Many sociologists of religion, as well as the general public, seem to take for granted the causal relationship between higher education and the decline of religion. The more educated someone becomes, the theory goes, the less religious they are likely to be. As European and American universities broke free from the control of the church in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science and the scientific worldview arose to become the prime competitor to religious authority. With this historical trend, it was assumed that those who occupy these elite places of learning would also shed the trappings of irrational religious belief. However, more and more sociological evidence reveals that this may not be the case.
In a recent article published in Sociology of Religion, sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons use data from a new, nationally representative survey of American college and university professors to test the long-running assumption that higher education leads to irreligiousness. Based on their research, they argue that "while atheism and agnosticism are much more common among professors than within the U.S. population as a whole, religious skepticism represents a minority position, even among professors teaching at elite research universities." This has been a long-running debate amongst those who study religiosity in higher education and pay attention to trends in societal secularization.
Gross and Simmons worked with a sample size of 1,417 professors, providing an approximate representation of the more than 630,000 professors teaching full-time in universities and colleges across the United States. It should be noted that they limited their study to professors who taught in departments granting an undergraduate degree. As such, professors teaching in medical faculties and law schools were not part of the sample.
According to their study 51.5 percent of professors, responding to the question of whether they believe in God, chose the response, "While I have doubts, I feel that I do believe in God," or the statement, "I know God really exists and I have no doubts about it." While atheists and agnostics in the United States make up about 3 and 4.1 percent of the population, respectively, the prevalence of atheism and agnosticism was much higher among professors: 9.8 percent of professors chose the statement, "I don't believe in God," while another 13.1 percent chose, "I don't know whether there is a God." In other words, religious skepticism is much more common among professors than in the general American population. However, the majority are still believers.
How do these numbers break down by discipline? Gross and Simmons explore how belief in God is distributed among the 20 largest disciplinary fields. In terms of atheists, professors of psychology and mechanical engineering lead the pack with 50 percent and 44.1 percent respectively. Amongst biologists, 33.3 percent were agnostic and 27.5 percent were atheist. Interestingly, 21.6 percent of biologists say that they have no doubt that God exists. In contrast, 63 percent of accounting professors, 56.8 percent of elementary education professors, 48.6 percent of finance professors, 46.5 percent of marketing professors, 45 percent of art professors, and 44.4 percent of both nursing professors and criminal justice professors stated that they know God exists.
Gross and Simmons also attempted to discover the proportion of professors who think of themselves as religiously progressive, moderate, or traditional. They found that professors in the social sciences and humanities are more than twice as likely identify themselves as religiously progressive (32.5 percent and 35 percent, respectively), while a larger number of physical and biological scientists see themselves as moderate (32.2 percent) as opposed to progressive or traditionalist.
The research also describes the religious affiliation of professors in the United States: 37.9 percent can be classified as Protestant, 15.9 percent identify themselves as Roman Catholic, and 9 percent as "Other Christian." Jewish professors make up about 5.4 percent of the sample, and 2.6 percent are Muslim. Overall, 18.6 percent stated that they were "born-again Christians." Around 46 percent of professors who identified themselves as "traditionalist" were also born-again Christians. Although, as noted above, 51.5 percent of professors say they believe in God, 31.2 percent claim to have no religious affiliation. In other words, they don't belong to any particular religion, but still believe in a higher power.
Professors in the United States also have a complex understanding of the Bible. According to Gross and Simmons, only 5.7 percent said that the Bible was the "actual word of God." In contrast, 48.3 percent answered that the Good Book was an "ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts," and 39.5 percent note that it is the "inspired word of God."
What all of these data make clear, and future studies are sure to further complicate, is that the simplistic association of "intelligent" with "atheist" is not backed by the evidence. "Our findings call into question the long-standing idea among theorists and sociologists of knowledge that intellectuals, broadly construed, comprise an ideologically cohesive group in society and tend naturally to be antagonistic toward religion," write Gross and Simmons. The idea that "the worldview of the intelligentsia is necessarily in tension with a religious worldview, is plainly wrong." In contrast, the evidence seems to suggest that instead of leaving religion behind, the intelligentsia, like the rest of society, rationally wrestle with ideas, scientific and religious, and attempt to find answers to the big questions that plague us all.
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Religiosity and intelligence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ - CNN.com
"Accommodationist"--I love that term. It presumes that an extreme position is the logical and correct one.
That point has been made over and over in this thread, and my response is (someplace) below.
Predictably, the responses fall into three main categories: the umpteenth reiteration of "God doesn't exist," or else lots of nitpicking about the survey's questions and format (too ambiguous, misleading, etc.). The third category consists of didn't-read-the-article responses, wherein people simply repeat by memory the very cliches that the survey challenges.
What we have to keep in mind is that this survey was intended to test the pop meme that religiosity equals imbecility. Broad and absolute claims of the type peddled by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are quite properly challenged in the most direct and simple fashion possible. There's no need to fine-tune the hell out of a survey that's meant to test a claim whose force consists of its utter simplicity and mob appeal. If there comes a day when the pop-atheist crowd offers charges against religion of a complex, nuanced, and thoughtful nature, then I'd hope the response would consist of an in-kind survey. But the only way to respond to brutally stupid pop culture memes is with a broad-stroke, no-nonsense series of questions.
I'm not the least bit astonished that this 2009 study is getting no push from the media.
The study showed a greater propensity towards Atheism among undergraduate professors, whatever that means, it doesn't matter, that is what they found. It would be interesting to know what their sampling techniques for this study were, did they target specific universities? Also, the ability to generalize this sample to all highly educated people is difficult. How can you claim professors in programs offering undergraduate degrees represents medical doctors, lawyers, people working in government, people working for private institutions, ect.? Whether the rest of the population of high degree earning individuals is more religious or irreligious is not answered by this study.
Specifically, "professors who taught in departments granting an undergraduate degree." What's lame about that? 630,000+ profs "teaching full-time in universities and colleges across the United States." Wow, how skewed can a study get?
Those dirty liars....
I call 'tampered data shenanigans' on these guys.
But, if you REALLY want to learn a subject, you just might find that the student is their own best teacher. You, the book/study materials, and ample time to research, and reference. Because, at the end of the day, the key ingredient to education isn't the stuffed shirt giving ANOTHER boring lecture, it's the person trying to assimilate new information and make sense of it and put it to good use.
A God does not need to exist to explain the Universe, therefore the best approach is to assume there is none.
I figured the received idea of the pop-atheist set (profs being mostly atheists) was a lie. Pop atheists hear, believe, and claim what they want to hear, believe, and claim. This, somehow, qualifies them to lecture others about delusions, fanciful thinking, etc.
Too funny to be sad, too sad to be funny.
It had been a longstanding assumption that a person's practical mind (work, food, clothing, etc.) and absurd mind (fairies, gods and lucky charms) could coiexist peacefully running in parallel. My lucky rabbit's foot in my pocket but I still remember to buckle my seat belt when I go for a drive. But in recent decades religionists insist on *pushing and pushing* the boundaries, demanding the absurd mind have a greater sway over the practical mind. I must now not only openly acknowledge my belief in my lucky rabbits foot, I must be judges as to the strength of my belief and I am expected view the world according to the dictates the 'lucky rabbits foot sociey' has set down for me.
did i capitalize correctly?
What evidence? The survey didn't measure intelligence, it measured field of teaching. You can't measure one thing and then make a claim about another. That's just unintelligent.
Ohhhhhhhh-kay. Well, you see, there's this study which takes a group of people who are far, far better educated than the general public, and--sakes alive!--that group is dominated by believers, not atheists.
So the educated=less religious meme (a meme that has sold tons of books and provided a false basis for insult-athons on and off the Internet) has been exposed as a lie. You can quibble about precisely what the survey measures. But the chief piece of slander against faith--that it goes hand in hand with lack of I.Q. and education--has been dealt a very serious blow.
Read the piece.