June 15, 2007
Evolution, Religion and Free Will
The most eminent evolutionary scientists have surprising views on how religion relates to evolution.
Gregory W. Graffin and William B. Provone in American Scientist:
During the 20th century, three polls questioned outstanding scientists about their attitudes toward science and religion. James H. Leuba, a sociologist at Bryn Mawr College, conducted the first in 1914. He polled 400 scientists starred as "greater" in the 1910 American Men of Science on the existence of a "personal God" and immortality, or life after death. Leuba defined a personal God as a "God to whom one may pray in the expectation of receiving an answer." He found that 32 percent of these scientists believed in a personal God, and 37 percent believed in immortality. Leuba repeated basically the same questionnaire in 1933. Belief in a personal God among greater scientists had dropped to 13 percent and belief in immortality to 15 percent. In both polls, beliefs in God and immortality were less common among biologists than among physical scientists. Belief in immortality had dropped to 2 percent among greater psychologists in the 1933 poll. Leuba predicted in 1916 that belief in a personal God and in immortality would continue to drop in greater scientists, a forecast clearly borne out by his second poll in 1933, and he further predicted that the figures would fall even more in the future.
More here.
Posted by Abbas Raza at 07:13 PM | Permalink
Comments
Interesting stuff!
It's less surprising that scientists dismiss religious literalism. But, that they seem to easily agree about religion's sociological function is comforting.
Posted by: beajerry | Jun 16, 2007 2:20:09 AM
As Darwin noted in his later book, the "God guided evolution" position makes nonsense of evolutionary theory, and as the survey shows most scientists in the field reject it. But it likely that it will continue to be a popular view among ordinary religious people who are not biologists, because they want to keep their comfortable and comforting religious world-view without seeming "anti-scientific."
So I doubt that most religious people are going to turn against biology because of the writings of the "new atheists" like Dawkins. They've made their peace with evolution, and will just agree to disagree with Dawkins. A relatively few people are outraged by him and the other new atheists, and these people are very vocal and prominent on the Internet. But the Internet is not the real world, fortunately.
Posted by: JonJ | Jun 16, 2007 10:02:53 AM
I agree JonJ, except with your last sentence. What about the internet is not real? It has significant, even enormous, influence in economics, politics, technology, travel, health, communication, education, religion, art. What happens on the internet does not happen in a vacuum. The internet, if not actually the "real world", is mixed with it in a blender on purée.
Posted by: ghostman | Jun 17, 2007 2:41:41 PM
Evolutionists were presented with four choices on the relation between evolution and religion: A, they are non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) whose tenets are not in conflict; B, religion is a social phenomenon that has developed with the biological evolution of Homo sapiens—therefore religion should be considered as a part of our biological heritage, and its tenets should be seen as a labile social adaptation, subject to change and reinterpretation; C, they are mutually exclusive magisteria whose tenets indicate mutually exclusive conclusions; or D, they are totally harmonious—evolution is one of many ways to elucidate the evidences of God's designs.
...we did expect a strong showing for choice C...
Instead, the wide majority, 72 percent, of the respondents chose option B.
But B and C are not mutually exclusive. One can certainly believe both that "religion is a social phenomenon that has developed with the biological evolution of Homo Sapiens" and that the tenets of religion and science "indicate mutually exclusive conclusions". In fact, unless one believes both propositions, one has no explanation for the continuing battles over creationism.
Posted by: Slocum | Jun 18, 2007 8:15:42 AM
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