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

20Crossing the Picket Lines: The Personal Faith of Scientistsscientist and a religious person at the same time, apart from some measure ofmental distress.REASON TWO: BECAUSE RELIGION HAS LETTHEM DOWNOne could argue that maybe nonreligious scientists just haven’t given religiona chance. But for at least some scientists at elite U.S. universities, religion hadits chance and it left them wanting—or even scarred. Of the nearly 1,700 naturaland social scientists surveyed, about 39 percent were raised in a Protestanthome. Less than half of these still identify as Protestants. About 23 percent wereraised Catholic, and fewer than half of these are still Catholic. 15 A former Catholic,a chemist, 16 explained that being a scientist and thinking like a scientistwere a big part of his early doubts about religion. He remembers going througha difficult period in high school around the time he was confirmed in the CatholicChurch. He started to have doubts about his faith, and the church offeredno answers to his deepest questions. These doubts eventually blossomed,resulting in what he called his “anticonversion.” In our conversation, he connectedhis anticonversion to thinking like a scientist and approaching the worldfrom the perspective that science alone can answer its questions.Social scientists raised in a religious home who then decided to leave theirfaith often found reading works by the founders of their respective disciplinesto be a critical turning point. The works helped them see the aspects of religionthat are socially constructed , created by groups of people to meet their ownneeds rather than being based on a supernatural reality. A sociologist 17 I talkedwith had this experience as a college freshman through reading the work ofEmile Durkheim, one of the founders of sociology and a seminal thinker inunderstanding the social construction of religion. 18 Finally, she felt releasedfrom her ties to her parents’ faith. In her words, “It was just like, ‘Okay, I canfinally let this crap go.’ ” Even before college, grade school science class wasanother place where it became clear to her that science was more reasonablethan religion: “In school . . . we learned about Galileo, and we learned abouthow crazy backwards people don’t believe in evolution, but evolution is whatreally happened . . . . I pretty much learned that religion was sort of superstitiousand science had . . . facts.” In her sense of things, learning more about thebases of social science theory further solidified her view that religion is lessabout seeking answers to genuine questions and more about communities ofpeople meeting their own social needs.