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

34Crossing the Picket Lines: The Personal Faith of Scientiststimes more elite scientists are Jewish than general Americans are. 10 And lookingat things the other way around, 14 times more Americans are part of an evangelicaltradition (about 28 percent) than elite scientists (about 2 percent) are.When considering the proportion of scientists who are part of traditions thatare not Judeo-Christian—such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam—the differencesbetween scientists and other Americans are still noteworthy. There aretwice as many Buddhist scientists as Buddhists in the general population. 11 Andthere are over three times more Hindus among scientists than in the public. 12For Muslims, the proportion is about the same. These scientists are normallyfirst-generation immigrants or not U.S. citizens. (Recent immigration is largelyresponsible for the increase in the U.S. presence of non-Christian religions.) 13Indeed over 30 percent of natural scientists at the top 21 U.S. research universitiesare either first-generation immigrants or noncitizen U.S. residents.The greatest commonalities in religious identity between scientists andother Americans are the similarities in proportion of those who identify asmainline Protestant and as Catholic. This is a big surprise in some ways, sincemore recently it is evangelicals who have been engaged in writing books tryingto reconcile Christianity with science. 14 We might be hearing more, however,from Catholic scientists in the future. Noting changes in the religious compositionof scientists over time will help us tease out what types of people might bethe future religious spokespersons for science. So I compared my 2005 surveyof elite scientists to the 1969 Carnegie Commission survey mentioned above ofthose in the same science disciplines. The proportion of Catholic scientists insome fields has grown dramatically, while the proportion of Protestant scientistshas consistently decreased in most disciplines.It is obvious that there is a much smaller proportion of evangelicals amongscientists at top research universities when compared to the proportion of evangelicalsin the general population. Yet when I interviewed scientists, I also founda considerable reluctance in using the term evangelical as a self-descriptor,especially when we compare its use in the general population. Even when scientistsfit the traditional description of an evangelical, they didn’t want toembrace the term for themselves. More important for them than labels werebeliefs and practices.What Do They Believe?Core beliefs are another important way that scholars determine how importantreligion is to an individual’s life. I can say, for example, that I am a Protestantor a Catholic, but what really matters, scholars would argue, is what I