Rob Dreher: Science vs. Religion: What do scientists say?
I dropped by a colleague's office today carrying a copy of a new Oxford University Press book, "Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think," by Elaine Howard Ecklund. "Have you seen this?" I asked her. "It's really great."
"You know," she said. "We funded her research." Sure enough, Ecklund, a Rice University sociologist, credits the Templeton Foundation with primary support for her data collection. I tell you this up front so you won't think I'm praising this book as some sort of professional obligation. It's truly an enlightening book, one that promises to change for the better the way we see the science-religion dialogue.
Sociologist Ecklund surveyed 1,700 scientists, and conducted personal interviews with 275 of them at elite American universities, seeking to find out what their views on religion were. She writes:After four years of research, at least one thing became clear: Much of what we believe about the faith lives of elite scientists is wrong. The 'insurmountable hostility' between science and religion is a caricature, a thought-cliche, perhaps useful as a satire on groupthink, but hardly representative of reality.She says that it's important that we understand the true complexity of the science vs. religion debate, so that we don't "cede ground to hotheads" on either side, who are interested in ramping up conflict when it doesn't really exist.
Unsurprisingly, Ecklund found that 64 percent of scientists are either atheists (34%) or agnostic (30%) -- about 10 times their number in the general U.S. population. Only nine percent of scientists say they have no doubt about God's existence (vs. 63% of the general public), but a surprising 27 percent of scientists have some belief in God, ranging from having some doubts, but affirming belief (9%), believing in God "sometimes" (5%), or believing in a higher power that's not God (8%). I don't know about you, but I am startled to read that so many scientists are open to religious belief of any sort.
Why is that? ...
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