Christians: Why are scientists more likely to be non-believers?

Great Debates
21

Well I don’t really buy into the argument that scientists are vastly overrepresented as atheists, and in any case it makes little difference, since statistics in such matter is irrelevant. I’m sure you can find many and good scientists that are atheists, as you can find many and good scientists that are Christians. Does it bother you that there might be people out there that are both vastly more intelligent and knowledgeable in relevant fields that you and who are Christians? I think you can apply the same answer you’d give to Christians.

A cosmologist might have knowledge about the early period of the Universe, but be clueless about how life emerged on Earth, as a biologist the other way round. Scientists these days are too specialised to be renaissance intellect, and I don’t see them as having any a prior special insight into the nature or existence of God. In fact many of the most brilliantly intelligently people often seem to be in general not very smart outside their field.

I cannot answer the question. I’m not the fundamentalist Christian you are looking for. If you were really trying to have a dialogue with fundamentalist Christians of the sort, I suspect you’d have better luck looking elsewhere.

22

I don’t know why I bother, as the church I belong to is not Fundamentalist, and I therefore fail **JohnClay’s **definition of “Christian.”

But, given what I have gathered from his posts, the particular cult he belongs to might feel that the snake-grabbers have too liberal a theology. He seems to be seeking for reasons why God has stepped back on the whole “smiting” thing.

23

[QUOTE=Tom Waits]
“There ain’t no devil, only God when he’s drunk.”
[/QUOTE]

…

24

I think a better question would be,“Why are some scientists still religious?” My answer, “Because of tradition and heritage.” We tend to “inherit” our religion from our parents and environment.

But back to the OP. Scientists tend to be non-religious if they apply the same investigative methods to religion that they do so successfully to their work.

To look at it another way – and I am paraphrasing Neil DeGrasse Tyson here – many years ago, our knowledge of the Universe was very sketchy. To fill the gaps, a god or gods, demons, angels, or whatever were postulated. As time went on, these fillers were less and less needed. Newton told us how the planets and stars performed, and we no longer had to say “He hangeth them upon nothing,” which was the best explanation at one time. (Book of Job)

So the need to call upon God to explain nature has become less. God’s role is shrinking. If the trend continues, He may not be needed at all. Or as Pierre LaPlace, when asked why his view of the Universe did not include God, said, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”

25

There are a bunch of statistics in this article:

Because this is a summary of many studies, the statistics are not quite consistent. One interesting point is that there’s no evidence that becoming a scientist tends to make someone less religious. Rather, the religious beliefs of prospective scientists is self-selective for the typical beliefs of scientists.

26

A while ago, most of everyone in Europe were Christians - there were not so many options on the table, without risking becoming a social outcast.

Atheism hasn’t infiltrated anything - Science has advanced beyond the explanations that religion is capable of, or willing to provide.

Creationism (at the organised level) is a sham - it produces no useful scientific output - it just reacts to actual scientific insight and discovery when it doesn’t like what that looks like.

At ground level, creationist Christians may be quite sincere, but the stars of creationists are con artists - it’s impossible, for example, to present a quote-mined argument in complete honesty and rectitude, because in order to construct such an argument, you need to read and understand something, then selectively quote it so that it appears to mean something else.

If the devil is playing any part in all of this, it’s in the dishonesty of the leading lights of creationism, leading the sheep astray.

27

Okay, before I get too far into this… JohnClay, are there any answers that you are willing to exclude from the outset? Or, to put this another way, if the answer is, “Those who have made a point of searching for knowledge have found that the evidence does not support Christianity”, will you accept that answer, or will you brush it aside, in the hopes of finding one that disagrees less with your preconceived notions?

Do you know what statements like this or “The fool says in his heart that there is no god” do? They serve the sole purpose of belittling the opposing position. Their purpose is not to address what other people say, their purpose is to say, “We don’t need to listen to that argument for reasons X, Y, and Z”. And that is stupid. It’s basically an ad hominem attack.

So… Where’d the devil come from? And why is he still allowed to mislead people like he does?

Oh look, you figured it out. No, it’s not the second one. The reason Christianity is on the decline specifically amongst scientists is due primarily to the way science works. Thinking from the scientific mindset, you look at the evidence, then try to figure out what it says about reality. When you are encountered with a new idea, the first question is “what is the evidence for this idea?”. And in Christianity’s case, the evidence is astoundingly lacking, especially given the genuinely incredible nature of the claims being made.

Hell, the evidence even directly contradicts a great many of the claims made in the bible. Take, for example, the myth of Noah’s Flood. Every single line of evidence, from genetics to geology to geography to physics to thermodynamics to ancient boat-building techniques points squarely to one unavoidable conclusion - there was no global flood any time in the last several hundred thousand years. The biblical story of Noah’s Ark, as written, is impossible without invoking miracles or magic, neither of which are explanations that work particularly well for the science-minded.
By the way:

Yes, and they are objectively wrong. It’s like saying that “flat earthers believe that the evidence points to the earth being flat”. Look, I’m sorry, but at this point, saying that they believe the evidence points to God and creation means they are mentally retarded, that they aren’t looking at the evidence, or that they are lying. In some cases, like Kent/Eric Hovind, Ian Juby, Kirk Cameron, Ray Comfort, or Ken Ham, we know they’re lying, because we have tried to correct them and they haven’t listened. We know that Answers in Genesis is full of shit, because various people have emailed them with corrections of the blatant misinformation on their website, and they have not corrected it. Hell, here we go again:

Um, newsflash, you don’t get to randomly throw unsupported presuppositions into a debate. I’m really quite curious which presuppositions AiG would claim scientists make that aren’t considered the foundation for any rational debate - things like the burden of proof, for example? After all, given that these guys seem to expect us to baselessly accept the bible as a starting point for discussion, I’d argue that’s a presupposition they disagree with.

But back to the topic, rather than taking a few more cheap shots at the dishonest and mentally challenged:

Yes.

Taken at its word, without massive reinterpretation (i.e. reading “days” as billions of years on a logarithmic scale), the genesis account is demonstrably false. Every available piece of evidence shows that the earth is not just considerably older than 6,000 years, but that that figure is off by a factor of over 500,000.

Taken at its word, without massive reinterpretation (i.e. “this whole thing is a metaphor”), the Flood of Noah is demonstrably false. We would see evidence of it in the geologic column all over the world - we don’t. We would see apparent genetic bottlenecks throughout the populations of every species alive today - we don’t. We would need an explanation as to where the water came from and where it went without violating the second law of thermodynamics - we don’t have one.

Hell, even the story of Moses is demonstrably bullshit - there were never Hebrew slaves in that number in Egypt. Ever.

The fact is that the bible and science are incompatible - the bible demands we reject the very basis of that which science is built upon, while science completely debunks a great many parts of the bible. Meanwhile, in the last 1900 years since the bible was written (give or take a hundred or so), actual miracles and actual evidence of the work of god has been astoundingly scarce. The most recent thing anyone could point to that could be claimed to be a miracle was the Fatima Sun incident, and there are so many things wrong with that that I’d really not rather get into it.

As for why Christianity is really on the decline? Well, two major factors.

  1. A decline in “miracles” and “gaps”. Remember when people thought that lightning was the wrath of god, and that there was no explanation for it? Remember when people thought that there was no explanation for why the seasons turned, and it had to be a sign of god? Well, basically, in ancient times, we filled in the holes in our knowledge with “god did it”. To obvious detriment, if you examine the effect this had on medicine and science back in the day. And miracles were everywhere as well - no, not really, but we didn’t know any better. But in today’s world, there just aren’t anywhere near as many gaps, and people are starting to take critical looks when you try to shove god into one of them.
  2. Open free exchange of ideas on the internet. Thunderf00t explains this far better than I ever could. The gist of it is that a large part of what kept religion popular among the young was insularity - how easy it was to keep your children away from opposing ideas, or alternate beliefs. Combine that with the fact that ideas that make sense propagate better in an open marketplace of ideas than those that don’t, and you have a recipe for disaster for ideas that make no sense, or have weak backing - see also: all of Christianity. Hell, back in the day, a lot of people might not have even known that it was possible to not believe in god. Try finding a child with an internet connection today who doesn’t know that.

So… That help you out any?

28

Budget Player Cadet writes:

> 2. Open free exchange of ideas on the internet.

Are you claiming that the decline of religion has mostly happened since the popularity of the Internet? Do you have any statistical evidence for that? Statistical evidence wouldn’t be comparing today with 1950. Lots of things have changed since 1950. It would be comparing statistical evidence about belief in the past two or three years with, say, 1990, which is just before the Internet really started to spread.

29

IANAC, but the obvious answer is that they lack faith. Faith, for a Christian, is a good thing, not a bd thing. Scientist are real good at doing science, but they apparently suck at doing religion. That’s a shame, for them. We (the Christians, that is) shall pray for them.

30

's worth a look. You do have a point though, the correlation is indeed not very strong.

…I’m honestly kinda flabbergasted that someone who’s been here so long can say this as if it was a good thing. So blindly accepting a belief is a good thing? How do you define faith?

Why? They rely on their intellect and reasoned logic to come to conclusions, rather than just believing things. Why is that a bad thing? If “doing religion” requires a suspension of disbelief and disabling your “bullshit meter”, why believe in the first place?

31

I don’t think he’s saying that the internet caused a decline in religious-ness, merely that the internet has accelerated a process begun by easily disseminated pamphlets and books.

32

I didn’t say I thought it was a good thing. I said Christians believe that. IANAC, as noted in my post. You even quoted it.

33

It seemed quite implied (the whole “we shall pray for them” bit), and I didn’t know what IANAC until you posted this. My mistake, carry on. :smiley:

34

I did not say “we shall pray for them”. Read the entire sentence. I was speaking for Christians, not as one.

35

I’m not getting the whole “it’s not God, it’s the Devil” thing.

Is God Omniscient and all powerful, or isn’t he?

If he is, then anything that happens is implicitly happening with his consent. This would include the “devil tricking all those scientists”.

So if the devil really is deceiving the world’s scientists, it’s being done with gods blessing.

36

I must admit that I was boggled a bit myself. I looked at the name of the poster and said to myself, “John Mace? Wait, he’s a pretty logical guy. What am I missing here.”

Thanks for the clarification. And, Budget Player Cadet, at least you know that somebody else was confused as well. Heh

So, are the two modalities of thought, reason and faith, inherently incompatible? I have seen some remarkable example both online and in ‘real life’ of cognitive compartmentalization where a scientist (or usually an engineer) is very good at doing her job and yet professes a deep and abiding belief in the supernatural. The human mind is mysterious and yet to be properly explored.

37

Doubt is also a central Christian concept, at least as I see it. Faith cannot exist without doubt. Likewise should doubt be central to any scientist. A scientist that doesn’t doubt is a bad scientist per definition. A Christian (a human, any human) that doesn’t doubt is an impossibility. Atheist and Christian scientists are just doubting different things.

I’m kinda flabbergasted (I’m not really, but I should be) that you think being here for a long time precludes certain viewpoints. What part of having faith and believing it is good in your opinion ought to make a person feel unwelcome on this forum? Or is it that you arrogantly take for granted that any person exposed to the enlightened and superior opinions of the masses of SDMB will inexorable come to hold the same general viewpoints?

I believe my wife loves me. I have no proof of that, but I think taking it on faith is generally a good thing. Do you disagree? Ought I quiz her more thoroughly, observe and spy on her to try to spot inaccuracies that might challenge my faith?

38

I’m not sure what all that means, and whether “doubt” is a central Christian concept is certainly debatable. But, Faith is supposed to ultimately win over Doubt, if you are a Christian. You seem to imply some sort of equivalence, but I don’t think that’s so.

I am not a Christian, but I was raised one, and I’m quite familiar with the RCC flavor of that religion. Faith is central. To the extent doubt is acknowledge, it is to be overcome, through Grace, leading one to Faith.

39

I believe she loves you too, but I seriously doubt you have no evidence for that. (I know you said proof, but proofs are best left to mathematics, not science). After all, she married you, she stays married to you, I imagine she gives you a kiss on your way to work and smiles when you dote on her. You’re not taking your wife’s love on faith - you’re taking it on a whole lot of evidence, probably including the fact that she’s said “I love you”.

Faith is belief without evidence, which is anathema to science, which is belief from evidence.

40

I hate this tired, silly argument.

Of course you don’t take your wife’s love on faith. You believe she loves you because she tells you. Because she shows you by taking care of you and your home, and/or by being there for you when you need support.

If your wife constantly cheated on you and told you how you are a good for nothing SOB all the time - would you believe she still loved you? At least then you could make a case for faith.

… And beat to it by a mile.