Today’s Guardian runs an apologist piece on science and religion. Why is it that people pick a few scientists who are religious and draw the conclusion that this is the norm and that because some scientists are religious this helps the case for religion?
1. Most scientists are not religious. Those that are not “constitute 60% of American scientists, and a stunning 93% of those scientists good enough to be elected to the elite National Academy of Sciences“.
2. This Guardian article argues that the religiousness of scientists adds credibility to religious belief. Therefore, if you buy the article’s premise and look at the facts, the proven lack of religious belief amongst the majority of scientists actually reduces its credibility.
3. An alternative premise is that scientists who are religious don’t help the case for religion one way or another. People are irrational beings with an innate susceptibility to superstition.
4. The reverse premise is much more interesting. What if the resistance to adoption of proven scientific ideas is higher amongst those who are religious? Such resistance would be easy to measure if it manifested itself in, say, physical violence, persecution. This is hardly contentious, people continue to die every day, because of ‘religious persecution’ (persecution ‘by’ and not just ‘of’ those who have blind faith in an ideology) of those who share scientific ideas which do not require faith, but have evidence to back them up and can make accurate predictions.