Science vs. religion : what scientists really think - File PDF

62Crossing the Picket Lines: The Personal Faith of Scientistsscientist, this biologist feels that spirituality is also about a belief in nature. Inhis words, “I get my spirituality, if you want to say that, from being in nature,but I don’t really believe there’s a God.” He believes that this view makes himdifferent from most other Americans, and he’s right.Some scientists feel that science actually frees them to admire the complexityof the natural world and praise it. Their spirituality helps these atheistsappreciate the mystery they often encounter in their work. As we all know, thework of scientists—especially natural scientists—requires highly technicalknowledge about the natural world, as well as skill in its manipulation. Somescientists see themselves as genuinely unlocking nature’s secrets through theirresearch. And for this group of spiritual scientists, their sense of access to thedeepest aspects of nature also enlivens a sense of spirituality. A biologist 32 saidthat spirituality could come from being connected to nature, as when seeingthe mountains of the Himalayas: “I’ve done it! You get sort of a feeling of awebefore nature. And that’s not really a religious feeling, more of a spiritual feeling,so I find that it’s a feeling of transcending your own being and feeling partof a great force and greater energy.” Many of these scientists intimately connecttheir spirituality to their understanding of the natural world but are clear todistinguish this from a connection with God.Some scholars would say that this sense of the spiritual but not religious issimilar to some of the ideas of the New Age movement, some of which borrowfrom Ralph Waldo Emerson and other transcendentalists. Yet I rarely heardthe interview subjects mention Emerson or any of the other Transcendentalists—andscientists emphasized that they were not, as one scientist clearly putit, “some flipping New Ager.” 33 Still, in their connecting of spirituality to nature,these scientists are similar to Emerson and the New England Transcendentalistshailed by religion scholar Leigh Schmidt as partially responsible for connectingspirituality to a deep appreciation of nature and the environment. 34According to another biologist, 35 spirituality helps students understand howlarge the natural world really is. Raised as a conservative Jew, this biologistdescribed himself as an atheist and said that his spirituality helps him to transmitto his students the sense of wonder found in the natural world: “I’m alwaystrying to remind my students that what they’re trying to understand is howeverything fits together . . . . That’s included for me [in my definition of spirituality],but it’s not included in everybody’s definition.” Some scientists madethe triangulated link between spirituality, science, and nature very explicit,such as the physicist 36 who talked about his time in an observatory. The hoursthat he spends alone in his work as an astronomer give him the time to “thinkof my place in the world and the universe and its vastness.” He contrasted thisdeep sense of spiritual connectedness to the world with what he feels when he