptions of such a concept when viewed in a scientific context. I also like to bring up the possibility that the universe was actually produced by the flatulence of a giant turtle, and ask them to disprove my Cosmic Turtle theory. It doesn't change their minds, but the ridicule can amuse onlookers. In any case, the mathematical proof is useful specifically against people who believe in a monotheistic God.

I guess what I'm saying is that I dislike the kind of arguments that could be seen as a lead-in to jump ship from traditional religion to vague new age horseshit, because then it feels like they missed the whole point. The American Religious Identification Survey suggests approximately about a 25% apostasy rate among Americans, but rather frustratingly, it doesn't really offer much data on whether or not these people get the point and become non-believers, or whether they merely sign on with a more slippery movement like the kind of new age crap that fewer people are versed in how to criticize and are all too eager to ape scientific jargon to serve their cause. I'd rather just go whole hog and stick to arguments that strike broadly across all supernatural beliefs, because while arguments that target a specific kind may not endorse any others, that's not how people who are intent on remaining religious with their pride intact see it.

I can appreciate that. On the other hand, there's something to be said for the idea that a religious person must be gradually eased away from the faith, step by step, rather than jumping from Bible study straight to atheism. Consider them merely competing strategic plans. In this case, the argument against a monotheistic God does not actually imply the validity of Vague SortaGod; it just fails to explicitly attack it. It's not one of those bogus arguments you make dishonestly in an attempt to cajole someone. It's logically sound.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Oh I'm definitely prepared to grant that, it's a fairly intuitive tactic that I've contemplated from the very beginning of my career as a debater on these issues. I've found myself leaning towards the broader arguments on most cases though because I feel that the issue of apostates who "miss the point" of religious criticism is woefully underadressed, and there may come a time where we'll be wondering why we didn't do just a tad more to nip this movement in the bud. Dawkins devoted a whole TV special to the New Age movement, but that's about it. This movement made literally from the ground up to appear to be a "reasonable" marriage of science and religion against which only a dogmatic and unfeeling materialist would object rather than trying to fight a losing battle against progress, and it'll be a lot harder to uproot it the longer it digs in.

I've heard it said that New Agers and religious progressives don't deserve the kind of attention that fundies do because they don't actively set out to harass and even destroy people, but they certainly do their fair share of passively putting others in harm's way with science denial and faith. For what an anecdote may be worth, my great-grandfather could've killed his whole family in their sleep because his solution to faulty wiring in the bathroom that was dangerously close to the piping was to place a crucifix over the wall where the area of concern was. He loved his family as much as anyone and was about as keen and progressive as an Italian immigrant laborer could be, but that could've snuffed me out of existence long before I had the chance to be conceived.

I'm not saying that fundies should be equally weighted with new agers or whatever, but I do feel they are getting away with a lot that isn't being challenged, and lord knows that there's already a glut of bog-standard atheists who can point out elementary arguments about why Creationism is preposterous, so it does irk me to see them go overlooked so often.

[Kanastrous]

For what an anecdote may be worth, my great-grandfather could've killed his whole family in their sleep because his solution to faulty wiring in the bathroom that was dangerously close to the piping was to place a crucifix over the wall where the area of concern was. He loved his family as much as anyone and was about as keen and progressive as an Italian immigrant laborer could be, but that could've snuffed me out of existence long before I had the chance to be conceived.

As good as the one about the Italian town that stored the local militia's gunpowder in the big church - because of course the House of God would be protected more than any other building, right? Well, a thunderstorm brewed up over the town, and guess what the tallest (and therefore most lightning-attractive) structure was...*BOOM!*

Maybe apocryphal. But who cares?

[Rye]

For what an anecdote may be worth, my great-grandfather could've killed his whole family in their sleep because his solution to faulty wiring in the bathroom that was dangerously close to the piping was to place a crucifix over the wall where the area of concern was. He loved his family as much as anyone and was about as keen and progressive as an Italian immigrant laborer could be, but that could've snuffed me out of existence long before I had the chance to be conceived.

As good as the one about the Italian town that stored the local militia's gunpowder in the big church - because of course the House of God would be protected more than any other building, right? Well, a thunderstorm brewed up over the town, and guess what the tallest (and therefore most lightning-attractive) structure was...*BOOM!*

Maybe apocryphal. But who cares?

For years I've been asking why churches have lightning rods at all.

The most annoying thing from the OP is going to be the chorus of "SEE?! Faith and science ARE compatible!" and then an orgy of back-slapping amongst the faithful and apologists. A load of scientists being religious doesn't mean their epistemologies are consistent or non-contradictory, i.e. truly compatible; it just means that they deal with the different epistemologies by intentionally avoiding such consistency. "Non-overlapping magisteria" was the older name for this conceptual means to protect the hypothesis from rational inquiry.

[TithonusSyndrome]

"Non-overlapping magisteria" is just a way of trying to legitimize cognitive dissonance. A priori, the compatibility of faith and science can be trivially ruled as nonsense, but we're not supposed to say these kinds of things or else we're dogmatic and militant atheists who want to upset the apple cart with the religious progressivists held to be our natural allies. We're supposed to be comfortable with this compromise that would see more crucifixes applied to solve wiring problems at the expense of a family's safety.

[Sea Skimmer]

Last I heard, ~90% of Americans were Christian, so ignoring all other religions, that's a 40% drop for "top scientists".

Back in the 1980s it was about 90%, but now it’s around 75%.

[Crossroads Inc.]

I could believe that 50% of scientists are religious. The word "religious", after all, encompasses everything from "I just believe in some kind of vague supernatural thing out there" and "Earth only 6000 years old, Flintstones frolicked with dinosaurs, Great Flood is geologic fact, raaaarrrr" lunatics.

It's still far less than the religious proportion in the general population.

"Religious" is such a god damn general term that a study like this is useless. What the study is REALLY saying is that "50% of Top Scientists AREN'T Atheists." which is saying something.