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

What Scientists Are Doing Wrong That They Could Be Doing Right 143When I asked a physics 40 professor in his mid sixties to describe his perceptionof the role religion is playing in the public sphere, he mentioned that it is“kind of troublesome as it relates to religion and science kinds of issues.” Ipressed him further by asking if he had any recommendations for what scientistsshould be doing to interact in the public realm over issues related to religion.This professor, a Quaker who only occasionally attends Friends meetings,explained that he and other scientists should be getting out there and “writingthings.” He said with conviction that American science is in a difficult placewhen competing on the international stage, making it important for scientists“to step up and point out when some of these issues come up and particularlyin misunderstandings.” He then showed me a newspaper clipping with thetitle, “The U.S. Needs to Hold On to its Scientists.” Reluctance on the part ofscientists “to get involved with political debates or public debates on a lot ofthese things,” he thinks, could be costly to the international standing of Americanscience. To the extent that misguided views about religion or the relationshipof religion to science keep people from entering science careers, then,scientists need to be doing more. In his sense of things, there are simply toofew scientists who are ready to go out and say what science is and what it is not.Scientists “should be doing more of this,” even if this means taking time offfrom research: “To some extent, we’ve allowed a lot of these ideas [that challengescience] to propagate without correcting it from the very beginning,which would have caused a lot less grief . . . than allowing [it] to spread far andwide and then trying to stop it.”Addressing Religious Challenges to EvolutionAs we have seen throughout this book, even when I did not mention them,religious challenges to evolution were brought up the most often of all issueswhen considering the public relationship between religion and science. I interviewedmany of these scientists during a time when Kitzmiller v. Dover was insession involving teaching intelligent design in U.S. public schools. Andalthough historian of science Ronald Numbers shows in his extensive volume,The Creationists , that such challenges are hardly new, religious and nonreligiousscientists were almost uniformly negative about such curriculum changesin U.S. science classes. 41 They were divided, however, about how scientistsought to handle the public issues raised by the debate. Sociologist Amy Binderhas done extensive research on what she calls the “movement to teach creationistperspectives in public schools.” Using insights from social movement theory,Binder argues that “vigorous repression of challenger demands often leads to a