From: Don Winterstein (dfwinterstein@msn.com)
Date: Sat Jul 19 2003 - 04:22:29 EDT
Debbie Mann wrote in part:
>Most of the scientific community that I have been involved in has a great
number of people who believe very strongly in God....
Just for the record, an apparent large majority of scientists I've associated with on the job (in earth science) were atheists or agnostics, many of whom were not bashful about publicly acknowledging their beliefs. Most had PhD's from top US universities. A few colleagues and acquaintances unexpectedly turned out to be strong believers in God (Christian or Jewish), although they did not as a rule make their faith publicly known. (That's why I say "an _apparent_ large majority;" one can't know for sure.) One very exceptional person spent his vacations doing Christian missionary work in China and India. Several colleagues were members of Christian churches, but not all such church members believed in God. Several seemed to belong to a church only for reasons such as "my wife expects it." These tended to demur a bit when acknowledging their church membership publicly, especially if they actually believed in God.
To sum up, in my former work environment at a research center of a major US corporation, atheism was openly respected and agnosticism was sometimes considered a cowardly version of atheism but as a rule was moderately well-regarded. Those who believed in God were respected as human beings but tended to be regarded by the majority as weak because they could not let go of their childhood security blankets.
My exposure to other research organizations, including ones at Los Alamos and Sandia as well as at several universities, makes me think our institution was not unusual in this respect. But I have no numbers. Among our support staff, belief in God seemed to be much more widespread.
Don
----- Original Message -----
From: Debbie Mann
To: Asa
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 8:00 AM
Subject: Statistics
There is the saying:
There are three types of lies: Big lies, white lies and statistics.
I have quoted my husband before as saying that it takes an awful lot of
faith to totally believe there is no God.
I find it extremely hard to believe that 93% of any group would align
themselves with this strong position. Therefore, I wonder who claimed that
93% are atheists. (Not agnostice, not 'not aligned with any formal religion'
not 'don't attend weekly services.')
My gut tells me that someone has taken something that asked for 'religious
affiliation' and denoted everyone that said 'none' as an atheist - or some
such thing.
Most of the scientific community that I have been involved in has a great
number of people who believe very strongly in God, yet feel the religious
community is full of beans.
True faith needs to be a one-on-one with God. We need a religious community,
but the exceptional people, particularly, have a hard time identifying with
the masses. Part of this is a related point:
To Rich - in the past many people went to church because it was the thing to
do. They may or may not have had a personal relationship with God. People
also dressed for dinner and did a lot of other things that were the 'thing
to do'. People don't do that anymore - at least not nearly as much. I
believe much of the 'falling away' that you see is people just being honest.
There have always been people that didn't get it, and now they feel free to
say so.
There's bad and good to that. The bad is that they don't feel pressured to
go where they can be taught the truth. The good is that maybe there's a
little more honesty in the church. When I was a child I heard a lot of
crying about hypocrisy in the church and the evils of church politics. I
haven't heard those accusations in years.
Debbie Mann
Debbie Mann Consulting
(765) 477-1776
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Jul 19 2003 - 04:18:14 EDT