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

78Society and Broader Publicsfor religion. My interview with one biologist 9 caught me off guard: Although hethinks that religion should generally not be discussed in academic settings, hewas so eager to talk about the negative connections between religion, spirituality,and science that my interview with him lasted over two and a half hours. Atone point, I asked him if religion ever comes up as a topic in his interactionswith students. He adamantly replied that even if a student does mention it, hetries hard to suppress such discussions. He specifically explained why he thinksstudents do not talk about religion very much: Since he “teaches advancedundergraduates and graduate students, by that time . . . the people who want totake [the kind of high-level courses he teaches] are just not religious in the firstplace.” In his words, “they’re certainly mature enough not to come up to youand start talking about creation or something.” One wonders how this biologistknows how religious his students are, since he squelches their religious talkor forces them to face being considered not “mature.”Like many of the faculty I spoke with, this biologist has had little positiveexperience with religion. He said he has been an atheist since he was four yearsold, and he subsequently has little knowledge of the range of ways scientistsmight talk about the connections between religion and science. He furtherwent on to illustrate with an analogy just how irrelevant religion is to science:I mean it’s as if you were asking me, “Is alchemy a topic of conversation in thechemistry department?” Well, I’m not in the chemistry department, but I feelabsolutely sure it isn’t . . . . I think that religion should have been discarded at least25 hundred years ago . . . . I see the fact that we have it at this school as a horridanachronism.It should be kept in mind that there is not a large group of scientists who are soextremely hostile to religion (less than 5 percent of those I interviewed). Yetthose who are this hostile are often the most outspoken, making it appear toscience students as if more scientists are hostile to religion than really are.“Religion Has No Place Here”A chemist 10 who teaches at a large state university in the West explained thathe strongly “believes in separation of church and state.” For much of theinterview, he was laid-back, not conveying the ivory tower aura with whichacademics are so often associated. As he started to talk about religion enteringteaching, however, he lost his easygoing manner and became more animated,waving his hands as he talked: