From: Dr. Blake Nelson (bnelson301@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Jul 17 2003 - 20:46:19 EDT
--- "Howard J. Van Till" <hvantill@chartermi.net>
(SNIP)
> > It seems to me that organizations like NAS,
> Scientific American, PBS, etc.
> > generally attract people of an atheistic leaning.
>
> Why should that be the case? Does it also say
> something about the interests
> of Christians? Why would theists be
> under-represented?
Well, lots of reasons.
1. There has been for a couple centuries scientists
who espouse and revel in the conflict metaphor and
science is the way to banish the "superstition" of
religion
a. People who are anti-religious may well be
attracted to fields that are thus portrayed as having
meaning in a world without God (I was actually shocked
when I read a book of interviews of physicists where
some famous cosmologist said something to the effect
that physics is the only field with any meaning and
how great it was that every day he got to do this and
he couldn't imagine how other people managed to get up
in the morning if they weren't doing physics (being an
atheist, it was the only thing meaningful to him and
he was so myopic he apparently could not see how
anyone other than physicists could have meaning in
their lives).. ,
b. in the modern era, there certainly have been
many apostles of a very jaundiced view of religion,
including Sagan, R.Dawkins, etc. who sell lots of
books and further attract the anti-religious to
scientism,
2. There are, especially in the European tradition,
anti-clerical tendencies in particular strata of
societies from which people who go into particular
fields or the academy. Anti-religious belief systems
such as Marxism have been alloyed with scientific
progress, attracting people who hold those views or
come from that background into the sciences or the
academy. Likewise, when someone like Freud is seminal
in founding an entire discipline, it would not be
surprising that those of like mind to Freud would be
disproportionately attracted to the field (note, the
focus is on the disproportionate attraction of the
anti-religious, not the failure of christians to be
interested in the field).
3. The academy (where I imagine a disproportionate
number of NAS members come from) has been stridently
secular for some time for many reasons, including
ideological, and philosophical. NAS members are
largely the products of the academic system which
actively serves to suppress religious faith at many
schools. A good friend of mine who was an absolutely
brilliant graduate student in German literature was
directly told by a professor how astonished the
professor was that the student was christian, because
"he seemed so intelligent." In my experience this is
quite a common opinion where religion is considered
primitive, superstitious, and/or irrational.
I don't know how someone can even have a passing
familiarity with academic circles and not see an
enculturated bias, which I do not think, from my
personal experience, is generally based on a rational
reflection on the issue.
4. The pervasive anti-religiousness in the academy I
think has a tendency to push christians away from
graduate education, because they believe (rightly or
wrongly) they are going to catch flak for their belief
system from their professors and the students they are
there with.
5. While I think I have less to base this guess on, I
think that people tend to put their emphases on what
matter most to them. It may well be for someone like
Sagan who finds meaning primarily in science that is
where their treasure is, their focus, and such focus
and work is likely to be recognized by success in the
field and nomination to things like the Royal Society.
I am not saying this is uniformly true, but I tend to
think there may be a matter of different emphases in
one's life in balancing competing interests and a
serious commitment to religious belief does result in
less time for other aspects of life or work.
If I thought about it a little longer, I think I could
probably come up with another handful of possible reasons.
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