Really? The following appeared in Nature recently (can't work out how I
got access to it now, otherwise I would have posted the url)
/Gary
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Leading scientists still reject God
Sir -- The question of religious belief among US scientists has been debated
since early in the century. Our latest survey finds that, among the top
natural scientists, disbelief is greater than ever -- almost total.
Research on this topic began with the eminent US psychologist James H. Leuba
and his landmark survey of 1914. He found that 58% of 1,000 randomly
selected US scientists expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of God,
and that this figure rose to near 70% among the 400 "greater" scientists
within his sample1. Leuba repeated his survey in somewhat different form 20
years later, and found that these percentages had increased to 67 and 85,
respectively2.
In 1996, we repeated Leuba's 1914 survey and reported our results in
Nature3. We found little change from 1914 for American scientists generally,
with 60.7% expressing disbelief or doubt. This year, we closely imitated the
second phase of Leuba's 1914 survey to gauge belief among "greater"
scientists, and find the rate of belief lower than ever -- a mere 7% of
respondents.
Leuba attributed the higher level of disbelief and doubt among "greater"
scientists to their "superior knowledge, understanding, and experience"2.
Similarly, Oxford University scientist Peter Atkins commented on our 1996
survey, "You clearly can be a scientist and have religious beliefs. But I
don't think you can be a real scientist in the deepest sense of the word
because they are such alien categories of knowledge."4 Such comments led us
to repeat the second phase of Leuba's study for an up-to-date comparison of
the religious beliefs of "greater" and "lesser" scientists.
Our chosen group of "greater" scientists were members of the National
Academy of Sciences (NAS). Our survey found near universal rejection of the
transcendent by NAS natural scientists. Disbelief in God and immortality
among NAS biological scientists was 65.2% and 69.0%, respectively, and among
NAS physical scientists it was 79.0% and 76.3%. Most of the rest were
agnostics on both issues, with few believers. We found the highest
percentage of belief among NAS mathematicians (14.3% in God, 15.0% in
immortality). Biological scientists had the lowest rate of belief (5.5% in
God, 7.1% in immortality), with physicists and astronomers slightly higher
(7.5% in God, 7.5% in immortality). Overall comparison figures for the 1914,
1933 and 1998 surveys appear in Table 1.
Repeating Leuba's methods presented challenges. For his general surveys, he
randomly polled scientists listed in the standard reference work, American
Men of Science (AMS). We used the current edition. In Leuba's day, AMS
editors designated the "great scientists" among their entries, and Leuba
used these to identify his "greater" scientists1,2. The AMS no longer makes
these designations, so we chose as our "greater" scientists members of the
NAS, a status that once assured designation as "great scientists" in the
early AMS. Our method surely generated a more elite sample than Leuba's
method, which (if the quoted comments by Leuba and Atkins are correct) may
explain the extremely low level of belief among our respondents.
For the 1914 survey, Leuba mailed his brief questionnaire to a random sample
of 400 AMS "great scientists". It asked about the respondent's belief in "a
God in intellectual and affective communication with humankind" and in
"personal immortality". Respondents had the options of affirming belief,
disbelief or agnosticism on each question1. Our survey contained precisely
the same questions and also asked for anonymous responses.
Leuba sent the 1914 survey to 400 "biological and physical scientists", with
the latter group including mathematicians as well as physicists and
astronomers1. Because of the relatively small size of NAS membership, we
sent our survey to all 517 NAS members in those core disciplines. Leuba
obtained a return rate of about 70% in 1914 and more than 75% in 1933
whereas our returns stood at about 60% for the 1996 survey and slightly over
50% from NAS members1,2.
As we compiled our findings, the NAS issued a booklet encouraging the
teaching of evolution in public schools, an ongoing source of friction
between the scientific community and some conservative Christians in the
United States. The booklet assures readers, "Whether God exists or not is a
question about which science is neutral"5. NAS president Bruce Alberts said:
"There are many very outstanding members of this academy who are very
religious people, people who believe in evolution, many of them biologists."
Our survey suggests otherwise.
Edward J. Larson
Department of History, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-6012,
USA
e-mail: edlarson@uga.edu
Larry Witham
3816 Lansdale Court, Burtonsville, Maryland 20866, USA
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References
1. Leuba, J. H. The Belief in God and Immortality: A Psychological,
Anthropological and Statistical Study (Sherman, French & Co., Boston,
1916). Links
2. Leuba, J. H. Harper's Magazine 169, 291-300 (1934). Links
3. Larson, E. J. & Witham, L. Nature 386, 435-436 (1997). Links
4. Highfield, R. The Daily Telegraph 3 April, p. 4 (1997). Links
5. National Academy of Sciences Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of
Science (Natl Acad. Press, Washington DC, 1998). Links
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