Research Scientists who are Christian

Here’s a 2007 study of academics from top research institutions.
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~ehe/doc/Ecklund_SocialProblems_54_2.pdf
A little under half of all natural and social scientists have attended a religious service in the past year. About a quarter believe in God at least sometimes. Something like a third are atheists with the remainder consisting of agnostics or possibly pantheists.

So anyway there are a lot of hard scientists at top research universities that are Christian and a lot who are not. Drilling down, 13.6% of the general US population affiliate with Evangelical/fundamentalist sects compared with 1.5% of scientists.

Measure for Measure’s cite is to a paper which looks at scientists in US research institutions. I haven’t seen the cites for Dawkins’ comment - indeed, I haven’t seen Dawkins’ comment - but there’s no reason to suppose he’s talking about the situation in the US.

Evangelical/fundamentalist varieties of Christianity are much more prominent in the US than elsewhere - particularly than in Europe - and this may serve to alienate people of a rationalist/scientific mindset at greater rates. The proportion of US scientists who identify as religious is not necessarily going to be the same as the proportion of scientists in other countries who do so.

I think this phenomenon is highlighted by the OP, and my reaction to it. The OP says that he is “having trouble understanding” how a research scientist can be a Christian. My reaction, as somebody who has lived in both Ireland and Australia, is “why?” It’s sigfnificant that the OP doesn’t feel it necessary to explain why he has difficulty with this; he assumes that we will all understand his difficulty. If the OP takes a fundamentalist, literalist believer to be normative for Christianity, then of course his difficulty becomes understandable.

Yes, this in fact might be the problem I’m having. I’m not sure exactly what you mean by 'fundamentalist, literalist believer", but I tend to think of someone who claims to be a Christian as someone who believes without doubt that:
Jesus is the true and literal Son of God and really is literally a diety
Jesus was born of a virgin
Jesus was literally risen from the dead, not in any metaphorical sense
Jesus performed very real acts (miracles) that seem impossible from an empiricist point of view, and that these miracles really did happen and aren’t stories or parables or metaphors for other things.

I don’t think I’m too far off the mark with that assessment of what a “normal” Christian is.

Yes, you are describing Christian fundamentalism. During the 1950s - 1970s, you might have been off the mark, but mainline Christianity has declined in the US since then. It still dominates in most countries though.

Discussion of Biblical inerrancy among Christian churches.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/inerran10.htm

Don’t answer yes to any of those, but identify as Christian. I realize many disagree with me. I’m not a scientist either, though.

I’d agree with that assessment, more or less, as kind of a minimal ‘common ground’ that Christians share. There are some Christians, like I believe Jehovah’s Witnesses, who don’t believe that Jesus was God, but most Christians would accept hose four points.

So are you saying that there are many people who identify as Christians in the U.S. and (possibly most) in other countries that DON’T believe these four points I brought up?

In a word…yes.

This Gallup poll is interesting.The general consensus seems to be that around 3 in 10 Americans believe in the literal truth of the Bible. It’s a little higher among folks that identify as Protestant and lower among Catholics but by almost any metric it’s less than half.

While Catholicism is a little hedgy on the subject they seem to take the point that while the Bible is divinely inspired it isn’t literally true

Here is an interesting piece that references John Paul II’s opinion https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090126132702AAWCi5J
( I tired to post a clean link to the original article but it was broken)
The Church supports science in the discovery of God’s creation. At this time, the theories of the big bang and evolution are the most logical scientific explanations. However tomorrow someone may come up with better ideas.

As long as we believe that God started the whole thing, both the Bible and responsible modern science can live in harmony.

[QUOTE=JP 2]

  • The Church supports science in the discovery of God’s creation. At this time, the theories of the big bang and evolution are the most logical scientific explanations. However tomorrow someone may come up with better ideas.

As long as we believe that God started the whole thing, both the Bible and responsible modern science can live in harmony. *
[/QUOTE]

The only metric in this survey that puts it as more than half, interesting enough, is political. Probably many of them decided to believe in it just because Obama doesn’t.

Personally, I think the 3 in 10 seems high but I grew up before the recent resurgence of evangelicalism.

I was raised in a mainstream religious upbringing and I was taught in no uncertain terms that the Bible wasn’t literally true. I think my father told me " I’m Christian, not stupid" … my church phrased it more delicately but the message was the same. We equated Biblical literalism with the folks that went to that funny little church on the edge of town with the signboard – the ones that wouldn’t sent their kids to “real” school.

AAARGG…edit window expired while I was trying to fix links
Here’s the link I was trying to post

And sorry for the garbled duplicate quote in my earlier post

I don’t see anything in Sigene’s list that requires a literal reading of the (entire) Bible. Which, as you say, is a historically recent and U.S.-centric development in Christianity.

Sigene did include the idea that Jesus is “literally” divine, was born of a virgin, performed miracles, and rose from the dead. I’d venture to say that most Christians, even when you were growing up, accepted these tenets. The divinity, birth, and resurrection of Jesus are found in the ancient universal creeds of the church.

So while I’d agree that a belief in a literal seven day creation or Noah’s flood, or even faith in the historical accuracy of the Exodus story or the scope of David’s kingdom - are not part of historic creedal Christianity, I don’t think you can dismiss Sigene’s list that easily.

In your defense though - a mythological understanding of Jesus’ birth, life and death is by no means unknown and also has a healthy tradition within Christendom, although they tend to be shouted down today in many circles.

Probably a significant number of mainline Christians don’t. I can remember being in a Sunday school class in a Presbyterian church many years ago where I was the youngest person in the class by twenty years or so and there being a discussion about how the Resurrection was a metaphor. Certainly I don’t think a literal interpretation of these points would be that common in mainline seminaries.

Agreed. I’d be more inclined to quibble with the necessity for a Christian to believe “without doubt.” All the statements that Sigene lists are mainstream, orthodox Christian beliefs, affirmed by Christians throughout the past two thousand years. Without getting into the question of who “counts” as a Christian (which has been discussed to death in other threads), I think it’s safe to say that many, though far from all, people who self-identify as Christians (including those who are far from being Fundamentalists) would assent to all of them.

And I’d agree with others who say that there aren’t any specifically scientific reasons to believe these things, but that doesn’t mean that scientists can’t believe them (for other, non-scientific reasons).

I don’t want to hijack the thread, but, if I’m remembering correctly what I’ve read in Asimov’s autobiographical writings, his parents weren’t particularly religious until later in their lives, and Isaac himself never was.

I’m a member of a mainline church (Episcopalian), and while I have no idea what they teach in seminaries, probably the majority of clergy I’ve talked to seem to treat the miracles of Jesus as historical.

I agree that most mainline Christians would probably reject the historicity of most of the Old testament, especially Genesis.

I’d think Dr. Francis Collins would pretty much be the ultimate example I know about.

And he wrote a book about the OP’s question…

bump, this thread is a spinoff of a thread in which the OP started by mentioning Collins. It seems we’ve come full circle.

“Absolutely believe in the virgin birth without a doubt?” Snort.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/virgin_b7.htm

Ok, about 60% of the country said they believed it in absolutely. The others were less sure to varying extents. Interestingly, Catholics were more uncertain than Protestants. Among clergy, about half of them among the Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists believe in the Virgin birth overall, though belief is higher among Baptist and Lutheran ministers.

To me, science addresses ideas that are falsifiable. Most core religious tenets, such as virgin birth, are not falsifiable. It is a logical fallacy to interpret absence of evidence as evidence of absence, or, put another way, to interpret non-falsifiability as evidence of falsehood. So, while science can clearly predict how pregnancies can occur (e.g., with non-virgins), and can predict that–given ordinary circumstances–pregnancy will not occur in other situations (e.g., with virgins), the entire premise of the miracle and object of faith is that the circumstances were not ordinary. Science will never be able to tell us anything about theology until we find a way to subject God to the scientific method. So, I don’t see how science contradicts religion.

As far as religion contradicting science, the only times I’ve seen that are when a person is interpreting both and saying that the other is wrong. My own faith isn’t in the people of my faith but in the deity, which I might understand better through other people but which cannot be limited by the understanding of us mortals. I think most apparent contradictions arise from misunderstanding of the other side, much like most all interpersonal conflict. It is hard, after all, to study and fully comprehend a single topic, much less two at the same time.

On the other hand, I do see how science and religion complement each other. For example, religion generally cannot help us build a better widget, while science can; but science cannot help us determine whether building a better widget is a good idea, while religion can. If that’s too abstract, take out “widget” and replace “nuclear warhead” or “genome.”

My logical side says that both science and religion are great within their respective scopes, but their ideas are too broad and deep for any individual to fully consider in practical application. Even the most intent practitioner of either will necessarily shortcut their understanding of their actions with either the alternative or its imitation. So it is better to use the time- and experimentally-tested shorthand offered by both religion and science in our daily lives rather than hoping that our off-the-cuff “common sense” will help us muddle through acceptably well.

I think most people who reject science for religious reasons owe it to themselves to learn more about what science is. Likewise, people who reject religion due to the apparent conflict with science owe it to themselves to learn more about religion. There are both religious crackpots and scientific crackpots, and it isn’t rational to lump them in together with their more genuine counterparts, but it is impossible to tell them apart without knowing about the fundamental ideas of either.

Thanks all for your help in my understanding. I’m starting to parse some sense of dichotomy between Christians who believe in God, and Christians who include the true and absolute divinity of Jesus.

This seems odd to me as I have just expected any Christian to wholly believe the four points I mentioned upthread. I wonder what camp Collins falls into, I’ve just expected and assumed that he was in the later camp.
I note that the short description of BioLogos in Wiki, seems to be more emphasized on the general belief in God, and not so heavily emphasizing the true and literal divinity status of Jesus.

I’m much more comfortable with the idea of God in general and research scientists acceptance of that concept. I’m still struggling a bit with the other strict definition of Christianity and its acceptance to those scientists who require empirical data to accept things as true in the physical world.

Brainglutton gave the rationalwiki article. Here’s the answer at wikipedia: Non-overlapping magisteria.