Roughly 40% of scientists are believers I think I remember reading (roughly the same as at the turn of the last century as well). You’re right - that’s a lot, though it’s a very course statistic if treating ‘believer’ as a binary response. I can’t remember which bucket that would have put Einstein in, for example.
To add to prior lists …
Particle physicist and priest, John Polkinghorne: “Belief in God in an Age of Science” or “Science and Theology”
For the last century if I remember correctly, 54% of nobels in scientific matters were specifically Christians, not even theists or deists.
Just made a research and it turns out that I was actually being conservative
“Given the focus on the sciences, one would expect atheists and agnostics would form the greatest percentage of Nobel Prize winners over the last century. Below are the surprising facts:
Over 65% of Nobel Prize winners identified as Christian. And, among the science awards, Christians received 64% in physics, 65% in medicine, and 74% in chemistry.
Twenty percent were Jewish, yet .02% of the world’s population is Jewish.
Less than one percent were Muslim, yet 20% of the world’s population is Muslim.
Just less than 11% were atheists or agnostics. Further, 35% of those who won were in the field of literature, with scientific awards being only a fraction (7% chemistry, 9% medicine, and 5% physics).”
…and yet we are rightly cautioned by passages you yourself posted against trying to find any signicance or solace in any such numbers.
Your best move would be to ditch whatever feeds or sources that keep referring you to such reactionary or sensationalist sources, and instead get your reading lists from more spiritually mature places. (And this very thread includes a lot of that.). The more you take in well considered work, you’ll be less swayed and alarmed by all the whimsical gusts of current culture or living by fearful (or triumphalist) glances towards popularity polls. Those are not reliable pointers towards truth, as we should know very well by now here in the U.S.
Absolutely, which is why I regard the fact that there are so many Christian scientists as nothing short of a miracle, as I said, and I wasn’t writing that metaphorically.
I don’t see it as something normal at all.
It’s not a question of reactionary sources, the question is whether those data are true or not. If they are, I believe that it’s a very powerful sign from God.
Wikipedia gives similar figures regarding the percentage of Christians in those fields:
“By one estimate made by Weijia Zhang from Arizona State Universityand Robert G. Fuller from University of Nebraska–Lincoln, between 1901 and 1990, 60% of Nobel Prize in Physics winners had Christian backgrounds.[2] In an estimate by Baruch Shalev, between 1901 and 2000, about 65.3% of Physics Nobel prize winners were either Christians or had a Christian background.[1] ”
So I see no reason to discard those data simply because they go against the spirit of the age, which likes to suggest that only the uneducated can be Christians (A prominent Italian scientist, Piergiorgio Odifreddi, has even gone so far as to call Christians “cretins”)
Either the data are accurate or they are not. And if they are not, then that should be proven.
I believe Christians should stop being so accommodating to the spirit of the age and stop conceding the high ground to atheists claims even when said high ground is non existent.
In case anyone thinks I’m exaggerating, here is the translation (from this “Perché non possiamo essere cristiani” (e meno che mai cattolici) | Recensione link)
“Long awaited after the great success of The Impertinent Mathematician, Piergiorgio Odifreddi’s book on Christianity has finally appeared. From its very title, the volume invokes Bertrand Russell—another logician and mathematician, as chance would have it—and, in an obviously negative judgment, Benedetto Croce, who bears responsibility for a text (Why We Cannot But Call Ourselves Christians, 1942) that has by now become the mantra of those who champion the Christian roots of Italy and Europe.
This time, however, the impertinent mathematician has given way to the conscientious logician. Much as Isaac Asimov once did in In the Beginning, analyzing Genesis as though it were a scientific text, Odifreddi now examines above all the internal coherence of the Holy Scriptures, as well as of the dogmas distilled from them by the various Christian confessions. Rather than biblical criticism, one should therefore speak of textual criticism, embodied here in a work that might almost be called an exercise in secular exegesis, insofar as it approaches the text as though it were being read for the first time. This is why the quotations and notes are drawn almost exclusively from Scripture itself.
In orderly and methodical sequence, the Old Testament, the New Testament, Christianity, and Catholicism are all put through the grinder. All in all, though, with less impertinence and disdain than some had feared—or hoped for—even if the volume opens with a chapter entitled Christians and Cretins (a pairing, moreover, with a certain etymological justification). The Bible is described as an account of ‘the petty quarrels of a people of Middle Eastern shepherds from three thousand years ago’: books steeped in violence, to the point that ‘the number of victims attributable to good old Yahweh, from Lot’s wife to Saul, comes to 770,359 people, give or take a few errors and omissions,’ as the meticulous professor dutifully notes. This circumstance provides good reason to ask ‘why the one dictating [the Holy Scriptures] would ever have wanted so many things to be written down that, as we have begun to note and will continue to note, are scientifically wrong, logically contradictory, historically false, humanly foolish, ethically reprehensible, literarily ugly, and stylistically slapdash, instead of simply inspiring a work that was correct, consistent, true, intelligent, just, beautiful, and straightforward.’
Why indeed? Because all sacred texts inevitably reflect the political, economic, social, and cultural conditions of the communities that produced them. Or rather, of the elites that produced them. Even the New Testament is no exception to this observation, especially where Jesus says to his disciples: ‘To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the others only in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’ The author’s commentary is scathing: ‘according to Yahweh’s twisted logic […] his word must therefore not be understood, so that on the one hand he may perversely rage against his people for failing to understand […] and on the other hand he may then magnanimously forgive and heal them. This twisted logic is thus inherited by his Son as well, or whoever stands in for him, who speaks in parables so that people cannot understand him, in order that the prophecies may be fulfilled.’
The inevitable consequence, the author argues, is that Christianity reveals itself to be ‘a religion of illiterate cretins,’ unworthy ‘of human rationality and intelligence.’ ‘We cannot be Christians, still less Catholics,’ he declares forcefully, ‘if at the same time we wish to be rational and honest. Reason and ethics are in fact incompatible with the theory and practice of Christianity.’ “
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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