Does Science Lead to
Atheism?
By
Matt Young, Panda's Thumb blog,
Matt
Young on July
1, 2009 11:31 AM | 182
Comments |
That was the short answer. The longer answer is that scientists
are more likely to disbelieve in God than are nonscientists, and
eminent scientists are more apt to be disbelievers than journeyman
scientists. But does science lead them to atheism? Possibly, but it
seems more likely that freethinkers or skeptics are attracted to
science than that science creates atheists.
I studied this question a few years ago, when John Lynch and I
prepared an
article for the
New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. What
follows the horizontal rule is an excerpt from that article. One of
the conclusions we drew was that 1. biologists, anthropologists, and
psychologists were more likely to disbelieve in God than physical
scientists and engineers. That conclusion has recently been called
into question, and I will discuss the new data after the second
horizontal rule.
Measuring Unbelief among Scientists (1914 and 1933).
The psychologist James H. Leuba surveyed a large number of US
scientists in order to learn their beliefs about God and
immortality. In both polls, disbelievers (not including doubters or
agnostics) represented a plurality over believers and doubters.
2. Further, the least likely to be believers were
psychologists, followed by sociologists, biologists, and physicists,
in that order. The order stood firm across the years. Distinguished
scientists (as identified by American Men of Science)
exhibited a substantially greater rate of disbelief than lesser scientists.
Leuba's poll was, however, not without problems. First, because
the U. S. was almost monolithically Christian, Leuba formulated two
questions that asked, in essence, whether respondents believed in a
particular Christian conception of God. Asking his questions in that
way militated against getting positive responses from, for example,
pantheists such as Robert Millikan and Albert Einstein, who
associated God with the universe and its laws and thus did not
revere, in Leuba's words, "the God of our Churches." Leuba asked
respondents whether they believed in "a God to whom one may pray in
the expectation of receiving an answer" (a question specifically
defined to exclude psychological or subjective consequences of
prayer), disbelieved in such a God, or had no definite belief.
Second, several questionnaires were returned with remarks intended
to justify the respondents refusals to answer the questions.
According to Leuba, most of these were from disbelievers; hence, he
concluded, the percentage of disbelievers may have been understated
in his poll. Scientists are more educated than the general population, and
Leuba, a religious humanist, thought that increasing education would
decrease rates of belief in God. To test his hypothesis, he surveyed
college students at two unidentified colleges: a high-ranking
college that was divided among the major Protestant denominations,
and a college that was radical in its leanings. In both colleges,
the number of believers in both God and immortality decreased with
age or academic advancement (freshman through senior years). Leuba
also cites a decrease in belief at one of the colleges between 1914
and 1933, as well as similar results found at Syracuse University in
1926. Leuba, a professor at Bryn Mawr College outside Philadelphia,
does not identify the two colleges in his study, but they are
probably in the northeast, if not the Philadelphia area. If the
major Protestant denominations means the mainline Protestant
churches, then Leubas studies of college students may not be
representative, inasmuch as they omit students affiliated with
churches not heavily represented in the northeast. Oddly, Leuba does
not mention the Roman Catholic Church.
Measuring Unbelief among Scientists (the 1990s).
In 1996 and 1998, Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham
replicated Leuba's surveys. For consistency, they did not edit Leubas questions, despite the cultural changes that had occurred in
80 years. Additionally, American Men and Women of Science
no longer highlights eminent scientists, so Larson and Witham
derived their greater scientists from the membership of the
National Academy of Sciences; comparison with Leubas greater
scientists is therefore problematic, because the NAS probably
contains substantially more-eminent scientists than the highlighted
scientists of the earlier surveys. Larson and Witham found that nearly 50 percent of the scientists
and nearly 75 percent of the greater scientists surveyed
disbelieve in both God and immortality. An additional 15-20 percent
are doubters. It is hard to make much of three numbers, but during
the century the percentage of disbelievers increased monotonically
in every category, except for a peak in the percent of scientists
who disbelieved in 1933. Disbelief in immortality more than doubled
among scientists in general and nearly tripled among greater
scientists. It is thus hard to credit Larson and Withams claim that
belief among scientists has remained more or less steady for 80
years. C. Mackenzie Brown has analyzed Leubas data and also suggested
that demographics may make comparison between Leubas and Larson and
Withams surveys difficult. For example, more scientists now are
women, and women are more likely to be religious than men. This
factor reduces the number of disbelievers in the later surveys and
possibly disconfirms Larson and Withams conclusion that scientists
religious beliefs have not changed much since 1914. Brown has
similarly noted that applied scientists are underrepresented among
the greater scientists and adds drily that their underrepresentation
may be relevant to any discussion of the beliefs of eminent
scientists.In 1998, Laurence Iannaconne and his colleagues examined existing
data gathered between 1972 and 1990, and tried to assess the
prevalence of scientists belief in God. They found that 19 percent
of professors/scientists have no religion and 11 to 21 percent
oppose religion. It is hard to compare these figures
with those of Leuba and Larson, but arguably between 27 and 40
percent of professors/scientists may be doubters or disbelievers.
The study broke the data down further by discipline and found a
hierarchy similar to that found by Leuba: Social scientists, at 36
percent, were most likely to have no religion, followed by physical
scientists and mathematicians (27 percent) and life scientists (25
percent). Among the social scientists, sociologists (35 percent),
psychologists (48 percent), and anthropologists (57 percent) were
most likely to have no religion. According to a 2003 Harris poll, by
contrast, 90 percent of all adults [in the U.S.] believe in God and
84 percent in survival of the soul after death; that is, 10 percent
disbelieve in God or are doubters, and 16 percent disbelieve in
immortality or are doubters.
Interpreting the Data. Leuba speculated whether
scientists become disbelievers or whether independent thinkers
willing to confront reigning orthodoxies become scientists. The
greater scientists are presumably on average more-independent
thinkers than the lesser; the fact could account for the increase of
disbelief among greater scientists. That conclusion is supported by
a study by Fred Thalheimer, who concluded that religious beliefs are
frequently set during high school or college and that nonreligious
students may choose more-intellectual or -theoretical endeavors. Scientists who study biology, psychology, and sociology and
anthropology are more likely to disbelieve in God and immortality
than physical and applied scientists. Leuba speculated that
physicists and engineers see a creator in the lawfulness of the
physical and engineering worlds. Social and biological scientists
may be less likely to see lawfulness in their studies, and Brown
asks, further, whether social and biological scientists are perhaps
influenced by the suffering that they see and physical scientists do
not see. Thus, the question may be why biological and social
scientists are more likely to disbelieve, rather than why physical
scientists and engineers are less likely. Arguably, then, science
leads to disbelief, at least among those already inclined to be
independent thinkers. Leuba predicted that increasing scientific knowledge would lead
to increasing disbelief. That prediction is apparently (at least
partly) correct. He further predicted that the religions would adapt
to the best scientific insights and replace their specific method
of seeking the welfare of humanity by appeal to, and reliance upon
divine Beings, by methods free from a discredited supernaturalism.
That prediction, at least so far, is largely incorrect.
Measuring Unbelief among Scientists (2004-2007).
Elaine Ecklund and Christopher Scheitle have recently examined the
religious beliefs of scientists as a function of discipline. They
discuss a survey of faculty at 21 elite research universities. Among
the questions they asked were, Which one of the following
statements comes closest to expressing what you believe about God?
The statements ranged from I have no doubts about Gods existence
through I have some doubts, but I believe in God to I do not
know�Ķand there is no way to find out and I do not believe in God.
To compare their results with Leubas and others, I identified I do
not believe in God with disbelief and identified I believe in God
sometimes and I do not know�Ķand there is no way to find out with
doubt. The comparison is problematic, if only because Leubas survey
concerned a God who potentially answers prayers. The results are
presented in Table 3. They support the conclusion that scientists
are more apt to be disbelievers than the general public, but they
are at odds with the conclusion that the rate of disbelief
correlates with discipline. Ecklund and Scheitle, however, performed
a statistical analysis that suggests nevertheless that biologists
may be somewhat less inclined toward religion than physicists; they
speculate that the correlation, if it is real, may result from what
they call the contentious relationship between evolution and certain
religious groups.Ecklund and Scheitles study is marred somewhat both by its
restriction to elite scientists and by its mechanism for choosing
those elite scientists. Not every faculty member at an elite
university is an elite scientist, certainly not on a par with
members of the National Academy of Sciences. Nevertheless, they
found that the best predictor of their scientists religious
practice is the scientists childhood religious practice and
conclude, more or less in agreement with Thalheimer, that
freethinkers or doubters to some extent self-select when they become
scientists. Thus, science may not lead to disbelief; rather,
disbelievers or skeptics are led to science. Finally, Ecklund and Scheitle found that younger scientists are
more apt to be religious than are older scientists and note without
comment that this finding could indicate an overall shift in
attitudes towards religion among those in the academy.
Unbelief outside the US. I do not know of any
studies similar to Leubas outside the United States. Europe is
generally thought to be less religious than the United States, but
Andrew Curry, writing in Science, notes some disquieting
appearances of creationism in Europe. He cites a German study, which
I have not read, to the effect that students openness to
creationism is less a result of religion than of their failure to
appreciate or understand science.Pierre Clment and his colleagues report on a study of the
creationist beliefs of teachers, as opposed to professors and
practicing scientists. The cohort of teachers comprises both
practicing teachers and students studying to become teachers. The
study included 19 countries, mostly from Europe, the Levant, and
northern Africa. Approximately one-third of the teachers were
biology teachers, and the remainder taught the national language.
Among 14 of those countries, 12.5 % of respondents were agnostic. In
France and Estonia, more than 50 % were agnostic. The authors give
no indication whether the biology teachers were more or less likely
to be agnostic than the language teachers.
The study asked questions such as, Which of the following four
statements do you agree with most? 1. It is certain that the
origin of the humankind results from evolutionary processes. 2.
Human origin can be explained by evolutionary processes without
considering the hypothesis that God created humankind. 3. Human
origin can be explained by evolutionary processes that are governed
by God. 4. It is certain that God created humankind. A similar set
of questions asked about the origin of life, as opposed to the
origin of humanity. The questions were translated into each national language.Clment and colleagues considered those who ticked question 4 to
be (anti-evolutionist) creationists, whereas those who ticked
question 3 were designated creationist-evolutionists - most probably
what in the United States are called theistic evolutionists. Only
about 2 % of the respondents from France, for example, were
creationists; more than 80 % of respondents from Morocco and Algeria
were creationists, even among biology teachers. Creationism was more
likely in those who were more religious, either in belief or in
observance, irrespective of religion. Those who said that the theory
of evolution contradicted their own beliefs ranged from a few
percent among agnostics, through approximately 25 % among Catholics
and Protestants, and 40 % among Orthodox, to nearly 75 % among
Muslims. Acceptance of evolution, including theistic evolution,
among the entire cohort of teachers, however, increased with years
of training, from about 45 % among those with less than 2 years of
training through 80 % among those with 4 or more years of training.
These numbers are all rough, because I had to pick most of them off
some fairly small graphs. I suspect that the correlation with
religion is partly the result of demographics; the study did not
compare, for example, Catholics and Muslims within a single country,
such as France.The study included five countries in western Europe: France,
Germany, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Italy. Approximately 10 %
of biology teachers in the UK and 15% in Portugal responded that it
was certain that God created life - the response that Clement and
his colleagues consider the creationist response. Nearly 20 % of the
language teachers in Italy responded similarly.On the other hand, roughly 15 % of biology teachers in the UK and
Germany, a bit over 20 % in Portugal and Italy, and 35 % in France
responded that the origin of life resulted from natural processes. The language teachers responses to the same question
ranged from a low of perhaps 12 % in the UK (which at 35 % also had
a relatively high fraction of theistic evolutionists) to 52 % in
France. In four of the five countries, the percentage of language
teachers who thought that life had resulted from natural processes
exceeded the percentage of biology teachers; I havent the foggiest
idea why. Finally, the percentage of both biology and language teachers who
ticked natural causes or theistic evolution was least in the Muslim
and Orthodox countries, Lebanon, Malta, and Poland.Conclusion. Paul Strode and I tried to show that
science is not necessarily incompatible with religion, though it
certainly falsifies the specific claims of some religions.
Nevertheless, both atheists and creationists (some of them, anyway)
want to think that science necessarily leads toward atheism or
agnosticism. It is hard to say, but it seems more likely that
skeptics or freethinkers, who may be already inclined toward
disbelief in God, are more likely to become scientists or, perhaps,
science teachers. The claim that social scientists are less likely
to believe than are physical scientists may not stand up to
scrutiny.
References.
Anonymous, Harris Poll: The Religious and Other Beliefs of
Americans 2003, Skeptical Inquirer, July-August, 2003, p. 5.
Brown, C. Mackenzie, The Conflict between Religion and Science
in Light of the Patterns of Religious Beliefs among Scientists, Zygon 38(3): 603-632 (September), 2003.
Clment, Pierre, and Marie-Pierre Quessada, Les convictions
crationnistes et/ou volutionnistes denseignants de biologie: une
tude comparative dans dix-neuf pays, Natures Sciences Socits 16,
154-158, 2008; in French.
Clment, Pierre, Marie-Pierre Quessada, Charline Laurent, and
Graa Carvalho, Science and Religion: Evolutionism and Creationism
in Education: A Survey of Teachers Conceptions in 14 Countries,
XIII IOSTE Symposium, Izmir, Turkey, The Use of Science and
Technology Education for Peace and Sustainable Development, 21-26
September 2008.
Curry, Andrew, Creationist Beliefs Persist in Europe, Science
323: 1159, 2009.
Ecklund, Elaine Howard, and Christopher P. Scheitle, Religion
among Academic Scientists: Distinctions, Disciplines, and
Demographics, Social Problems, 54(2): 289-307, 2007.
Iannaconne, Laurence, Rodney Stark, and Roger Finke, Rationality
and the Religious Mind, Economic Inquiry 36(3): 373-389, 1998.
Larson, Edward J., and Larry Witham, Scientists Are Still
Keeping the Faith, Nature 386: 435-436, 1997.,
Leading Scientists Still Reject God, Nature 394: 313, 1998.,
Scientists and Religion in America, Scientific American
281(3): 89-93 (September), 1999.
Leuba, James H., Belief in God and Immortality, Boston:
Sherman, French, 1916., Religious Beliefs of American Scientists, Harpers Monthly
Magazine, August: 291-300 1934.
Thalheimer, Fred, Religiosity and Secularization in the Academic
Professions, Sociology of Education 46: 183-202 (spring), 1973.
Young, Matt, and John Lynch, Unbelief among Scientists, New
Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2007, pp.
687-690.
Young, Matt, and Paul Strode, Why Evolution Works (and
Creationism Fails), New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers, 2009, chap.
18.
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