The link between geography and secularism may also play a very subtle role, as large, urban centers tend to be more secular than rural areas. A student in close proximity to a large research university is much more likely to attend any university than a student far flung from any such institution, and the distribution of religious vs secular students will reflect that. I’m not suggesting this is a dominant factor, it is likely very minor but it all adds up.
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That I meant that, was obvious from the whole direction of the discussion from the beginning. We were discussing why so few elite NAS scientists (and also, earlier, American scientists generally) believe in God, whereas the majority of the American public does believe in God. The whole point of my contrast was that this was not the case earlier in Western history. You complain that my restatement was too flowery, but I shouldn’t have needed to make a restatement in the first place. You should have been able to tell from the context of “American” and “1500 years” that I was speaking of Western civilization. But since you seemed to need it made more explicit, I did so. And then you complained about the prose of my answer. I don’t know why I bother.
You aren’t following the discussion. The discussion isn’t about 6-literal-day readings of Genesis. The surveys we are speaking about ask scientists whether they believe in “God”, not “a literal reading of Genesis.” There is no reason why scientists should move from “not believing in a literal reading of Genesis” to “not believing in God.” The “not believing in God” part still remains unexplained.
Could it be nothing deeper than it just takes time to change the cultural milieu of which scientists are a part? Bacon, Boyle, Newton were of an age in which a theistic worldview was near universal, unlike today. Pursuing scientific questions did not catapult them out of their times.
The artificial synthesis of urea broke the barrier to chemical explanations of organic life. Darwin published his theory, providing an alternative to special creation. QM, which occasioned an entire re-think of reality and the nature of causation, and disrupted scholastic theistic arguments. Hawking, while not speaking for all scientists, does for many when he asks “What place, then, for a creator”? God has become more transcendent, or superfluous, depending on your point of view, over the past few centuries. The classic scientists preceded these developments, and a prime mover was still necessary or compatible with their efforts.
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Literary critics?
Again one wonders why you are bringing philosophers and literary critics into it. Were you frightened by a literary critic as a child?
Sure, that is plausible. But I don’t understand this sentence:
Who is “we”? Do you mean, people who believe in God? Do you mean that more of the people who believe in God should choose to go into science instead of theology or ministry?
Another suggestion: Could part of the problem be high-profile New Atheist writers, who, even if they aren’t really reflective of what goes on in science, pass themselves off successfully as the voice of science? If you combine the high public presence of such writers with the statistics for belief in God among scientists, might all of that be off-putting? Might some not draw the conclusion that the ethos of modern science is anti-faith? Even if that’s a wrong conclusion, can’t one see why some might draw it?
Because I suspect that if a similar survey was done on them – and on most intellectuals – sociologists, feminist theorists, psychologists, etc. – the numbers would also show a marked discrepancy between their belief in God (or lack thereof) and that of the general population. Whether the discrepancy would be as great as in the NAS case, or in the natural sciences generally, I don’t know; but supposing for the sake of argument that the discrepancy existed, that would be prima facie evidence for a cause of unbelief in God that is not entirely related to the contents or methods of natural science, but something going on more broadly in modern culture. You seem to be taking it for granted that it’s the critical method of scientists that is the cause, but the methods in other studies are often quite different from those in the natural sciences, so if the same skepticism about God prevails elsewhere, it strikes me that your answer is at best incomplete, and possibly misleading, by diverting attention from other more general cultural causes.
For me and, apparently, for some believers in this conversation, the prevalence of unbelief among scientists is not a “problem.”
But I do think you are right that there are voices (not sure it’s primarily “new atheists” but that doesn’t matter) and trends that can inappropriately reinforce views or feelings that science is inherently anti-religion. I think Christianity is a damaging intellectual parasite, but I don’t want science to be anti-religion and I think it is bad for science (in various ways) to be perceived as biased against supernatural belief of any kind.
Yes, it does take time, but what I’m asking about is not how much time it takes, but why the milieu changes in the first place; why some ages are more predisposed than others to believe in God. I realize that this is a big question, the answer to which probably requires a good deal more philosophical and historical than scientific reflection, but it’s this sort of thing we have to understand if we want to understand why the scientists of our era think the way they do.
You’ve given several examples, which did, I think, as a matter of historical fact, contribute in some ways to modern unbelief, but still, they aren’t really satisfying. Darwin’s early supporters numbered many Anglican clergymen who thought that is was just as good, or better, for God to work through a natural process like evolution as opposed to a series of discrete miraculous acts; for them, belief in evolution did not require disbelief in God. As for urea, vitalism, and so on, they were never really requirements of belief in God in the first place; there is nothing about belief in God that entails the view that certain molecules could only be made by God, not by man or nature. God might manufacture molecules needed for life through chemical evolutionary processes. And sure, quantum mechanics does not fit easily with some notions of Newtonian physics, but is it inconceivable that God could create a world in which quantum phenomena operated? Indeed, many evolutionists (e.g., Robert Russell) have suggested that God might control evolution invisibly, hidden under quantum indeterminism. The God of theism is not necessarily tied to Aristotelian or other Medieval concepts, or to particular concepts of Newton, Boyle, etc. I don’t see how modern science should lead one to reject God – though it might well lead one to reject a concept of God that is too tied to either a literal reading of Genesis or to earlier scientific concepts of nature and causality that are no longer held by scientists.
If the question on the survey was, “Do you believe in a traditional conception of God?” the negative answers might make more sense, but since it’s just “God” without qualification, why wouldn’t a scientist select “Don’t Know / Not Sure” rather than “I don’t believe in God”?
Your suggestions all make sense to me, so I’m not rejecting them outright, but trying to convey to you where I’m still puzzled. David Heddle’s put out his original question with more or less an invitation for us all to think out loud, so that’s what I’m doing.
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In my opinion, both. We have too many pastors, which is why we created positions that should not exist, like “youth pastor.” And seminaries are, again this is my opinion, largely unnecessary. In Acts when Apollos was teaching incorrectly, Priscilla and Aquila took him aside, corrected him, and sent him on his way. Today we would say: “What, you haven’t been to seminary? What do you think you are doing.?”
The main problem with seminaries is (again, just my opinion) academic seminary faculty. Many seminaries evaluate faculty like universities do, where the push is to come up with something novel. But that is exactly what you do not want from theologians. You do not want theologians to come up with something new, because there is nothing new. All you really want from them is to explain the old more clearly, if possible.
Except for the sideswipe at Christianity, I agree with this.
I’m sympathetic with this, in the main.
That depends on how one conceives of Christianity. If Christianity, to be properly understood, requires knowledge of things like the Creeds, and of the history of doctrinal development, and of methods of interpreting the Biblical text, then there needs to be a place where Christian teachers can get serious academic training – in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Greek philosophy (which was involved directly or indirectly in the discussions over the Creeds), church history, hermeneutics, etc.
On the other hand, if Christianity is just simply living out the Christlike life, as taught in, say, the Sermon on the Mount, then there is probably no need for seminaries at all – young leaders could learn purely by hands-on experience and from listening to more mature leaders.
I could accept either model of Christian education as in some sense authentic, but in my experience, most of the “mainstream” Protestant seminaries (I’m speaking mainly of the typical M.Div. programs here, not the more advanced programs in theology that some of them may offer) do neither of these, or, if they try to do either of them, do them quite poorly. I think this is partly because modern Protestants (in the mainstream denominations anyway, as opposed to the more fundamentalist places) are becoming vaguer and vaguer about what Christianity is. It’s hard to train Christian pastors successfully if you’re not clear in your mind about what Christianity is, what the Church is, and so on. Once one is clear about what Christianity is, then I think that one could choose one of the models set forth above, and run with it successfully.
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No, that isn’t it. NAS scientists are more non-religious than the general population.
It’s worth looking at. First we have to observe a phenomenon, and then we can come up with hypotheses to explain it. Suspicions, however, don’t count as evidence.
I guess we might consider these data:
I’m not offering one study as decisive proof of anything, but here is a rather interesting paragraph (emphasis added by me, just for fun):
There is also significant variation on this question by disciplinary field. Looking at the top 20 BA
granting fields, we find that atheists and agnostics are more common in some disciplines than
others. Psychology and biology have the highest proportion of atheists and agnostics, at about 61* percent. Not far behind is mechanical engineering, 50 percent of whose professors are atheists or*
agnostics. Behind that is economics, political science, and computer science, with about 40 percent
of professors falling into this category. At the other end of the spectrum, 63 percent of accounting
professors, 56.8 percent of elementary education professors, 48.6 percent of professors of finance,
46.5 percent of marketing professors, 46.2 percent of art professors and professors of criminal
justice, and 44.4 percent of professors of nursing say they have no doubt that God exists. We leave
it to future papers to determine whether there is something intrinsic in the nature of these fields
that makes professors in some more religious than professors in others, or whether observed
differences reflect other things, like the differential distribution of fields across types of
institutions, differences in the gender composition of fields, and so on.
For the whole study, see:
Not sufficiently detailed to test Eddie’s hypothesis.
Here is another interesting article, with links to many other studies:
I’m not trying to prove anything by citing this one, but merely indicating that there is much data and much interpretation pertinent to the questions we are talking about. It does seem to indicate that the difference in religiosity between the average American and the average American academic is a difference observed for academics in a wide number of fields, many of them outside the natural sciences. But there is so much discussed in the article that it all has to be carefully sifted.
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Thanks. That’s an interesting article with a number of factors considered. I think it’s a weakness that it equivocates between science and academics, seldom making it clear which population is being discussed. I do find it interesting that only 16% of academics in dentistry are “nones”; I wish it had compared that to medical professors.
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