I posted links to more than one source of data, over decades, and don’t see what “organization” you are discussing. OTOH, your references do not address or contradict those findings.
Sure you did. You had three bullet points in your comment. The second one referred to some sort of 5-10% belief among members of specific organizations: the National Academy and Royal Society. But that’s oddly low. As I showed, among elite scientists more widely, the number is about 50%. Your Pew link actually verifies this number. The numbers you cite from the National Academy and Royal Society are absurdly non-representative.
You didn’t post anything about elite scientists. Has Ecklund done any analysis of that group? She may have, but I haven’t seen it anywhere.
That’s what her research was on. I gave the citation for her book. In the description on her website:
Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think fills a void in our knowledge by examining the religious views of elite scientists from top U.S. research universities. Until now, we have known little about scientists’ religious views.
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Ah!! I missed that. Have you read the book? Does she discuss the results of previous research and explain/speculate on the difference? It’s possible there isn’t much difference, since she is using different terms (“are religious”) than the surveys from the past seem to use (belief/doubt). And I would want to know if she looked at her subpopulations to see if she could replicate (or refute) the conclusions of the earlier survey of National Academy members.
Okay, sorry for responding to my own post. I found a recent research publication from Ecklund that is very interesting and that seems to verify the overall findings from the past century. What I can’t figure out is whether this paper separates elite from non-elite scientists. It is clear that they did this (stratified at least some of the groups) but all of the figures show comparisons between scientists and the general population, most markedly in the west (especially in the US). They focus on biologists and physicists.
The paper shows global differences and discusses them nicely. It also shows that the “conflict model” is not something embraced by scientists in general, and that is something I can strongly agree with based on my personal experience.
Thanks for prodding me to look for Ecklund’s research; it’s interesting and important!
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023116664353
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Ah!! I missed that. Have you read the book?
Not even a sentence. My reading schedule is far too stacked for that. Looking at the Wiki page, it clarifies that about a third (36%) of the scientists had some sort of belief in God and the number goes to 50% when we consider some form of spirituality, or religious self-identification, etc.
EDIT: Thanks for the new paper. That 2016 paper you cited seems to look at scientists more broadly, in contrast to the 2010 book which looked at elite scientists. I shall be saving this and I had not thought of looking at Ecklund’s other work, so thanks.
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Sooo 50% of scientists are actually believers ?
It’s been a while since I read Ecklund’s book. My memory is that ‘elite’ here means a professor at a tier 1 research university. My scribbled notes from the book say that 64% of that population identified themselves as atheists or agnostics and 28% as theists. I believe other research shows that as you use a more restrictive definition of ‘elite’ (i.e. member of the National Academy), the fraction identifying as theists drops a lot further.
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So sould that concern us or “tell us something”?
I think it is also appropriate use it as a reason to examine our faith from what they have studied, but not to take their opinions as gospel, so to speak. It is incredibly ironic to see what popular opinion holds as good reason for trust. We go to surgeons (Dr Oz) for medical advice, when a minority of his is science based…he should stick to cutting. Similarly, studying obscure conditions in physics, biology, or astronomy may make you a scientist, but give you no reason to pronounce on philosophy whatsoever. A scientist like Francis Collins is world class and many rely on his BRCA cancer testing fairly frequently in primary care medicine, but while he is a Christian, and some of his thoughts I agree with, I don’t agree with the argument from morality entirely (though I am a Christian). There are many things I can not discourse on well, so don’t take my word for those outside my experience (family physician). God is unfailingly patient and just, so we are not expected to know everything… we can only try.
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