Reading a report on religious practice and science

[benlehman]

Reading a report on religious practice and science for a class presentation.

Interesting things:
* Around %50 of scientists at top-level American universities report having religious beliefs. Around %70 say that they have some "spirituality."

* The "hard sciences" report more religion than the "soft sciences" report more religion than the "social sciences." The least religious science is psychology. The most is chemistry.

* Scientists are less religious than the population as a whole. The only Christian denomination represented more among scientists than the population at large is "liberal protestant." Several minority religions are over-represented among scientists by 2-3x : Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus. If you consider Atheism a religion, it is also over-represented, about on the same scale as Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

I'd really like to see a cross-comparison by social class and income bracket, but the study didn't have one.

Comments

[moreocean.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. An honest survey of physical science has to recognize the absolute interconnectedness of matter. From there, religion doesn't look like an evolutionarily useful fantasy but rather a separate instrument, keener in some ways than science. Human concepts like morality, love, and God are often astute, objective observations of nature. (Not to say that there haven't always been plenty of fake scientists and fake priests saying a lot of wrongheaded things.)

The "social scientists" are removed from the truth that can be teased out of matter, and much more likely to believe "the march of science means magic/God is fake, and morality does not matter" which is really just victorian industrialist propaganda. Biologists who have done the reading have always scoffed at "social Darwinism." Greed and exploitation are in fact maladaptive traits. Witness the state of the planet. When a small group of tightly-related organisms promote their own growth to such an extreme as to unbalance the surrounding/supporting body of slightly less-related organisms, that's called cancer.

[platonic1.livejournal.com]

I wish science education were not so neglected in religiously-oriented institutions of learning, at least all the ones I've experienced.

[alexpshenichkin.livejournal.com]

Did this study cover scientists in general or just scientists in academia?

If it's the latter, I really wish they broadened it to all academics. The "hard"->"soft"->"social" thing would be a lot more meaningful if you could actually extend it out to cover professors of history, literature, art, &c.

-- Alex