This article from American Scientist describes a recent project that surveyed the religious beliefs of 149 prominent evolutionary scientists. Three previous polls, in 1914, 1933, and 1998, showed a decline in belief in a personal God and belief in immortality among scientists, with biologists consistently being the least likely to say they believed in either. The 2003 Cornell Evolution Project, a dissertation project, was the first to look only at evolutionary scientists’ attitudes toward religion. It included 17 questions and gave respondents the option to comment; in addition, 12 evolutionists were interviewed.
The biologists were given a more fine-grained range of choices to describe their religious beliefs, and the results by and large agreed with those of the earlier polls. When they were given four options for describing their thoughts on the relationship between religion and evolution, only 8% agreed with the idea put forth most notably by Stephen Jay Gould, that religion and science are not in conflict because they cover separate non-overlapping spheres. (I’m not surprised; as much as I respect Gould, I think he was way off base with that idea.) And only 3% found religion and evolution to be “totally harmonious”.
The other two options were that religion and science are in conflict because they provide contradictory answers to our questions about life, or “religion is a social phenomenon that has developed with the biological evolution of Homo sapiens—therefore religion should be considered as a part of our biological heritage, and its tenets should be seen as a labile social adaptation, subject to change and reinterpretation.” Judging from all the heated discussion on the subject lately, you’d expect that maybe most of the scientists would have chosen the former, but in fact 72% chose the latter: they don’t see a conflict because they see religion as a manifestation of evolution.
The article explains how this attitude is the opposite of one held in the 1860s which saw no conflict because evolution was seen as evidence of God’s activities. It’s easy to see that today’s attitude, which assumes that religion arose as part of our evolutionary history and is not based on eternal revealed truths, is likely to make some religious people unhappy. Since biologists have consistently been the least likely of all scientists to believe in a personal God or in immortality, would giving kids a better education in biology lead to a reduced belief in religion across the rest of the population?
This article is blatantly and pointlessly offensive to religious people. It is hard not to read “indoctrinate” where “educate” is written.
The trouble with the United States is not that our population believes in God. If education in biology were to somehow “cure” our culture’s religious base, it would not benefit any of us. The trouble with the United States is that our population is undereducated in the teachings of Jesus Christ (a millennias-dead Gandhi, if you will).
Religion is not the enemy. When someone blows up an abortion clinic, protests a biology curiculum, slaughters Muslims, or censors TV, they are not acting on behalf of Christ. They are instead responding to a labile political adaptation, a power structure created by power-hungry people independent of any enlightenment or “revealed truths.” To call such “religion” is as misguided as debunking evolution because Darwin’s descent charts contain nonsense. Jeesh, haven’t we ever heard of Minipax, or is Orwell somehow in conflict with biology as well?
When we suggest blithely that biology indoctrination might cure us from religion, we are simply perpetuating the fallacy that power is the solution. If only *we* had the power over the education system then there wouldn’t be a problem!
Whoa there Greg. Don’t shoot the messenger just because she tells us how the 149 scientists responded.
I’m as religious as the next Unitarian and in no way did I find the article offensive. I think Niels Bohr said something to the effect that the opposite of a correct statement is a false statement; but the opposite of a profound statement may well be another profound statement.
As reason discovers ‘true statements’ in biology, etc. I certainly want those to be taught in educational settings. They are necessary. But personally I doubt if such facts alone will provide us with many of the ‘profound’ viewpoints needed to do a better job with this old world. Such as working toward more equitable and sustainable societies, etc., etc. True statements may not be sufficient.
Therefore personally I would lean towards Gould’s position as indicated in the survey, i.e. the 8%. (Even though I note that it would be possible to subsume it, intact, within the majority 72% position.)
Greg was concerned about more power going to biology teachers. History certainly shows that power has allowed corrupt actions by many groups (including some of the religious groups that Greg suggests should have more teaching power). Somehow we just have to find a way to be more inclusive, more fair, and more all that sort of thing.
Pogo may have had it right: we have met the enemy, and the enemy is us!
I would never suggest that a religious group should have power. For example, the catholic church is distinctly not in the business of distributing Christ’s enlightened perspective. There are churches which are more “in tune” with Christ, but if you gave them power, they would become corrupted. The teachings are the solution but there is nothing systematic you can do to “enforce” them.
However, I maintain that there is a presumption by many scientists that religion is the enemy because churches and church-goers perform retarded (to put it kindly) acts. This presumption is not scientific and it causes people to disrespect and fear science as surely as the the westboro baptist church causes people to disrespect and fear religion.
That most famous “someone” once wrote that many rationalists view mythology as superstitious gibberish; and many believers view myth as literally true. Hinting that both groups want power, whether it be over nature, the psyche, the divine, or whatever.
Whereas whoever wrote Shakespeare, reminded at least those of us named Horartio, that there might in fact be more than can be imagined in our philosophies.
To our learned hostess I would ask why you think Gould was so far off-base with his tale of two domains? And if I may be so bold, how would you answer the survey in general? & PS: thanks for all the interesting work your doing.
And Greg, I’ve met, and read, a few of the science types that you mention. They can get carried away and project an entire world view from a rather small piece of data. But also an aside regarding churches: I’ve met so many wonderful and caring individuals from so many denominations. I admire the individuals, although I might well have some disagreements with many of their institutions. I’d encourage all to keep tinkering with the systems. &
Thanks for your passionate comments.
Greg, speaking from a scientific point of view, I don’t think that many scientists object to religion because churchgoers “perform retarded actsâ€, but rather because religion teaches, even requires, that we accept religious “facts†without thinking critically about them. This indoctrination (education) discourages any reevaluation or any corrections of erroneous beliefs or facts. The habit of acceptance without question is then transferred to other aspects of life with unfortunate consequences. It is perhaps what has led the public to support the Bush administration’s trampling on the Constitution in support of a “war on terrorismâ€.
First, thanks to everyone for the responses. I’d like to throw a little more data into the debate; check out this Gallup poll that looked at Americans’ beliefs about evolution. There are some fascinating stats, the most surprising being the number of people who said they believe in both creationism and evolution. But the most relevant graph for this discussion is toward the bottom, and shows weekly church attendance fairly strongly correlated with rejection of evolution, and little or no church attendance correlated with acceptance of evolution. So Greg, I’m not sure if this answers your questions–I don’t see religion as “the enemy”, but I believe that an evidence-based, reality-based approach to questions like where we came from works better than one based on blind acceptance of scripture, and it’s unfortunate that in the US in particular, many churches encourage the rejection of the former in favor of the latter. It also bugs me that churches so often discourage critical thinking, as Mark pointed out, and thus cannot or will not align themselves with facts about how the world really works. (The Dalai Lama is notable as one religious leader who lets science take precedence when science conflicts with Buddhist beliefs, and I wish there were more like him.)
And in response to what Don asked (“Learned hostess”, thanks, I like that. 🙂 — I disagree with Gould on NOMA because I see a number of areas of overlap between the questions addressed by science and religion, for example questions of origins (origins of humans, origins of the universe). For those who take a metaphorical view of scripture rather than a literal view, there doesn’t have to be a conflict between science and religion on the question of evolution. But many people in this country believe their church or the Bible is the best source for answers to questions about the origins of human life. In my view religion is encroaching on the magisterium of science by trying to answer a scientific question with an answer based on faith. To the faithful I’m guessing it looks like science is encroaching on the magisterium of religion by trying to figure out where we came from. So the two spheres aren’t really all that separate.
So I’m afraid I’d have to put myself, rather reluctantly, among those who believe that religion and science are in conflict because they provide contradictory answers to fundamental questions in biology. It doesn’t have to be so, and I wish it weren’t so, but in this country it certainly seems to be the case. I do believe that religious behavior and emotions in humans are a consequence of how our brains evolved, and I personally have no problem with that.
“Religion is not the enemy. When someone blows up an abortion clinic, protests a biology curiculum, slaughters Muslims, or censors TV, they are not acting on behalf of Christ. They are instead responding to a labile political adaptation, a power structure created by power-hungry people independent of any enlightenment or “revealed truths.†To call such “religion†is as misguided as debunking evolution because Darwin’s descent charts contain nonsense.”
This is a bit of a “No True Scotsman” fallacy.
If you separate organized religion from personal faith and reject the latter as unreligious, you’re simply adopting a nonstandard use of the word “religion” and the argument becomes circular.
The Catholic Church is not part of what Christianity should be; but it is part of what Christianity is.
If someone has faith in the scripture (even unquestioning faith will do) then they will know not to judge, they will know to turn the other cheek, they will know about the separation of search and state, and they will know all about human fallibility. The acts which you associate with religion are derived from blindness. You cannot blame the scripture for the blindness, for the blind haven’t even read it.
We have already tried berating these blind people for having faith. Not only can faith be good, it’s something they don’t have. So we’re just berating them in some misguided attempt to alienate them from the one force they might actually be able to learn some wisdom from. Great!
Blindness and faith are far to similar for me to accept this contrast. “Having faith in scripture” I tend to interpret as “accepting scripture on the basis of authority or tradition, rather than because of its merits”. Faith implies belief that is to some extent independent of the attributes of its object. And this is the problem; faith can just as easily have the positive values of, e.g., the Sermon on the Mount or, conversely the negative values of, e.g., Leviticus as its object.
Instead, I think you are using faith in a way that implies only positive values; but how do we choose the good values? Doesn’t this require a means of evaluation that is necessarily beyond faith?
Faith is a rejection of evaluation, of critical judgment. This is its link to authoritarian structures like the Catholic Church.
Patrick
Suppose you go to see a magic show, and the magician walks into a door on the left side of the stage and, less than 200ms later, appears in a door on the right side of the stage, 100ft away. We instantly know that he did not teleport. Do we know this because we have examined his equipment, or systematically proved that teleportation is impossible? No, our belief is based on faith in unproved principles like Occam’s Razor and skepticism. You may say it is a rational probability assessment, but the numerical probability you would assign to teleportation in that context is probably not too different from the numerical probability you would assign to God unveiling Judgement Day tomorrow. In other words, you would treat it as impossible. You would immediately decide that he either travelled approx 341mph a “conventional way”, or a double came out of the second door somehow, and the strength of your belief would be as strong as any religious faith I have ever known.
Faith is not blindness, it does not have to be derived from blindness. Faith is simply a way of pruning the probability trees in our assessments of the world. It can be pretty awful, or it can be pretty great, just like ice cream.