Scientists overwhelmingly believe in God

Scientists' Belief in God Varies Starkly by Discipline
By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 11 August 2005
02:24 pm ET



About two-thirds of scientists believe in God, according to a new survey that uncovered stark differences based on the type of research they do.

The study, along with another one released in June, would appear to debunk the oft-held notion that science is incompatible with religion.

Those in the social sciences are more likely to believe in God and attend religious services than researchers in the natural sciences, the study found.

The opposite had been expected.

Nearly 38 percent of natural scientists -- people in disciplines like physics, chemistry and biology -- said they do not believe in God. Only 31 percent of the social scientists do not believe.

In the new study, Rice University sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund surveyed 1,646 faculty members at elite research universities, asking 36 questions about belief and spiritual practices.

"Based on previous research, we thought that social scientists would be less likely to practice religion than natural scientists are, but our data showed just the opposite," Ecklund said.

Some stand-out stats: 41 percent of the biologists don't believe, while that figure is just 27 percent among political scientists.

In separate work at the University of Chicago, released in June, 76 percent of doctors said they believed in God and 59 percent believe in some sort of afterlife.

"Now we must examine the nature of these differences," Ecklund said today. "Many scientists see themselves as having a spirituality not attached to a particular religious tradition. Some scientists who don't believe in God see themselves as very spiritual people. They have a way outside of themselves that they use to understand the meaning of life."

Ecklund and colleagues are now conducting longer interviews with some of the participants to try and figure it all out.

 

I've posted this before but I think it bears a repost:

Atheist Philosopher, 81, Now Believes in God
By Richard N. Ostling
Associated Press
posted: 10 December 2004
09:31 am ET



NEW YORK (AP) _ A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God -- more or less -- based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.

At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.

Flew said he's best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson, whose God was not actively involved in people's lives.

"I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins," he said. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."

Flew first made his mark with the 1950 article "Theology and Falsification," based on a paper for the Socratic Club, a weekly Oxford religious forum led by writer and Christian thinker C.S. Lewis.

Over the years, Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele, and Reading universities in Britain, in visits to numerous U.S. and Canadian campuses and in books, articles, lectures and debates.

There was no one moment of change but a gradual conclusion over recent months for Flew, a spry man who still does not believe in an afterlife.

Yet biologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved," Flew says in the new video, "Has Science Discovered God?"

The video draws from a New York discussion last May organized by author Roy Abraham Varghese's Institute for Metascientific Research in Garland, Texas. Participants were Flew; Varghese; Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder, an Orthodox Jew; and Roman Catholic philosopher John Haldane of Scotland's University of St. Andrews.

The first hint of Flew's turn was a letter to the August-September issue of Britain's Philosophy Now magazine. "It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism," he wrote.

The letter commended arguments in Schroeder's "The Hidden Face of God" and "The Wonder of the World" by Varghese, an Eastern Rite Catholic layman.

This week, Flew finished writing the first formal account of his new outlook for the introduction to a new edition of his "God and Philosophy," scheduled for release next year by Prometheus Books.

Prometheus specializes in skeptical thought, but if his belief upsets people, well "that's too bad," Flew said. "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."

Last week, Richard Carrier, a writer and Columbia University graduate student, posted new material based on correspondence with Flew on the atheistic www.infidels.org Web page. Carrier assured atheists that Flew accepts only a "minimal God" and believes in no afterlife.

Flew's "name and stature are big. Whenever you hear people talk about atheists, Flew always comes up," Carrier said. Still, when it comes to Flew's reversal, "apart from curiosity, I don't think it's like a big deal."

Flew told The Associated Press his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe. He accepts Darwinian evolution but doubts it can explain the ultimate origins of life.

A Methodist minister's son, Flew became an atheist at 15.

Early in his career, he argued that no conceivable events could constitute proof against God for believers, so skeptics were right to wonder whether the concept of God meant anything at all.

Another landmark was his 1984 "The Presumption of Atheism," playing off the presumption of innocence in criminal law. Flew said the debate over God must begin by presuming atheism, putting the burden of proof on those arguing that God exists.

 

cool. so what's the national average? i mean scientists "overwhelmingly" believe in god, but how does that compare to the national average? let's even go with "non-religious" as being equal to "don't believe in god". the non-religious make up 13% of the population. that seems to me to indicate that studying biology seems to lead people to disbelieve in god -- biologists are nearly 4 times as likely to not believe as the average american.

that's quite a statement.

even the extreme pro-belief choice is twice the national average (27% for political sciences). what is it about science that turns people away from belief of the supernatural, i wonder....

 

file under archaeopteryx i guess, eh?

http://atheism.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp%3FAssetID=138

 

From your link:

[Editor's note: This article no longer represents Flew's current position. For the most recent information, see Antony Flew Considers God...Sort Of.]

 

I'm not at all surprised that many scientists in all disciplines believe in some sort of god. I've seen a number of books by scientists who specialize in natural sciences, such as physics, that put forth theories on scientific bases for belief in some sort of supreme being.

I would think that biology itself would provide one of the strongest arguments for a living creator. One of the most fundamental laws of biogenesis is that life only comes from pre-existing life.

As for an afterlife, another basic law of nature is that matter cannot be destroyed. Matter can be converted to energy & vice versa; but it can't be destroyed.

Food for thought

 

So is the fact that even with cutting edge new data and an exponentially larger knowledge base to work from, over 60% of those same scientists still believe.

How about that?

 

yeah, i read that, but i don't think that represents his actual position - that is, as a philosopher, he probably posits a lot of different things. his last official word was that article, as i understand it. has his book come out? honestly, i had never heard of him till his name came up in this regard.

 

clearly the trend is the more science you're exposed to, the less likely you are to hold onto a belief in god. i suspect this will continue in the future. no wonder christians are freaking out about science. today it's evolution, tomorrow it's physics...