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Are Most Scientists Atheists or Agnostics Rather than Believers in God?

During last Friday night's episode of Real Time, Bill Maher made the comment that most scientists are atheists or agnostics.  That caught my attention, although it's the kind of statement that I probably wouldn't have questioned if my own personal observations weren't to the contrary.  Sure, I could buy that it's a true statement in the sense that any percentage greater than 50 is "most", but frankly I don't at all buy it in the sense that Maher was using it: to claim that science and faith are incompatible and that religion's credibility is diminished by the "fact" that it is rejected by "most" scientists.

For the last 8 years I've worked in R&D for a major chemical company surrounded by a whole gaggle of PhD engineers and other members of the "hard" sciences.  Time and again I've been surprised to find out that one of my colleagues is a church-goer.  With many of them that I haven't had deep conversations about faith, so admittedly some may be atheists or agnostics who happen to go to church for one reason or another.  However, there are also plenty that I do know well and know that they are strong believers.  As another anecdote, my own PhD advisor (who was and continues to be one of the most respected and influential professors in his field of science) is a Christian.  Somehow these sorts of surprises are reassuring to me in my own faith.

Prompted by Maher's statement, I did some googling.  A recent study pretty much fit my expectations, so I quit looking further.  ;-)

Based on a survey of scientists from 21 "elite" research universities, approximately 60 percent were either atheists or agnostics.  So, yes, ~60 is greater than 50 and is a larger number than the general public.  The study also suggested a bit of a surprise:

Scientists are less religious than the general population, a new study shows, but the reason has little to do with their study of science or academic pressures.

The findings challenge notions that science is responsible for a lack of faith among researchers, indicating that household upbringing carries the biggest weight in determining religiousness.

"Our study data do not strongly support the idea that scientists simply drop their religious identities upon professional training, due to an inherent conflict between science and faith, or to institutional pressure to conform," said Elaine Howard Ecklund, a sociologist at the University at Buffalo and co-author of the study.

That fits with my observations.  It's too simple to say that faith and science are incompatible and the scientific pursuits necessarily drive out faith.  Other factors are important, so I shouldn't be surprised that many of my scientist-pals in the mid-west, middle-America are people of faith despite the stereotype.

I'm sure if I looked a little harder, I could find plenty of evidence to the contrary (for example, this site quotes from various sources to draw different conclusions), and I'm not at all surprised that scientists tend to be less religious than the general population.  But I'm also convinced that the science vs faith divide isn't as cut and dried as conventional wisdom might claim.

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