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

The Voice of Science 15discuss. He told me how he would like to respond to people who have a beliefin God. If they would listen, he would say to them, “If you knew more aboutbiology and the sequence of proteins from all different parts of the tree of life,”then you would realize that “God did not just invent beavers! Beavers arosefrom a common ancestor of something else. And you would realize that you donot need to believe in God to understand how life came about.”Arik and Anthony and others like them are part of a tradition of scientists whothink that eventually science will make faith irrelevant. And their words wouldappear, on the face of things, to confirm the image of the godless scientist.Some scientists said in conversations with me that it is only a matter of timebefore science completely replaces religion, which was simply trying to answerthe wrong questions in the wrong ways. As science continues to make furtheradvances in the pursuit of knowledge, they reasoned, it’s going to be harderand harder for religion to have a place in society. It is clear that these scientistshave a very particular notion of what constitutes science: Science is fact. Thosewho adhere to this unwavering conflict position hold religion under the lampof what they see as empirical reality. In this light, religion is vacant.But our goal is to dig deeper, pursuing dialogue between scientists and thegeneral public that goes beyond thin views of science or thin views of religion.We need to ask how even atheist and agnostic scientists such as Arik andAnthony view the connection between religion and science, and why.Statistics make starkly obvious the differences in religious commitmentbetween scientists and the general public; while nearly 28 percent of the Americanpopulation is part of an evangelical Protestant tradition, about 2 percent ofnatural and social scientists at elite universities identify themselves this way. Theonly traditional religious identity category where scientists comprise a muchTABLE 2.1. Religious Affiliation of Elite Scientists Compared to all Americans 3Religious Affiliation Percent of Elite Scientists Percent of U.S. PopulationEvangelical Protestant 2 28Mainline Protestant 14 13Black Protestant 0.2 8Catholic 9 27Jewish 16 2Other 7 6None 53 16Total Percent 100 100