Re: [asa] Scientists, Religion, and Politics

I'm quite agreed with you that the knee-jerk intellectual (or scientific) choice
to identify with liberalism is less than intelligent when it is just to be
contrary to political or religious conservatism. It's too bad so much of our
political "discourse" (such as it is today) never gets beyond the knee-jerk
commentary.

Another factor that always looms behind these discussions is the matter of our
preoccupation with "where the 'intelligent' people are" ---intelligence being
measured the only way we know, of course; by degrees earned and career success.
 Yet I Corinthians 1:26 reminds us how not many of the brethren were recognized
as being "wise according to the flesh" ---"that no man may boast before God" as
Paul reveals a sentence or so later. While I'm sure many Christians use this
unwisely to be anti-intellectual (and I don't mean to press it in that way), we
are still reminded in this passage that God's kingdom doesn't follow the
patterns of worldly success. It should always give us pause as we become
fascinated with polls and notice that our satisfaction is pending on who we can
discover that is "on our side".

--Merv

Quoting Nucacids <nucacids@wowway.com>:

> Hi Merv,
>
> Yes, but that reply clearly comes across as convoluted face-saving. The
> simplicity and beauty of the “intelligent science leads to atheism” argument
> is cut away and replaced with a response that explains political stands in a
> manner that does not reflect intelligent or scientific consideration. The
> argument would have us believe that many scientists agree with Republican or
> conservative values, but because of the outspoken conservative Christian
> component of the Republican party, they choose to label themselves as
> Democrats or liberals. Sounds like an emotion-based decision more than
> “intelligent science.”
>
> Of course, there is a more direct response to the “intelligent science leads
> to atheism” argument (I missed it the first time around). As Schwarzwald
> noted, the survey shows that a minority of scientists are atheists and,
> what’s more, the younger scientists are more likely to be theists than the > >
older scientists.
>
> http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1549
>
> Mike
>
>

> > 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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>
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Received on Tue Jul 14 13:28:00 2009