As I’ve said, there is much that is surprising or unexpected about Elaine Ecklund’s findings on religion among scientists. I’m going to be blogging on this all week, but again, as background, if you haven’t yet you should first check out our Point of Inquiry episode (show website here; listen here; download/subscribe here).
The second point that arises from Ecklund’s research that I find intriguing is this. There’s a cliche out there, particularly among some conservative religious folks, that there is something nasty about science (and particularly evolutionary science), such that studying it will kill off your belief system.
However, Ecklund’s research seems to give the lie to this idea–and our discussion of this topic begins around minute 17:55-19:10.
First, among scientists who are atheists, Ecklund found that they tended to come from irreligious or not very observant family backgrounds. In other words, their atheism or lack of religion was in place long before their scientific training began.
Meanwhile, for scientists who retained religious beliefs, they tended to have started out with them to begin with, and then held on to them after a struggle or crisis of faith. But once again, if I understand Ecklund right, the struggle tended to happen before one’s scientific training and so was obviously not caused by it.
In both cases, then, what seems to be the key predictor of a scientist’s religious belief is family religious background…and not whether one studies science.
So why then are Christian conservatives so afraid of letting their kids learn real science? It doesn’t seem to be the threat here at all.