Are Most Scientists Atheists?

by passwordprotected 57 Replies latest jw friends

  • Caedes
    Caedes

    STUDIES Of SCIENTISTS

    1. William S. Ament, 1927
    C. C. Little, president of the University of Michigan, checked persons listed in Who's Who in America: "Unitarians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Universalists, and Presbyterians [who are less religious] are¡¦ far more numerous in Who's Who than would be expected on the basis of the population which they form. Baptists, Methodists, and Catholics are distinctly less numerous."

    Ament confirmed Little's conclusion. He noted that Unitarians, the least religious, were more than 40 times as numerous in Who's Who as in the U.S. population.

    2. Lehman and Witty, 1931Identified 1189 scientists found in both Who's Who (1927) and American Men of Science (1927). Only 25 percent of those listed in the latter and 50 percent of those in the former reported their religious denomination, despite the specific request to do so, under the heading of "religious denomination (if any)." Well over 90 percent of the general population claims religious affiliation. The figure of 25 percent suggests far less religiosity among scientists.

    Unitarians were 81.4 times as numerous among eminent scientists as non-Unitarians.

    3. Kelley and Fisk, 1951Found a negative (-.39) correlation between the strength of religious values and research competence. [How these were measured is unknown.]

    4. Ann Roe, 1953Interviewed 64 "eminent scientists, nearly all members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences or the American Philosophical Society. She reported that, while nearly all of them had religious parents and had attended Sunday school, 'now only three of these men are seriously active in church. A few others attend upon occasion, or even give some financial support to a church which they do not attend¡¦ All the others have long since dismissed religion as any guide to them, and the church plays no part in their lives¡¦ A few are militantly atheistic, but most are just not interested.'"

    5. Francis Bello, 1954Interviewed or questionnaired 107 nonindustrial scientists under the age of 40 judged by senior colleagues to be outstanding. Of the 87 responses, 45 percent claimed to be "agnostic or atheistic" and an additional 22 percent claimed no religious affiliation. For 20 most eminent, "the proportion who are now a-religious is considerably higher than in the entire survey group."

    6. Jack Chambers, 1964Questionnaired 740 US psychologists and chemists. He reported, "The highly creative men¡¦ significantly more often show either no preference for a particular religion or little or no interest in religion." Found that the most eminent psychologists showed 40 percent no preference, 16 percent for the most eminent chemists.

    7. Vaughan, Smith, and Sjoberg, 1965Polled 850 US physicists, zoologists, chemical engineers, and geologists listed in American Men of Science (1955) on church membership, and attendance patterns, and belief in afterlife. Of the 642 replies, 38.5 percent did not believe in an afterlife, whereas 31.8 percent did. Belief in immortality was less common among major university staff than among those employed by business, government, or minor universities. The Gallup poll taken about this time showed that two-thirds of the U.S. population believed in an afterlife, so scientists were far less religious than the typical adult.

    From http://kspark.kaist.ac.kr/Jesus/Intelligence%20&%20religion.htm

    According to the studies above, yes. I have yet to find a study that indicates otherwise. The higher your IQ the less likely you are to be a believer.

  • MissingLink
    MissingLink

    >> Did Einstein buck the trend?

    Absolutely not. He did not believe in a personal god.

    He said:

    "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

    Einstein also said:

    "I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive."

    But like Besty said, even if he did, so what. He was a brilliant mathematician and physicist. That was his thing. Did understanding how the universe works better than most people give him insight into whether there was a god? I don't know, maybe. He appreciated that things are more complex than he could understand fully, and therefore could not exclude the possiblity of "a god". But saw no evidence of a personal god. This is how most atheists view things.

  • PSacramento
    PSacramento

    The question should have been:

    Do you believe in religion, LOL !

  • rebel8
    rebel8

    IQ does not equal educational achievement.

    Atheism does not equal proof that no god(s) exist.

    One instance of a person having different attributes than the majority does not constitute bucking a trend or defying statistics.

    Posessing or not possessing 'authority' to comment on the existence of God has no relationship to a person's personal belief in same (which is the topic of this thread: Are Most Scientists Atheists?).

    These items seem to be used interchangably in this thread, and I find that confusing.

  • passwordprotected
    passwordprotected

    Do you believe in religion, LOL !

    Absolutely. Religion and belief in God are completely different things. So many people (even those with high IQs) don't understand that.

  • passwordprotected
    passwordprotected

    Posessing or not possessing 'authority' to comment on the existence of God has no relationship to a person's personal belief in same (which is the topic of this thread: Are Most Scientists Atheists? ).

    I agree. Sort of illustrates my reference to Dawkins putting forward his views on religion and the existence of God and his followers preaching the same gospel.

  • inkling
    inkling
    Did Einstein buck the trend?

    The polls we have been talking about refer to belief in a personal god.

    The kind of impersonal (and possibly metaphorical) "god" that many scientists
    (including Einstein) talk[ed] about is so far removed from any religious idea of
    god that at some point it becomes indistinguishable from atheism.

    So, no.

    I can decide for myself whether there is a magick man in the sky who made everything then went quiet on us.

    And that is probably related to my IQ.

    Oh snap.

    [inkling]

  • passwordprotected
    passwordprotected

    Did Einstein buck the trend of all intelligent people, in particular scientists, being atheists?

    Apparently not.

  • besty
    besty

    PP - are we agreed that whether scientists are atheists or theists is irrelevant?

  • inkling
    inkling
    I agree. Sort of illustrates my reference to Dawkins putting forward his views on religion and the existence of God and his followers preaching the same gospel.

    While the idea of above-nature god can not be directly addressed by science, the vast majority
    of claims about god (made by religions) CAN be, becuase religion makes claims about how god
    interacts with the word, the real world, and so when people start talking about flying horses
    and crackers turning into godmeat, those are claims that are fair game for scientists and
    critical thinkers worldwide, even he they have no "theological training"

    Did Einstein buck the trend of all intelligent people, in particular scientists, being atheists?

    Apparently not.

    Einstein was an atheist by any reasonable definition.

    (The definition he himself apparently used for his famous "I am not an atheist" quote,
    though perhaps reasonable at the time, does not seem reasonable today.)

    More importantly, he was an atheist by the definition of the polls we have been talking about.
    So no, he did not buck the trend we are discussing.

    Atheist: not a theist. Einstein was not a Theist of the sort addressed by these polls.

    How can you read what he wrote about god and the universe
    and still claim that what he talked about as "god" is in any way
    related to theism?

    [inkling]

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