[asa] Scientists, Religion, and Politics

We often hear that, unlike the general public, the majority of scientists are atheists and, in some way, this is supposed to support the notion that science and intelligence lead to atheism.

Yet a recent Pew Research survey (http://people-press.org/report/528/ ) shows that scientists are also different from the general public when it comes to their political views.

General Public

Democrat 35%

Republican 23%

Independent 34%

Scientists

Democrat 55%

Republican 6%

Independent 32%

General Public

Liberal 20%

Moderate 38%

Conservative 37%

Scientists

Liberal 52%

Moderate 35%

Conservative 9%

Sorry folks, I think it would be silly to argue that intelligence, reason, logic, evidence, etc. lead people to choose a political party or political viewpoint. And if so, what we have here is something akin to a control on the atheism/scientist statistics. That is, the high percentage of scientists who are atheists may be as significant to the debate about God's existence/religion as the high percentage of scientists who are Democrats.

Mike

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Received on Mon Jul 13 22:27:44 2009