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

90Society and Broader PublicsAnd Boston College political scientist Alan Wolfe has written about the“welcome revival” of religion in the academy. 14If there is indeed a resurgence of religion on campuses, it might havemore traction in some geographic locales and in some types of universitiesthan others. Universities like Duke and Emory might be more open to integratingreligion into the curriculum because they are located in the South,in the midst of a populace that is more likely to be religious (the “BibleBelt”). And sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons show that faculty atregional universities and teaching colleges might be more religiously similarto the general population than are those who teach at the kinds of flagshipstate research universities and Ivy League schools that I included in mystudy for this book. 15MODELS OF UNIVERSITY LIFEAlthough there is strong evidence that religion among students is returningto top university campuses, I did not find as dominant a group of scienceprofessors who advocated public expression of religion on campus or scholarlyconversations about religion and its role in public science. This lack ofcommitment among scientists to talking about and responding to religion ontheir particular campuses comes—for both religious and nonreligious faculty—fromparticular models of the university. Remember that models areunderstandings of what ought to be. We all subscribe to certain models, andthey influence our actions, even if we’re not totally aware of them. If I hold amodel, for instance, that elementary schools should be safer, then I mightendorse the hiring of security guards there and criticize a perceived lack offire alarms. In the same way, elite scientists subscribe to models of what lifeat their universities ought to look like. And through analysis of interviewtranscripts, we are able to identify some of these models, which I discussbelow as Opposition, Secularism, and Pluralism. When a university is seen asa place that should be religion-free, the result is an institutional separation ofreligion from the rest of intellectual life and, in some cases, actual suppressionof religion.Irving,16a psychologist, told me that the university is a place for the “generationof knowledge rather than the generation of faith.” For him, to acceptreligion in university life would be to support opinions that he sees as dangerousto the mission of science in the university. Scientists like Irving are stuck.Many wonder how they can stay true to their commitments to science and to