Almost a quarter of Americans think scientists are hostile to religion. But what do we really know about how scientists think about morality, spirituality and faith?
From 2005 to 2008, I surveyed nearly 1,700 natural and social scientists on their views about religion, spirituality and ethics and spoke with 275 of them in depth in their offices and laboratories. It turns out that nearly 50 percent of scientists identify with a religious label, and nearly one in five is actively involved in a house of worship, attending services more than once a month. While many scientists are completely secular, my survey results show that elite scientists are also sitting in the pews of our nation's churches, temples and mosques.
Of the atheist and agnostic scientists I had in-depth conversations with, more than 30 percent considered themselves atheists; however, less than six percent of these were actively working against religion. Many atheist and agnostic scientists even think key mysteries about the world can be best understood spiritually, and some attend houses of worship, completely comfortable with religion as moral training for their children and an alternative form of community. If religious people better understood the full range of atheistic practice -- and the way that it interfaces with religion for some -- they might be less likely to hold negative attitudes toward nonreligious scientists. The truth is that many atheist scientists have no desire to denigrate religion or religious people.
In fact, about one-fifth of the atheist scientists I spoke with say they consider themselves "spiritual atheists." Perhaps their stories are the most interesting. One chemist I talked with does not believe in God, yet she says she craves a sense of something beyond herself that provides a feeling of purpose and meaning and a moral compass. She sees herself as having an engaged spirituality, one that motivates her to live differently. For example, spiritual reasons keep her from accepting money from the Department of Defense, she says; for her, it's too linked to the military.
Given the presence of religion in the scientific community, why do Americans still think scientists are hostile to religion? Within their scientific communities, religious scientists tend to practice what I call a "secret spirituality." They are reluctant to talk about religious or spiritual ideas with their colleagues. I spoke with one physicist who said that he thinks universities are not always very accepting environments for scientists of faith. He believes that if he openly said he is religious, others would question the validity of his scientific work; it is his sense of things that at his elite school, he can be a scientist or be religious, but not both.
And within their faith communities, religious scientists often practice a "secret science." Sitting in the pews, they are often hesitant to discuss scientific ideas because they are afraid of offending those next to them. The result of this reticence is that people of faith are not aware of the religious scientists in their midst. More than that, these scientists fail to serve as role models for religious youth who might want to study science but fear science might lead them away from faith. As a result, these children lose out.
Research shows that the experiences students have with science in elementary and secondary school, and how well their science abilities evolve from there, help predict both whether they'll attend college and whether they'll enter into high-status professional fields. Other research has shown that those with stronger science skills and a better scientific understanding tend to have greater socioeconomic stability and overall success. So if religious folks want their children to succeed (as a scholar of American religion, I have every reason to believe they do) and if scientists want more children to consider a career in the field (as a scholar of the American scientific community, I know they do), there needs to be a better dialogue between people of faith and the scientists among them.
We need real, radical dialogue -- not just friendly co-existence between religion and science, but the kind of discussion where each side genuinely tries to understand why the other thinks the way it does and where common ground is sought. This dialogue should reach the rank-and-file in religious communities with the message of how to maintain faith while fully pursuing science. And it needs to reach the rank-and-file in the scientific community as well, providing them with better ways to connect with religious people.
Religious people need to remember that not all atheist scientists are hostile to religion. They need to know that even the most secular scientists struggle with the moral and ethical implications of their work. And scientists need to do a better job of communicating the importance of science to religious people -- especially in those areas in which religion might actually motivate them to care about science (like environmentalism, or "creation care"). Because if people of faith believe they have to become antireligious or completely secular to be a successful scientist -- when this is not a full reflection of the scientific community -- it would be a disaster.
Sam Harris: Toward a Science of Morality
Loading comments… 
Within the realm of science is a thing called evolution. Today, virtually every book for the public spends much effort building the author's theory, thesis, personal "discovery
Funny, if one takes out the fairy tale of evolution, the whole case collapses. So, why are so many fascinated with evolution? Because it is a fairy tale, a fantasy, and people love those kinds of stories.
Does this sound familiar? "Once upon a time, long long ago...."? Of course, it does. It begins a fairy tale. But, science & evolution would never write like that, right?
Oh? How about this, from a bona fide book on evolution.
"To appreciate cosmic evolution, we must broaden our horizons, expand our minds, and visualize what it was like long, long, ago. We must go way back into the past. Go back, for instance, five billion years." Yep, there's the arousal of the fairy tale syndrome to capture the unthinking
"The history of the earth is a DRAMA in which the actors are all real, and the stage is the whole wide world. The student MUST sense the ACTION and FEEL the ESSENCE of HIGH ADVENTURE in the MARCH OF TIME as shifting scenes unfold and living actors cross the stage. THIS VIEWPOINT has CONTROLLED both the selection and the treatment of subject matter in this volume."
And, the young mind just can't wait for the rest of the fairy tale fantasy to unravel before their untrained eyes. They are hooked. From that point on the initiate is hooked.
Oh, this could not be true, I'm sure one will think. But, the interestin
Is this too harsh to say about evolution and the writers? I don't think so. When Dawkins and others can call individual
"The problem comes in when scientists try to use science to destroy the beliefs of others, while proclaimin
lol...Do yourself a favor, before you start bashing science...
They are in opposition to religion intruding in scientific process. But the conflation of the two has been a big part of "teaching the controvers
There is also resistance to "religiosi
So I appreciate that Ecklund indeed finds that the vast majority of scientists have no beef with religion, I'm somewhat disappoint
This is very field dependent. Biology, cosmology, life science and medicine and climatolog
--Zarathus
The Renaissanc
1) Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543
2) Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1627
3)Johannes Kepler (1571-1630
4) Galileo Galilei (1564-1642
The Enlightenm
5)Rene Descartes (1596-1650
6) Isaac Newton (1642-1727
7) Robert Boyle (1791-1867
8)Michael Faraday (1791-1867
9) Gregor Mendel (1822-1884
10) William Thomson Kelvin (1824-1907
11) Max Planck (1858-1947
12) Albert Einstein (1879-1955
You should have done a little more research, instead of just pasting crap from the very first link listed by Google. Not only does this list contain incredibly wrong statements
Also, you completely overlooked the obvious fact you presented: where are all the preeminent scientists from this day and age? That's because there just isn’t that many. At least, not many that aren't pandering to the religious right, because they aren't taken seriously by the scientific community as a whole. Are there exceptions to this? SURE! But, as a whole, most scientists dismiss the notion of a personal god. Many people are spiritual, but not religious, and those numbers are rising. Thus, there is NO correlatio
To alleviate this problem I propose a simple solution. All religious/
People who agree with these statements identify themselves as reasonably logical people who can be convinced of an argument when provided with an enormous amount of unassailab
Second, the idea of God is a moving target. I've heard people say that the stories of the bible are metaphoric
When parents choose to pray instead of taking their kids to the hospital which results into a deadly outcome when the diabetes was treatable by modern medicine
When 50 people in India go blind by staring at the sun expecting to see the image of virgin Mary
When people who are infected with HIV think raping a child(!) will rid them of this disease. Supposedly the younger the better.
When the Catholic church tells people in Africa that condoms have holes in them simply because they are against birth control for "pro-life" reasons
Since millions, if not billions have their personal liberties weakened because of religious laws, especially in theocratic nations. This is especially true for women and and certainly homosexual
When a teacher can be fired for having pre-marita
When football fans are killed simply because they watched soccer in the wrong country (religious
When you cannot author a book like Salman Rushdie and not receive death threats. Or draw a picture.
When adulterers are stoned to death
When psychics and other quacks fool people out of their money
When religious people wish to teach pseudo-sci
The utter divisivene
The examples are endless.
Religion and superstiti
By the way, how do you know what pseudo-sci
Yes, false examples are endless.
They weren't afraid of mistakes, they thought prayer worked and the reason the kid died was because they didn't believe hard enough. In this case the death was caused by religious superstiti
Of course there are mistakes (I haven't claimed otherwise)
I like how religious people never blame the design from their god at all. The reasons I hear all the time is that it is because of our sins that they exist in the first place. Why make the human so disease ridden and fragile? If the job was better done by your god, which you believe in, we wouldn't have to spend trillions each year to keep ourselves and others alive. (A battle btw which is doomed to fail in the end)
Yes, I've written essays on pseudo-sci
Person A: Christian: perceives their faith as true
Person B: Muslim: same as above
They both claim to hold to truths, but they are different.
Any decent skeptic would throw out religious books.
http://unr
There are as many unique personal understand
And while science may point out to religion that, lack of proof cannot confirm an hypothesis
Both however, share a common standpoint
I strongly disagree with this sentiment. So in your view Galileo ceased to be a scientist when he chose to publish findings that flew in the face of church dogma? How does that work, again? I agree that science will never answer questions like whether there's a God or where we go when we die or why we're here in the first place (nor should it even try), but the bottom line is that religious interpreta
There are times that religion NEEDS to be challenged
Usshar's "science" consisted of running through names that appeared in the Book of Genesis. Once he came to the end of those who begat each other, that was the end -- or the beginning of the creation of Earth which he determined to be about 6,000 years old. Naturally, someone cloistered in a dank, dark hermitage probably had a lot of time on his hands so one can understand the boredom he must have felt.
As to the current entrenched mind-set that abhors even the word evolution we know they generally work through local school boards where they place like-minde
Many of these boards are using their churches to directly indoctrina