"Science and Religion in America," Scientific American 1999
Now, at the turn of the millennium, comes a movement
bent on reconciling science and religion. New books
hail the divine in physics, biology, even computer
information theory. Last year 'SCIENCE FINDS GOD'
emblazoned the cover of Newsweek, and other leading
news magazines picked up on the theme. More
conferences than ever feature dialogues between 'the
two ways of knowing.' By one report, US higher
education now boasts 1,000 courses for credit on
science and faith, whereas a student in the sixties
would have long dug in hardscrabble to find even one.
Scientists who are older and tenured, it is said, feel it is
time to give witness to their once closeted or newly
found faith."[1]
The authors of that article set out to determine whether the atheistic
trend in science had increased or not. They repeated the questions of
the 1914 poll to the same level of scientists and discovered that today
there are still 40% of scientists who believe in God. They conclude,
"scientists today no more jettison Christianity's 'two cardinal beliefs'
than their counterparts did in 1914. Gallup surveys suggest the same
about the general population." They go on to report that among
scientists in the top positions the atheistic trend does appear to be
increasing, but they also note that it has been pointed out that,
"There's a reward system to being irreligious in the upper echelons."
Thus, it has been suggested that the extreme atheism at the very top
is probably more of a result of "200 years of marketing that if you
want to be a scientific person you've got to keep your mind free of the
fetters of religion."
[1] "Scientists and Religion in America," Scientific American, 281,
No. 3 (September 1999), pp. 88-93 |
