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

26Crossing the Picket Lines: The Personal Faith of ScientistsPossibly their parents had gone through a struggle of leaving the faith of theirown families. Such scientists are part of a group that is rare in the rest of theAmerican population: the second-generation atheist or nonreligious person.Going on to describe his scant experiences with religion, this political scientistsaid that he had only attended two religious events: a wedding, and a churchservice that he was obligated to go to when he was a Boy Scout. For Boy Scouts,“being an atheist was not an option, so [he] had to choose a church, and [he]was a Catholic for a day.”WORKING TOWARD DIALOGUEScientists at elite research universities are indeed less religious than many otherAmericans, at least when we measure their levels of traditional religious commitment.Some do drop their religious identities upon learning more aboutwhat the religion involves. Others experience an anticonversion (or aversion)after difficult or painful encounters with religion as children. The assumptionthat becoming a scientist necessarily leads to loss of religious commitment isnot supported when we take into account the fact that scientists seem to selfselectfrom certain kinds of religious background—most importantly, frombackgrounds where religion was practiced only weakly. (Religious socializationand heritage are strong influences on present religiosity, even among elite scientists.)And others, whose only exposure to religion is the fundamentalistProtestantism they see represented in the news media, are disgusted by the ideaof affiliating with any religion at all.The work of sociologist Basil Bernstein brings some insight to how we mightbegin to assess the implications of scientists’ religious backgrounds. His workprimarily analyzes social class differences by examining what he calls languagecodes. Bernstein’s research focuses on the factors in working-class families thataffect how their children learn to talk—not just their first words, but their particularway of talking. Bernstein thinks these ways of talking help to determinewhether a child will grow up to be a janitor or to work on Wall Street. Middleandupper-class children benefit from being taught elaborate codes that arecomplex and accessible; lots of people can understand them. In comparison,the restricted codes used by many working-class children—for example, usingphrases like “I ain’t” repeatedly—have lots of shorthand and shared meanings,making it more difficult for these children to interact with a variety of peopleoutside their social class. This inability to relate to those outside their classmeans that working-class children do not possess the language necessary to