Scientists' Belief in God Varies Starkly by Discipline

[Dover]

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...cont'd

http://www.livescience.com/othernews/050811_scientists_god.html

[CarbonDate]

1. Huh? Is this a joke?

Since when are "political scientists" considered to be "scientists" in the same sense as a physicist or a biologist?

[beam me up scottie]

6. I'd take anything from that site

with a grain of salt.
It's like the Mickey D's of science information.

The reporter cites another "study" without a link:

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.

And here is the bio for the researcher:

Elaine Howard Ecklund

Elaine Howard Ecklund received her B.S. in Human Development in 1995 from Cornell University. While here she was a member of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and upon graduation took a position as InterVarsity staff. After three years she returned to Cornell to begin her doctoral degree in Sociology. She received her M.A. in Sociology in 2001 for her work on feminism and women's leadership in the Catholic Church, and will defend her dissertation, The "Good" American: Religion and Civic Adaptation Among Second-Generation Korean Americans this spring.

Among her many awards she received Sage Fellowships in 1998-1999 and 2001-2002, Teaching Awards in 2001 and 2003, and a 2003 Albert S. Roe Graduate Student Research Award. She was involved in the Pew Mentoring Program from 2000-2003 and continues to be an active member of the Graduate Christian Fellowship.
http://www.chestertonhouse.org/ecklundbio.html

They have great space wallpaper though.

[John Q. Citizen]

7. Forever. They just study human political behavior instead of the behavior

of matter and energy (like physicists.)

It's not new.

[electron_blue]

8. Make no mistake, social scientists definitely consider their discipline

a science.

These results don't surprsie me. Seems like kind of a dumb article, all in all.

[Dudley_DUright]

2. I don't know why it was surprising that more

social scientists compared to natural scientists are religious. I would be interested a more detailed comparison among the sciences, but it looks like this is just a preliminary report, with more detail forthcoming later.

[ochazuke]

3. Must be Americans they surveyed

Religion is an accident of birth.

[kestrel91316]

4. There is nothing wrong with scientists believing in God.

The problem arises when they try to inject a belief in God into the teaching of science. The existence of God cannot be proved. It is a philosophical matter: a matter of "faith", if you will. Science deals with the experimental method and verifiable theories and observable facts.

More than a separation of church and state, we need separation of church and science.

When I was in college 1974-1982 studying microbiology and veterinary medicine, there was NEVER a mention or hint of god anywhere in any of my classes. Ever. As it should be.

If I want a religious education I will go to church or seminary, thank you. Your religion ends where my body begins.

[Desertrose]

5. Actually I'm not too surprised it works out this way

"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. "

Did they ever specifiy "religion" vs "spiritual" I wonder....

"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."

OK...that makes even more sense.

Interesting article.
thanks Dover:)

[toddaa]

9. Social "Science"

I'm probably asking for it, but since when have sociologists, psychologists, and economists become scientists?

[Maple]

10. They always

have been.

[greyl]

11. It's not so black and white.

There has always been much debate.

[Maple]

14. Only from people

trying to hog the title.

Turf protection is a wasteful exercise.

[greyl]

15. It's good of you to admit that I spoke the truth.

Now, as far as your claim that the only debate has come from people trying to "hog the title", that's not true. The debate goes on from disinterested parties as well, say... philosophers. You must know that the very definition of Science is still being debated, so how could the categorization of various "studies of" not be debated?

That economics is a Science was first claimed in the 1930s, 150 years after Adam Smith.
The father of Sociology, Auguste Comte, was acknowledging grey areas when he said that Sociology wasn't a pure Science, but rather an applied Science.

One inclined to research the issue, will find plenty of evidence that the debate continues, but one must ask "why?". Why is being considered a Science so desirable, such a badge of value and achievement?

[Maple]

18. Actually I said the opposite, however...

sci·ence ( P ) Pronunciation Key (sns)
n.

The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.

Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena.
Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study.

Methodological activity, discipline, or study: I've got packing a suitcase down to a science.

An activity that appears to require study and method: the science of purchasing.

Knowledge, especially that gained through experience.

Science Christian Science.


Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language

I vote for number one....and that pretty much covers this subject, don't you think?

It's simply a search for knowledge...not a boy scout badge. There's no need for a tangent from the topic here.

[toddaa]

22. Always?

It's hard for me to think of someone like Carl Jung as a scientist.

I'm not knocking social science. Much of it is definitely scientifically rigorous. I just find it interesting that disciplines relying mostly on statistics can be thought of as pure science.

[Maple]

23. Which is why science

is having so many problems.

The priests guard the flame zealously, lest the commoners profane the altar.

[whyverne]

26. Dr. Lewis Thomas once compared the social scientists

of today to the alchemists of yore. Much of what was done in alchemy seems pretty silly today but it did lead to real science. Dr Thomas was sure the same thing would happen in the social sciences.

[beam me up scottie]

27. Hey Whyverne,

welcome to DU!
:7

[enlightenment]

30. "Soft" versus "hard" sciences

is the way I've always heard it described -- including anthropology and poli-sci in the "soft" sciences. I'm an historian and occasionally even my discipline gets tagged as a "soft" social science (I don't really agree . . .)

edit: can't spell

[NNadir]

12. I recall one of my advanced physical chemistry courses where the professor

said, "Resonance is like 'god,' the more you know, the less you need it."

It was one of the more memorable lectures of my education.

It seems more and more true; the more you know the less you need it. In fact the new found theocratic government here demonstrates nothing more than the American decent into deliberate ignorance.

In accordance with the others who have posted to this thread, I certainly had no expectation that social "scientists" would have less of a belief in god than physical scientists. I would have, in fact, expected the exact opposite. I have some respect for some activities undertaken by practitioners of social "science," but this is not the same as regarding their activities as science in the purest sense. Many different groups want to appropriate the credibility that the word "science" brings, as in Christian "Science" or Creation "Science" etc. I join others though in thinking that the claim for the existence of Political "Science" is pretty dubious.

Scientists formulate laws - usually formulated in a purely mathematical way - that make predictions that are testable, usually in a way that is quantifiable. I have never heard of a Political "Scientist" who has done that.

[onager]

13. Following the money didn't take long...

In fact, only as long as it took to google "Ecklund" and "Templeton Foundation."

Whenever you see PR for God in the news, it's a safe bet that the Templeton Foundation threw money at some hungry "independent researcher."

Templeton is one of the richest and most aggressively religious foundations in the U.S., and they are ALWAYS sponsoring guff like this. (You'd think an omnipotent, omniscient deity could do Its own PR, but I'm just a Grumpy Atheist without the academic...chortle...background to ask such questions.)

With a $283,000 grant from the Templeton Foundation, Ecklund mailed $15 and a request to participate in a 10-minute on-line survey to 2,148 faculty at 21 of the top U.S. research universities. She phoned those who did not take the survey to give them a chance to answer questions by phone. After seven weeks, more than 1,600 had completed the survey either on-line or by phone. The final response rate of 75 percent was "quite high" for social science research, Ecklund said.

The 36 questions on the survey examined a variety of topics, including religious beliefs, participation in religious services, spiritual practices, and the intersection of spiritual beliefs and research ethics.

http://pda.physorg.com/lofinews5785.html

[beam me up scottie]

16. A fellow googler.

My skeptical nature took over as soon as I realised the "research" didn't pass the smell test.

The reporter obviously doesn't concern himself with the boring scientific details or the facts about the backers of the study.

[Pepperbelly]

17. I read the methodology.

What is your problem with how the study was conducted?

[onager]

19. My problem is with the Templeton Foundation

Yet another outfit which is doing bass-ackward science while claiming just the opposite. It has the answer it wants already--a God-Critter Exists!--and it only looks for questions supporting that answer.

[Maple]

20. That's true in any field

whether the searchers are aware of their biases or not.

If you set out, even subconsciously, to find Eve...you discover 'Lucy'

On edit: I should add, for the sticklers here, the search also leads to 'mitochondrial Eve’

[Pepperbelly]

21. That wasn't what the study asked ...

I am unsure as to what you thought the study tried to prove. It shows some statistically significant difference in the rates of belief in a God among different disciplines.

Of course, I don't know why a study was required but if these yahoos want to spend a quarter of a million bucks to find out something that everyone knew anyway, more power to them.

[enki23]

24. what methodology?

the article mentioned almost nothing at all about their methodology. all they said is that they mailed out surveys. that's it. that's almost completely useless information, and certainly doesn't even *begin* to describe what, for example, their sampling methodology might actually have been. we also don't know what the questions were, what format the answers were in, how they actually interpreted the data. no data about response rates. nada. zip. nil. nothing at all. not in the article i read.

it may well be accurate, or it may not be. aside from the raw number of surveys sent out, there's no real methodological information in the linked article at all.

[Pepperbelly]

25. actually ...

they mailed out 2,148 questionaires, received 1600 replies. It's not a huge number but it is statistically significant, if the sampling was correctly done, for the entire USA. For the smaller universe of college profs in the sciences, it is more than adeauate.

I did not see the raw data but tabulating questionaires is not that difficult, particularly with this sort of survey. Tedious perhaps but not difficult.

http://www.physorg.com/news5785.html

[dutchdoctor]

28. There is a clear conflict of interests

if the researchers were paid by a religious organisation.
That alone means that their methodology is not sound.

[Pepperbelly]

29. I don't see that although ...

I do see that the conclusions reached are really not surprising nor are they something that would serve any particular group's interest. I think they pissed away a quarter of a million bucks and that is good. It'smoney they cannot spend on more substantial mischief.

[Igel]

31. The methodology is the methodology.

It's one thing to assume that somebody wouldn't want to do research in an area that is of interest to them, or seek research funding from some group that's interested in that area.

It's another thing to assume anybody funded oby a given group or affiliated with some organization is going to falsify their data. I thought that thinking went out of vogue in the '50s in this country.

Presumably the research will be peer reviewed and published. But it's unlikely that this would have seen the light of day had not some faculty member looked it over. She's a post-doc at an institution that is no slouch when it comes to academic integrity. (Having taught at the school as an adjunct for a term or two, I feel obliged to defend it.)

I'm actually moderately surprised at the results, even though I consider sociology to be one of the Dark Arts. I'd like to see exactly how she worded her questionnaire.