Re: [asa] Scientists, Religion, and Politics

As an aside, looking through this poll I was surprised to find that
atheism/agnosticism among US scientists is apparently in the minority! 33%
proclaiming belief in God, 18% in a higher power, and 41% in neither. I seem
to recall those views being reversed (40% believing in God or a higher
power, the rest divided between atheist or agnostic). Chemists being the
most likely to believe also strikes me as odd - I wonder why that may be.

Young scientists being most likely to believe in God is rather encouraging
in a way. An interesting poll, though I'd agree with Mike Gene (as well as
what the claimed knee-jerk reply would be.)

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 12:00 AM, wjp <wjp@swcp.com> wrote:

> I have no reason to not believe this poll, but frankly I find it amazing.
>
> The national laboratory where I worked for over 20 years was solidly
> Republican and conservative. In fact, we represented the major conservative
> stronghold in the otherwise liberal Deomcratic state of New Mexico.
>
> Of course, it was a defense laboratory. But nonetheless it is my only
> experience of the scientific community of mostly physicists.
>
> bill
>
> On Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:31:08 -0500, Merv Bitikofer <mrb22667@kansas.net>
> wrote:
> > The ready reply of those who wanted to press the "intelligent science
> > leads to atheism" argument could be as follows: Your chosen phenomena,
> > (Christian vs. Non-Christian, Republican vs. Democrat, Conservative vs.
> > liberal) can't be considered independent variables. Rightly or wrongly,
> > the republican party is the party most identified with an major
> > outspoken conservative Christian component. So the three variables or
> > spectra you cite are all placed roughly in lock-sync in the popular
> > public (and scientific) mind. Hence, they will just reply that their
> > generalization handily explains all three correlations. It doesn't help
> > that definitions given for these three may often involve
> > cross-referential identifications with each other, messily ignoring all
> > the exceptions however numerous they may be.
> >
> > --Merv
> >
> > Nucacids wrote:
> >>
> >> 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 Tue Jul 14 02:03:19 2009