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

No God on the Quad 103You can talk about kids. You can talk about movies . . . . But mostly we talk aboutscience and what we do, because there are not all that many people . . . who aregoing to be interested in what you do. And so when you find somebody who is,you spend most of the time on that.He went on to describe what to him is the almost euphoric experience ofgoing to a conference, where “basically . . . 24 hours a day, [we] just eat, drink,sleep, breathe [research].” While he doesn’t tend to comment on religion, thedebates about teaching intelligent design in public school classrooms havecaused him to become more vocal. He says it is “crystal clear” that there is an“absolute lack of evidence” for creationism and intelligent design. This isconsistent with his view that, strictly speaking, science does not conflict withreligion but rather conservative religion conflicts with science. He explains,“I view it as religion perceiving there to be a conflict when there reallyisn’t.”This psychologist maintains a “completely neutral stance” on the existenceof God. He has “a hard enough time with questions . . . in the science stuff.” Hedoes not want to waste time thinking about unanswerable religious or spiritualquestions. When asked about the meaning of life, he answered, “It beats me. Ihave no clue.” Part of the reason he never thinks about these issues is becauseof the pressures of academia. When asked whether he engages in any spiritualpractices, he responded, “I’m mainly trying to just get the stuff done that wasdue two weeks ago.” His views are similar to those of other nonreligious scientistswho subscribe to the Model of Secularism: The only questions worth askingare secular ones. Their departments and the broader university exist for thepurpose of forwarding knowledge, and religion is not an important type ofknowledge.Although this psychologist and Margaret the Episcopalian chemist havevery different underlying motivations, both think that the best way to handlefaith is to keep it private. Science and religion are kept in separate boxes, religionin a closed box within the closet and science in an open box outside it, andthis practice is largely due to assumptions about what the university ought tobe. This compartmentalization is not violated until there is an event that forcesopen the closet; this happened for our psychologist when intelligent designcases gained in prominence. 49One way of separating religion is to put literal institutional barriers aroundit. Some scientists proposed that science could be protected from religion byconfining it to divinity schools or religious studies departments. For some, religionshould be further restricted to only specifically religious institutions,where students could go if they wanted to learn more about faith. A Nobel