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

What Scientists Are Doing Wrong That They Could Be Doing Right 141structures. This is a particularly important practice for scientists who arethemselves religious. The general public might better apprehend science ifthey know there are scientists with the same kinds of faith commitments thatthey have.Involvement with Religious People and CommunitiesAlthough uncommon, a few of the scientists I talked with—especially thosewho are themselves very involved in religious communities—mentioned theirown efforts to do more to engage with religion and religious people in intelligentways. The biologist 35 described above explained that her work has a lot todo with nature, and for her, this has spiritual components: “One of the mainreasons that I am actually in the discipline has to do with a deep and abidingsense the earth is precious and unique and that there are a lot of really wonderfuland awesome things that humans are influencing, maybe without even realizingit.” Her motivations, she believes, have more to do with religion andspirituality than with science. And her work sometimes gives her the opportunityto interact with religious people. “A lot of the work that I’m doing now isactually in a pretty rural area, and folks there . . . are more likely to be associatedwith religion than the urban academics who I spend my time with,” sheexplained. She would like to become more involved with a “church communityand have the opportunity to talk about the natural world and human effects onit. Certainly there are lots of precedents for religious organizations . . . to befairly outspoken in terms of human stewardship [of nature] rather than justusing it, to protect it for future generations.” So this biologist’s connecting ofreligion to her scientific work on the environment leads her to want to helpreligious people better understand—through their own lens—why they shouldcare for the natural world.Scientists also mentioned the need to reflect on the myriad ways that researchand scholarship could be made relevant and accessible to the broader public.Some thought that being in better dialogue about religion and science was a partof this broader mission of public scholarship. A sociologist 36 who is an Ivy Leagueprofessor mentioned that there is essentially a lot of lip service paid to makingsociology more accessible to the public but that there is not much real reflectionin his particular discipline about what a public sociology would look like or howto convince the broader public of the relevance of sociological research.He observed that “public sociology has not been very self-introspective . . . .I don’t think we [have] gotten our principles down very well, and we don’targue about them at all.” He quipped, “We just declare ourselves public