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

Suppression or Engagement 79I think that it has no real place in my interactions with students. For example,I had one fellow who was a very devout Christian, and he was always tellingme what to do and how to live, and he was sort of evangelical, and how do Ihandle that? Well I would just make jokes, because it was just so silly. You haveto diffuse that kind of energy. It doesn’t really have any place in the workingenvironment.Since this chemist has no real language for talking about religion with his students,he does what he best knows to do; he avoids the situation by quicklydismissing it with either humor or the rhetoric of separation of church andstate.11It is not just anti- or nonreligious scientists who choose to suppress mentionof religion in their classrooms. An economist 12 I talked with currentlyteaches at what he described as an “aggressively secular institution.” Thisnature of his university is especially apparent to him, because he is Catholic.After converting to Catholicism as an adult, he taught for a short time at areligiously affiliated college. While he has been trying not to talk about religionat his current university, at the private, religious school, he “would havebeen comfortable talking about issues [related to religion, since] . . . all of thestudents were members of the same faith.” Students there would even have aprayer before class. In a public institution, however, he “just never would.” Heattributes his choice not to discuss religion to “institutional reasons”; in short,there is general discomfort about bringing religion into a pluralistic universityenvironment.SCRIPTS OF ENGAGEMENTOther scientists, particularly those whose fields—such as evolutionary biologyor sociology of religion—intimately overlap with matters of faith, try diligentlyto bring religion into the teaching environment. A small group of scientistswithin this category intentionally bring religion into their classes to model forstudents thoughtful ways of viewing the connections between science and faith.More often, however, these scientists bring in religion as a way of explaining tostudents how science either differs from religion or even disproves certain facetsof religious understanding. This is similar to the journalists and social scientiststhat religion scholar John Schmalzbauer discusses in People of Faith .They are not trying to proselytize. The engagement is much more subtle as theysimply try to connect their personal faith with their disciplines.