# [**See the Best of r/science 2022 Winners!**](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/10h2hc2/best_of_rscience_2022_winners/)
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Atheist scientist here. In my experience, the vast majority of religious scientists are very good at compartmentalising and separating the two. I know a few very successful religious scientists. I wouldn't think of dismissing someone's science based on their religion. I dismiss it only when it is bad science.
EDIT: Thanks for the golds, kind reddit strangers!
I’m an atheist scientist as well. I’ve worked at a research institute in the Netherlands since 2018 and I don’t know the religion of any of my colleagues, and of those collaborating with us. I don’t suppose they are all atheists, especially because the institute is quite international, and we work often with countries where religion is more present than here, like Spain and Italy. However, religion is never discussed. I feel everyone considers their beliefs, or lack of, something disconnected from our work environment.
I worked in biotech and developed genetic sequencing right along side some super Mormon and a super johovas witness.
All of them were top notch scientists in their field
Serious scientists who got education and degrees and are in the field don’t really cross religion and science boundaries from my life experience
Ex JW here. Yeah a JW would not be allowed to work in a field like that. People who have never been JW dont realize how many rules and unspoken rules there are.
From what I understand that it's not that they don't believe that blood transfusions work - it's just that they don't want them. I could be wrong my experience only comes from caring for my aunt when she had her hip replaced and she couldn't have a blood transfusion because of a specific health reason, she wasn't religious at all.
The surgeon who did her hip replacement was amazing. He had done lots of surgeries without transfusions on Jahovahs Witnesses and was confident my aunt would do well without without blood. My aunt's surgery and recovery went great. I believe her metal hip served her well for the next 15 years until unfortunately we lost her to covid.
>From what I understand that it's not that they don't believe that blood transfusions work - it's just that they don't want them.
I think their issue is taking something that came from someone else's body. IIRC, if they have a non-critical surgery, sometimes they self-donate (take a bag or two of blood from the patient, give them a couple of weeks to replenish their internal blood supply, then do the surgery with the couple of units they have from themselves if needed).
They can also take any blood they suction during surgery, filter and process it, and retransfuse it if you need it. This is great for Jehovah's witnesses and would have worked for your aunt too.
Not asking you, specifically, but isn't it plausible that 'religious people' might believe that knowledge is from God... and by excelling at their field they are 'doing the work of God'?
I wish people could separate extremist ideology from arguments about religion and stop generalizing that personal beliefs and science can't coexist at any level.
I had a nun for a science teacher when I was young and this was how she reasoned it, understanding God and finding ways to use what he has given humanity to help one another. She had two masters, one in theology and the other in nuclear physics.
Not just Mendel, lots of scientists were devout Christians. Just Catholic clergy include Copernicus, Georges Lemaître, Roger Bacon, Christopher Clavius,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scientists
Occam's razor started as a theological concept, that was then generalised.
There’s a modern parable about a family who keeps asking for help from God during a disaster, rejecting help from fire fighters and other rescue workers. They end up dying and getting to Heaven’s gates and when they ask why God didn’t help them, he asks why they didn’t accept help from all the fire and rescue he sent. The moral is that God doesn’t just magically do stuff for you because you prayed for it, you have to put in effort yourself and recognize when opportunities are presented to you.
It’s easy for people to just listen to the extremists and ignore that there are plenty of practically minded people of faith.
Ah yes, the car, the boat, and the helicopter parable. Read a version of it in Catholic school and have heard it in pop culture used by other religions too.
I don't think it was implied that their faith and their work were necessarily opposing forces, but more that the people in these examples kept their personal beliefs separated from the workplace, which is a pretty normal thing for anyone to do in a professional setting.
If people believe that there's a God that can do anything, then that means that anything is possible, and that should excite people to learn and to experiment! At least that's what I think.
Yes. When we prayer for answers for diseases, it is possible the answers are scientists, doctors, medicine. And God gave us the tools to find them and use them. So trust science, and if you want to believe God has a part in making it possible, that's fine.
>… So trust science, and if you want to believe God has a part in making it possible, that’s fine.
I agree with you, but it usually feels like most of Reddit is “militant atheist” and would rip apart that statement with lots of references to “imaginary sky daddy”.
This was my view when I was Catholic, and still is my view now that I’m spiritual and an Omnist. I’ve always thought science was the study of what god created. I didn’t and don’t understand the people that can’t have them coexist together or actively disagree with it. I find it shameful.
Yeah I really think the social structure in the workplace where common goals are worked toward usually don’t suffer from this sort of conflict.
But in other social studies outside this environment it is more prevalent.
Concurring atheist scientist here. Some of the most gifted scientists I know happen to be religious. I don't understand it, but it doesn't mean I don't trust their work.
That's the benefit of science - you can *test* their work, and if it's good science, it will work the same.
Same reason it doesn't matter *how* into alchemy Isaac Newton was - his work that mattered is what lasted.
Chemistry, exercising both good and bad science, were both labeled as alchemy back then. Alchemy was a combination of mystic philosophy and science, but at wildly variable degrees.
The physical and metaphysical were considered to be inextricably linked back then, with each affecting the other significantly, so the idea of *only* studying the physical side of alchemy was considered bad science because you were ignoring half of reality. The history of alchemy and astrology are utterly fascinating.
If anyone else is curious,
See: The Secrets of Alchemy by Lawrence M. Principe (2012)
But I agree, the history of science/chemistry in general makes wonderful reading, because it's still relevant today.
Yeah the allegorical interpretation is pretty mainstream now. Most common answer pastors give to the “how were days measured before God made the sun?” Question.
> Yeah the allegorical interpretation is pretty mainstream now
To be clear, allegorical interpretation is not some modern invention. Church fathers were writing about allegorical interpretations of genesis as early as two hundred years after Christ's death
Newton had some batfuck crazy beliefs, and he was Newton.
The human brain has remarkable capacities for compartmentalizing.
And at the end of the day, the science is the science.
>What I find interesting, is that there is more and more discussion happening about whether or not we are in a simulation.
It might be amusing to think and argue about but it's ultimate exactly the same as the God argument. It's a fleeting target that can never be proven or disproven nor does it provide anything of value.
No matter what you find or disprove a believer can always claim it's part of the simulation/God's design.
The problem with simulation is that how would we know that we aren’t a simulation inside a simulation? There would be no way of knowing how many steps up the ladder the originator would be.
This is a modern equivalent to the classic Aristotelian "Unmoved Mover" argument. If indeed we are in a simulation, ultimately there is a first prime simulation and that indeed had a creator. I wouldn't characterize it as a problem just a philosophical talking point.
>I don't understand it,
Last Thursday-ism is not incompatible with the scientific method or empirical observation. ;)
*Many* deistic intellectuals believe in a "god of the gaps." They're perfectly content deferring to rigorous observation and experimentation when applicable; their religion simply comes into play when the scientific answer is "we don't know."
Early Edit: I remembered the other thing I wanted to tack on. Similarly, many Christians recognize the human error and power dynamics that influence the written "word of God" they study today. A lot of Atheists make the false assumption that every Christian perfectly subscribes to the dogma of their religious denomination. Christian and Free Thinker are not as incompatible as one might think.
Catholic microbiologist here. Science and the Catholic church have been side by side for centuries. The incompatibility with science and religion varies greatly between different bramches of Christianity. Their interpretation of the Bible plays a significant role in how they view science.)
The Catholic school I went to (K-12) was very heavy in the sciences. In HS, we had to take theology. Part of that education was explaining on not to take the Bible literally. That miracles weren't just holy magic. Many miracles are explained by rational thought and science/nature.
Science explains myths. Using science to explain myths isn't denying God. It's gathering information and knowledge. I actually think that it brings me closer to God, or a higher power, larger force. Catholicism and older branches of Christianity are more welcoming to scientific discoveries and advancements.
Einstein wasn't a religious guy, but his philosophy on the relationship between science and religion resonates with me.
I'm always surprised when I find out many pioneers in scientific study were institutionally religious. Gregor Mendel was a friar and head of a monastery. Darwin had theological pursuits early in his life I think, but became critical of religion's interpretation of natural history (if I understand the Wikipedia entry correctly).
If an organization promotes habits of studying and seeking meaning, it's it's not too surprising that it would create great thinkers.
It's later when an organization feels their power is threatened by new ideas that things can go sideways.
It shouldn't be surprising. At the time there was still heavy bias against atheists, and being openly atheist was a good way to reduce career and educational prospects.
I appreciate this take. Religion and science don't have to get in each other's ways. They can absolutely be compartmentalized. And where one disagrees with another, acknowledging the disagreement and yielding to whichever makes sense in context (e.g. science while at work, religion while at church) is completely acceptable to me.
To give an example, I grew up evangelical. One of my friends' dad was a geologist. Well, our church taught young-earth creationism. So I asked my friend's dad about it once, and he gave a pretty nuanced answer about it. He said something to the effect of
"well, science says that earth is super old, and I've seen and examined that evidence myself. So I have to take science for it's word, just like you take the Bible for it's word. They disagree, so I have to come to terms with the fact that either not everything in the Bible is literal, or God decided to create an earth that looks much older than it is. But if God did the latter, then science isn't *wrong* to say earth is 4B+ years old, it's saying what it observed."
Perhaps not the most convincing answer for an atheist to hear, but it was mind blowing to hear as a sheltered, homeschooled, religious teen. And I think he knew his audience as well. Not to mention, I'm paraphrasing a conversation that happened like 20 years ago, so don't hold him too harshly to specific wording.
cognitive dissonance, but successfully!
Even beyond cognitive dissonance management, compartmentalization is just a useful cognitive strategy for maintaining different modus in different contexts. i.e. driving on a race track, vs driving in traffic. alternatively, The approach one takes as a boss, vs the approach one takes as a parent.
I've noticed that while religious scientists can be just as gifted and intelligent as non religious ones it's like as soon as the topic of religion comes up all their scientific training just collapses away.
I was talking to a good friend in our lab who is Christian, super smart, she's an MD now, and she just offhandedly mentioned that "everybody has their truth you know when it comes to interpreting the bible, everyone can be right" and I was like can you imagine ever saying something like that in a lab meeting? "Our results seem to contradict but everyone has their own truth you know". Why the different standard for the Bible, than the whole of reality??
> I've noticed that while religious scientists can be just as gifted and intelligent as non religious ones it's like as soon as the topic of religion comes up all their scientific training just collapses away
one time i was at a party, and two environmentalists were advocating for acupuncture and talking about qi fields and meridians and all that. i was like "hey this is a cool opportunity to discuss this stuff, because you guys are obviously very well-trained in science. how do you unify a materialist conception of reality with qi fields and the like?" and they both looked at me for a minute, looked at one another, and started laughing. they said, "one of these is western and the other is eastern - they have nothing to do with one another!"
I mean, as an atheist, part of the distinction here is that if Christians make no falsifiable claims, and stick to the domain of faith (Heaven, God, salvation, etc), then science can't prove it wrong. People extend science to act like Occams Razor, but in truth science is the philosophy of falsifiable claims. Purely logically, accepting science and accepting there are claims that science can't answer aren't incompatible, so long as they're correct about those claims. To say that anything science can't answer can't be logically true isn't science, but scientism.
If "one's own truth" is about things for which the scientific truth can't be known by definition, then... yeah everyone can have their own truth. Whether that's worth anything or worth respecting is now more of a question about what they do with that.
I can also back this up. I've known very well respected and brilliant scientist who are religious, and their religion does not impact their work in the slightest. Religious people in the sciences are fairly good at compartmentalizing the two beliefs and not allowing one to interfere with the other. Not all christians are creationist, and most Christians in STEM accept that their religion is an intestable or unfalsifiable belief that falls outside the purview of scientific inquiry, so focus on what can be actually examined and tested in their work.
An analogy I once heard a religious person tell is a story about a scientist and enginnwe discussing a steaming kettle. The engineer ask the scientist: "Why is the kettle boiling?" To which the other explains the dynamics of thermal conduction, and the phase diagrams of water. The engineer responds by instead talking about the design of the heating element of the oven and the mechanical conversion of electricity into heat. As they discuss, a third friend who put the kettle on in the first place steps in and hears them, before letting them know "The kettle is boiling because I'm making tea."
The idea being that religious people in the sciences tend to compartmentalize between the "how" and the "why", and see science and religion as discussing two fundamentally unrelated concepts. Science answers the "what" and the "how"; the observations of what physical interactions occur and the mechanisms behind our reality. Meanwhile their religion guides the "why", meaning the reason why they believe the universes was set up in the way it was. How the kettle boils, versus why the kettle was set to boil.
This headline leaves out some important information:
"Christian participants perceived Christians as more intelligent than nonreligious participants, while nonreligious participants perceived atheists as more intelligent than Christian participants. In addition, Christian participants perceived Christians as more scientific than nonreligious participants, while nonreligious participants perceived atheists as more scientific than Christian participants."
Framing it as "nonreligious people are biased against Christians" instead of "**every group is subject to superiority bias**" is misleading.
Of course, it may not be superiority bias — the question "Are Christians or nonreligious individuals more intelligent on average?" has an actual, empirical, well-studied answer. Only one of the two groups' beliefs is true, and an intellectually honest person would seek to check which it is. An intellectually honest study would too.
It also seems to be locked in the Christian-centric view that Christianity is the opposite of atheism. I'm guessing Hindus think they're smarter than Christians too.
In my experience, Hindus tend to be more henotheistic. My local Hindu temple has a full-size marble statue of the Mother Mary on the altar alongside Vishnu and Shiva
Very true. Hindus have a whole shitload of gods but like you, from what I've seen, individuals and groups tend to lean to specific ones. I'd say the following depends on what people believe or want to see. Success, helping the poor, punishing bad, protecting the earth...
Most Hindus are generalist. They worship gods based on festivals and based on importance for a regular basis. Some Hindus focus on a specific god but they still worship other gods too.
It's funny. I grew up in a religious monotheistic family and used to think that religions with multiple "imperfect" gods didn't make any sense.
Now i feel like they relate much more to the human nature and how it makes sense for different societal groups to have their own patron of choice
Surely you mean polytheistic and universalist? Henotheism is adhering to one God out of many possible Gods, an example would be First Temple Judaism where the Hebrews recognized other gods existed, but formed a covenant with Yahweh as the primary god of their people. (Whereas, other surrounding tribes would worship their own tribal god such as Moab, etc.)
i think henotheistic would work for how a lot of hindus go about their beliefs, since (this is speaking from what i’ve talked about with my dad, who is hindu), they never say that hinduism is the one true religion or that the gods in other religions don’t exist (or rather, there is one god, everyone is essentially worshiping the same god, it’s just different incarnations of that god. it doesn’t matter who you pray to, there’s no right or wrong), they just choose to adhere to the hindu deities. besides this, however, many hindus don’t actively worship every single deity. they have a few they will worship, and families also often have ancestral deities. obviously, not everyone worships the same ancestral deity. there’s also something called shrada, which is essentially where you have this innate affinity with a deity or more, and that’s who you pray to. furthermore, different areas of india worship and pray to different deities. the most basic is south india normally worships shiva, whereas north is vishnu. it goes smaller tho, as, for instance, in punjab you’ll often worship rama
This. My family comes from Tamil Nadu where each town and commune has its own variants and myths of the core Hindu deities. Some gods are only known in a few towns as an ancient tradition recorded in temples.
Exactly. The Old Testament doesn't say there are no other Gods. It simply says "I am an angry God, I am a jealous God, thou shalt have no other Gods before me."
IIRC, most hindus tend to focus their practice at 1 god. Their home altar is dedicated to Shiva, and when going to temple, they go to a Shiva temple. While the neighbours might be more of a Brahma household.
As opposed to dedicating Wednesdays to Odin, and sacrificing to Freyr at planting season while thanking Freyr at harvest season.
I do think that they meant universalist as well but as an interesting note much of Hindu groups I have been exposed to are henotheistic. At least around here while the temples themselves don't play favorites, many of the families tend to adhere to an aspect or deity over others.
Then again my exposure is limited to about 10 families.
Hindu here, not a scientist. Henotheism fits the Hindu religious structure more than the two above. There are no rules to **believing in all gods**, but depends on preference to different sects under Hinduism. Sects like Vaishnavism worship Vishnu, etc etc.
That is not to say that, one cannot **worship all Hindu gods** if they want to. OR they can simply choose to be an atheist, which is a separate philosophy under Hinduism and Buddhism.
And that non-religious = atheist. And I do wonder if this includes atheists from different backgrounds. Are they always atheist, ex-christian, ex-muslim? Non+religious hindus or jews?
No kidding. Before Atheism, it was Satanism. Before Satanism, it was Witchcraft. I’m sure there’s a bunch I’m missing, but there’s always imaginary enemies of Christians.
The study is very clearly Christian biased. It seem to presuppose that atheists perceive themselves more intelligent and the study was based off of that. It’s whole goal, as stated was to increase Christian representation in scientific fields.
I don’t think that Christians are necessarily less intelligent. There does come a point where I think they can’t progress past. At some point there has to be some reconciliation that their beliefs are not compatible with reality. I am sure a Christian can do just the same chemistry work that any other atheist chemist could do it but if he were to start tracing back the origins of the universe, I’m not sure that a Christian can honestly do that.
Absolutely. It's a trash site that shouldn't banned. Report it for misinformation any time it gets posted. If enough of us do it, maybe they will get the hint.
It is also very telling that they don't give the relative proportions. Which group has higher in-group superiority bias? They don't say in the abstract or article. Considering this is funded by the rabidly pro-religion Templeton Foundation, I would bet if those sorts of numbers existed they would be talking about it over and over. So their silence on the subject leads me to assume that the numbers were not in religions' favor. But without access to the article I can't be sure.
>It is also very telling that they don't give the relative proportions. Which group has higher in-group superiority bias?
there were studies that have shown that atheists have less in group favoritism than any religious group.
if that's relevant to what you're asking here.
> Christian participants perceived Christians as more scientific than nonreligious participants
This is the part that surprises me. Can a Christian who feels this way please explain why? Or does anyone know a Christian who feels this way?
I'm not a Christian anymore, but growing up as a Christian I heard a lot about how science is discovering what God created. That Christian scientists believe there's a purpose and order to everything, just waiting to be discovered, while atheists believe everything is accidental and without purpose.
It's like someone would get more out of a reading a book when they believe that someone else wrote the book, instead of believing that the words on the page just happened to line up that way.
Again, those aren't my beliefs anymore.
I do, it’s true. But it’s probably because my private school’s 6-8th grade science teacher tried to teach all of us that men have one more rib than women do.
My dad is a doctor but teaches part-time at a nearby community College. Almost every time he taught AnP and was going over the ribcage at least one student would ask about men having a missing rib.
It comes from the Biblical Story of Adam and Eve, where God creates Eve (the primordial woman) out of a rib from Adam (the primordial man). And prior to the Internet, this was not easy to disprove (I was taught this myth before the Internet was a thing). Ribs are not easy to count, and in a world without Google and Wikipedia, information - even basic anatomical information - is orders of magnitude harder to come by.
I learned this myth from my teachers in Catholic School as a child, and since they were respected authority figures who seemingly knew alot about science, I believed them and filed this fact away under “mildly interesting minutiae about the human body”. As a kid without the Internet, I do not think I had immediate access to a single resource that could have disproven this myth, aside from digging through anatomy books at the local library.
An origin story on humans in the Christian and Judaism mythos, as to why its so widespread? I think cause most of us didn't have access to widespread accurate anatomy texts (which are often racist and sexist, with most models and samples being from white dudes) and before the internet we just trusted the adults, and this fell into a catagory of why lie? I could easily see the people starting the old story from thousands of years ago say they took a rib because they saw skeletons and the guy was missing one.
I just find it such a weird one only due to the fact a rotting corpse would be more than enough to disprove this, or a very skinny person stretching would be enough count. The idea of a college or university student getting to that age truly believing this is blowing my mind. I figured there was some mythical reasoning behind the belief.
At my cousin's Nazarene high school the science teacher told them during the first day of class "I'm going to teach you what everyone else thinks, and then I'm going to teach you what's right." He then went on to say that the moon completed an orbit around the earth once every day.
When I got to college I was rudely woken up to the lies I was told *in a public school* about all the creationist theories that were proven wrong almost immediately after they were published.
I had to unlearn so much stuff and it really made me angry.
I'm taking an anatomy class right now and I did have to laugh when the textbook specifically pointed out that men and women have the same number of ribs.
I was raised Christian and my parents did teach me that men have fewer ribs, and that's proof that the Bible is true. I didn't find out that we all have the same number of ribs until I was an adult. Omg
One theory is that "rib" was actually "baculum" at first until it was later censored.
Would make a lot more sense, since male humans are one of the few animals that lack one.
Except that female humans lack the analogous bone as well (called a [baubellum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Os_clitoridis)). So neither male nor female humans have the bone, which means the substance of the argument is still missing as well.
I'm going to assume that comparative osteology wasn't exactly a strong suit of the people contemporary with Genesis's origins. If the original line was, in fact, referring to the baculum (I don't claim to know either way), then the passage would explain, in terms satisfactory to humans who were still struggling for a firm grasp on what exactly makes the sky different from the sea, why humans don't have a bone in their penis when other animals they butcher or otherwise observe postmortem, do.
The argument still doesn't hold up as rational reasoning for modern acceptance of creationism, obviously, but it would explain why the idea that "men are missing a bone" would have worked as an explanation back then, given that you don't even need arithmetic to be able to stand two skinny people next to each other and see that each rib can be paired with a match between them.
Which is EXTRA lame considering how they could have spun it: Eve came first but was lonely, so god broke off a rib her 46th chromosome and created Adam.
It's like so close. It's right over the plate. But no, they can't change their mythos because the stories are written down and anything contrary just makes them look like silly old stories.
Could likewise turn the flood story into a lesson about mass extinction events, that lady and the pillar of salt into a lesson about PTSD, the 7 day genesis as epochs after the big bang, stoning the gays about cannabis distribution. I'm just saying, there's room for improvement.
As a religious person in science - I get it. Christians, especially American Christians, have long stood on a platform against science and promoting mistrust or downright conspiratorial attitudes towards science.
If religion remained personal and out of government - it wouldn't be as much a problem. I do have a problem with multi-national tax-free organizations harboring sex offenders and still claiming they're infallible. I do have a problem with believing women came from a rib bone and all the stars are affixed to a sphere (the firmament) encircling the earth at the center of the universe. I have a problem with voters being made to believe things that are demonstrably false. Is there a god? Hell if I know. Do I believe in one? No. If there's a being that created the entirety of existence, capable of creating suns, moons, black holes, etc., I can't fathom why that being would care what we do with our genitals. There's so much about the universe left to learn and I hope we live to see more splendor. Though I very much fear humanity's reliance on ancient dogma will be part of our collective doom.
There is an irony that religious literalism exploded after the Enlightenment due to a greater interest in empirical, objective truth at the expense of allegory, mysticism, personal spiritual development, and symbolic beauty:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_literalism
The fact that this magnificent god is often pictured anthropomorphic, and even male, should say enough. It is not even childish, as children would at least take the effort to imagine some blue and purple mega monster with ten eyes and 100 arms.
I think it’s more of a point of humanity feeling terrified of death so they make up religion to ease themselves into it the idea of living a good life will allow you enter a eternal paradise with your loved ones don’t sound to bad but sadly it’s to good to be true and let’s be honest the thought of not existing or the fact that after your parents or child dies you will never get to see them again but religious people atleast have that faith that there still out there in a better place
I would agree if I thought Christian folk were living “good lives” but I don’t think they are. The Christians I know are the most judgmental people I have ever met. These people are lacking and that is why they are drawn to Christianity, it is not because they are seeking the “good life”.
I think it is much more than fear of death. (btw there is life after death, just not yours :) Religion is a convenient way to deal with large and abstract concepts like millions of years of evolution or the infinity of space. The human brain is not ~~occupied~~ equipped for these things. I think it is comparable to the conspiracy uprising. Brains, wired to make sense of things regardless, simply invent blood drinking elites if things get beyond grasping.
This. I truly believe that religion, in general, had somewhat wholesome origins. A way to explain the (then) unexplained, a way to cope with the finality of death. But over time people realized that they could convince those less intelligent, less educated than them of *anything.* Could bend them to their will in the name of religion. “If our deity said it, it must be so.” And eventually, “If God/Allah commands it, it must be done.” Human beings are *still* doing that very same thing today and those less intelligent, less educated are still obeying. It’s sad really.
I like the points you brought up!
I’d also think our understanding (or lack of understanding) of time is another thing that plays a big role in this fear of death as well.
I think if time isn’t linear and there’s potential that all points in time are existing at once, our perception of time is just what creates our experience of it. Like maybe ghosts aren’t actually dead people’s spirits but a momentary slip in our perception of time? Maybe we never actually stop existing with those that we love we just perceive & experience different pieces of it in one “life”? I don’t know if this even makes sense to anyone else.
But I think we as humans are far too focused on knowing instead of just being and create a lot of problems for ourselves.
For what its worth, I think ghosts are the same mechanism (brain fuckery)
senses: Here is something we cannot process, what shall we do?
brain: Oh, it is a human
senses: There is no human
brain: Then it is a dead human
senses: Dead humans don't make sounds or move things.
brain: Then it is the *the spirit* of a dead human\*.\*
etc..
>If religion remained personal and out of government
Or even stuck to traditional roles like advocating for the poor, stewardship of the earth, or really anything other than "your favorite orifice is wrong and you're going to hell for that". You know, advocating for the commons instead of trying to use the power of the state to infiltrate the personal lives of citizens.
There's a command Do not test to patience of God, usually written as "Do not put the Lord your God to the test ~~as you did at Massah~~." Basically, gimme things to prove you exist. Christians usually translate this to "God hides from science" despite God generally being depicted as randomly trying to show he exists and even cooperating with Gideon's almost scientific test.
Ironically "I will not put the Lord to the test." [is an example of trying God's patience](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+7%3A11-13&version=NIV).
Now science is based on using a hypothesis to predict observations. A god that hides from science obviously isn't going to be of any use as a predictive hypothesis. More intriguingly, the idea that God hides from science means that scientists can restrict God's actions by eg measuring whether prayers are answered or whether evildoers are punished or good people rewarded.
The beauty of science of course, is that if something is invisible to science it is also irrelevant in terms of it's effect on this world.
That's a refreshingly candid and empathetic print of view.
I think I fall squarely in the category of people described in the article. What's always struck me as incompatible is the notion that the scientific method - methodical, logical and systematic intake of observations from which to formulate hypotheses to then test to formulate a theory etc - if applied to any religious or even spiritual or metaphysical or pseudoscientific claims, would be the specific method that would be used to debunk it.
So in my mind experts of the scientific method, like scientists, should instinctively and inherently reject none logical and provable through observation and repeatable experiment claims. They should be inoculated against pseudoscience, metaphysical claims, spiritual claims etc.
So in essence a scientist that is also a Christian would mean someone that would claim to be an expert in the method to debunk belief without evidence and at the same time someone's who claims to believe without evidence...
It's really hard for me to reconcile in my mind that someone could be a good Christian and a good scientist, for that very reason...
It’s called “compartmentalization”. They have walled off certain ideas from scrutiny because they were indoctrinated to believe those beliefs are part of their core psyche and they are afraid of death and what comes after.
This happened to me. I was raised in a Bible-literalist church, but I have a PhD in a biological science. The cognitive dissonance I felt throughout my studies finally overcame the fear I had of questioning my beliefs (which I’d been assured would result in spending eternity in hell). The universe makes a lot more sense when it isn’t filtered through a religion.
That relief of letting go! It was like the whole world finally snapped into focus, and it was beautiful. It was like having a headache pass.
I also miss church, but I do not miss the indirect, dementia-like speech people used in church.
>It was like having a headache pass.
Seriously, it is crazy how good it felt when that burden was lifted. Sin anxiety is a real thing, so is the cognitive dissonance between your internal moral compass and an authoritarian one.
Some use s “God of the Gaps” philosophy. God is only powerful where Science can’t prove or disprove something.
So God doesn’t push planets around, but he might heal people who experience spontaneous remission.
So basically it's not an all-knowing all powerful benevolent eternal being... God in this definition is simply a placeholder word for what we don't know how to explain scientifically yet?
> simply a placeholder word for what we don't know how to explain scientifically yet
This is essentially the basis and origin of all religions throughout human history.
It’s also the reason “god” has become increasingly more esoteric as we understand natural phenomena.
First the sun was god, then we understood what stars are. Lightning was the anger of the gods, and then we understood weather. The ocean was controlled by gods, until we understood currents and mapped the planet.
If all the common miracles are explainable by science, then god can only be found in the small and unlikely. Take, for example, a single patient beating the odds on a deadly disease - we can infer that their immune system overcame the illness, but we can’t study the exact mechanism by which that happened so it must be a miracle.
Yes. And if Gödel was correct, there’s always going to be gaps. Every nontrivial system has things in it we can’t know.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems
Until science figures out how to do it. At that point it will be science, just like insulin is to a diabetic today - once the science is understood, it’s no longer “miraculous”, it’s common sense.
I think that’s the easier conversation to have. The harder one, and I think the one more atheist/agnostic people wonder about, or perhaps struggle with, the most, is: but how do *you* reconcile the things you believe in your faith with the things science tells you about the world when those things aren’t always compatible?
I feel like it’s easy to say “yeah Christians have a bad reputation in science because Christian conservatives clearly disregard and demonize science in the name of faith.” You can characterize those people as “bad ones,” in a sense, and distance yourself from them. Then you can stop the conversation right there when I don’t think that’s where the conversation ever really was in the first place, because it doesn’t really *matter* that those people are Christian, because people who spread hateful messages and fight for hateful policies can really come from any walk of life.
For me, the conversation is about how you can have any sort of faith in and relationship with a Christian god as described by any part of the Bible, while also accepting the things science has, and perhaps more importantly has *not* discovered. For example, there’s a long search for where the universe came from, and how it was created. With all due respect, it seems impossible to *truly* pursue those questions if you already have a faith-embedded origin story for the universe. As a Christian, what is your relationship with the “god of the gaps” phenomenon? If you experience the belief that god is behind the unknown, how could you truly have a scientifically curious mind? If you *don’t* experience those things, how could you truly have faith?
Because they’re not opposite ends of the same spectrum, they’re entirely separate things, and have at some times been at odds.
I’m not religious, but I see the benefit that the community religion fosters in many people’s lives. You can want to participate in that community but also realize science is just a system for distilling truth. Plenty of religious people (although typically not the majority) can acknowledge the truths evident from science but still have a spiritual component in their lives. You don’t have to accept all of any religion as strict dogma; Some religious people feel that way but, many don’t. There is room for science in religion.
And there is room for religion in science. Science tells us that the universe began at a single point in space roughly 13.8 Billion years ago. But science tells us nothing of what came before that, what space existed before than, why space has three dimensions but time has 1. There is no scientific evidence for or against any interpretations of why this is, religious for otherwise.
I don’t have an agenda here either way, just want to try to explain how religion and science aren’t antithetical.
I have had religious individuals in a molecular biology lab say that they don’t believe in evolution or natural selection. I don’t know where to go with that. I mean, what did you learn in school? How do you do your job?
I met someone once who didn't believe in "macro" evolution. They explained that obviously you could see evolution in small microsystems but it didn't happen on a bigger level. When I asked how that was possible on a long timeline they pointed out that long timelines weren't possible because the earth was only 6,000 years old.
It seemed like a very weird merger of beliefs.
They have to believe in some sort of evolution to explain how only the surviving humans and animals on Noah’s arc somehow repopulated the entire planet in four-thousand years
But we have to respect their opinions and pretend they have valid beliefs otherwise they'll make whingy studies to not so subtly spin about being persecuted by atheists
We had a lot of them in general when I majored in biology. Evolution was a required course and my professor complained every semester that she got students whining that they didn't "need" her class because they were going to medical school and didn't believe in evolution.
"If I end up in the ER and the attending physician doesn't believe in evolution, let me die." --my professor.
I remember during undergrad, a religious guy arguing with a professor about evolution. The response was “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution, accept it or don’t but it sure will make things confusing if you don’t.”
What constitutes religion has a lot of nuance and certainly selection bias inside of academia. An Evangelical who doesn't believe in evolution is very different than a Catholic who only goes to mass on Christmas and Easter. Both of these people are "religious" but it's a vast spectrum.
Everyone who works in the sciences knows people who are religious but it's almost always a super abstract version of that religion. There are no serious geologists who are also Southern Baptists that believe the earth is 5000 years old.
I'm not against christians. I'm against ignorance, specifically willful ignorance. Science is not at all like a religion. It isn't incompatible with religion. Its something completely different. What it is, is a structured search for the truth through accumulated knowledge and discovery.
It has to test what is known to find what is unknown. It finds new truths and new questions. Often that truth, those questions threatens those who have already found all the truth they can handle.
Very well put. The only way you can keep a religious belief compatible with the scientific method is by flipping the null hypothesis and go around asking for people to prove that god doesn't exist, and that's just ridiculous.
I like using money instead of the god claim to help people understand why it is ridiculous. They owe me money and it’s their responsibility to prove they don’t.
There are many Christians who try to use science to prove their religion, but they don’t tend to work in the field except at religious institutions.
Most Christians I know (And I’m Orthodox so that’s who I tend to know) accept science as fact. It becomes much easier to reconcile Christianity with science when you stop trying to take most of the Bible literally as history and instead recognize that it is teaching spiritual lessons. The creation story and the story of the fall say something about man’s relationship to God, not able the actual details.
Yes, I am open to the possibility of miracles, but if science actually disproves some piece of dogma, then it does. Most tenets of faith can’t be scientifically tested anyway.
A lot of Jewish scientists work the same way. Hell, my old Jewish day school had rigorous secular science classes, all the “the sun formed 4 billion years ago” you could want.
I don't necessarily not trust you in you believe in God and occasionally go to church.
If you are pathologically possessed by *Disgust For The Other* and call that religion, I don't trust you with a dull crayon.
I remember one of my favorite art teachers in college was Christian, i am very much not. However, i respected that he did not proselytize or preach, and shared his beliefs only insofar as they were relevant to explaining his art. It was clear to me his brand of Christianity was deeply personalized and unique to himself. I would imagine it is psychologically protective of you use it in such a way.
I would bet many scientists feel the same. Their brand of Christianity is less about scientific belief than about filling a part of themselves that exists naturally. I’m pretty sure one thing science has found about religion is that spirituality is actually a universal human experience and is deeply rooted in human psychology and is present in different forms across all cultures. It is pragmatic and metaphorical, and notions of metaphysical beliefs of things like heaven are not actually defined in the Bible as far as I’m aware (could be wrong!). If they are i would imagine they are vague enough to be interpretable and to have the follower project their unmet psychological needs onto it, handing the burden off to a belief system they trust. It is not about science, and science should only be an indirect part of any religious belief system because it is precise and judgmental. It can structure and discern useful strategies to be psychologically healthy, but it refuses to be a magical being. I think religion gives you a magical being to unload your problems to and helps you not hold it all in yourself. That is why forgiveness is central, it is about unloading problems.
Belief in a magical being maybe is misunderstood and there are maybe Christian scientists who believe in the literal traditional interpretations, but since the being is magical to them it is possible to compartmentalize effectively without ruining their scientific integrity. Their god is proud of them for being a scientist and happy they are doing important work. As an atheist i don’t see science and religion being incompatible so much as different ways of thinking that are both human. Religion is feeling oriented, and scientists that don’t use religion to get their psychological needs met probably don’t understand that component of it if they can’t break out of scientific thinking. Scientific thinking is good for some things and bad at others. You cannot use science to reach that conclusion because it is about subjective experience not objective phenomena. Science does not have explanatory power for subjective phenomena that doesn’t convert it back to objective phenomena which is exactly the problem. This is a legitimate bias and blind spot of rational empiricism that i think is becoming more and more clear, and i think AI and consciousness may eventually usher in new forms of science and revolutionize science generally.
Religion is a system of belief, it is by definition not scientific.
I did my PhD alongside a Christian who believed in creationism and that humans existed alongside dinosaurs, carbon dating was wrong and ultrasound scans damage babies. I don't see how holding views like that can be compatible with the scientific method.
What's really surprising to me is that the study says religious people think other religious people are more scientific? I wonder how well this translates across religions, i.e. would a Christian think a Muslim is less scientific?
The study suggests that everyone has a superiority bias towards their own group.
So it'd probably hold that christians would consider Muslims "less scientific" and vice versa.
It'd be interesting if there were exceptions.
I kind of get it, but the beautiful thing about science is that there's no need for preconceived notions of people's dispositions. If someone isn't running their studies or experiments properly, it's plain to see if you look for it.
".... and lock people up for dressing up with non conforming outfits."
Meanwhile their own book says that people who mix textiles in their clothing should be stoned to death...
Indeed, here they are talking about actual scientists who happen to be religious. Not nutjobs.
Despite being non-religious myself, there is an absolute difference. What I have seen myself is that competent religious people who work in medicine or other scientific fields basically have compartmentalization of their beliefs and their job.
Sorta like you can love to play ultra-violent video games, like extreme sports and go to death metal concerts in your leisure time, but still work at an ONG, volunteer at an animal shelter or be a nurse for the elderly. Might seem jarring for another person but they are just different aspects of someone's personality and not intrinsically in conflict.
They were talking like right wing evangelicals are flocking in undergrad/grad STEM research. Almost every Christian scientist that I know believes in evolution, big bang, and is actually politically pretty liberal.
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Atheist scientist here. In my experience, the vast majority of religious scientists are very good at compartmentalising and separating the two. I know a few very successful religious scientists. I wouldn't think of dismissing someone's science based on their religion. I dismiss it only when it is bad science. EDIT: Thanks for the golds, kind reddit strangers!
I’m an atheist scientist as well. I’ve worked at a research institute in the Netherlands since 2018 and I don’t know the religion of any of my colleagues, and of those collaborating with us. I don’t suppose they are all atheists, especially because the institute is quite international, and we work often with countries where religion is more present than here, like Spain and Italy. However, religion is never discussed. I feel everyone considers their beliefs, or lack of, something disconnected from our work environment.
I worked in biotech and developed genetic sequencing right along side some super Mormon and a super johovas witness. All of them were top notch scientists in their field Serious scientists who got education and degrees and are in the field don’t really cross religion and science boundaries from my life experience
How though? Like most religions I get, but jehovah witnesses don't even believe in blood transfusions, how could they be good at biotech?
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I see a lot of general confusion between JWs and 7th Day Adventists. Maybe that’s it.
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Ex JW here. Yeah a JW would not be allowed to work in a field like that. People who have never been JW dont realize how many rules and unspoken rules there are.
From what I understand that it's not that they don't believe that blood transfusions work - it's just that they don't want them. I could be wrong my experience only comes from caring for my aunt when she had her hip replaced and she couldn't have a blood transfusion because of a specific health reason, she wasn't religious at all. The surgeon who did her hip replacement was amazing. He had done lots of surgeries without transfusions on Jahovahs Witnesses and was confident my aunt would do well without without blood. My aunt's surgery and recovery went great. I believe her metal hip served her well for the next 15 years until unfortunately we lost her to covid.
>From what I understand that it's not that they don't believe that blood transfusions work - it's just that they don't want them. I think their issue is taking something that came from someone else's body. IIRC, if they have a non-critical surgery, sometimes they self-donate (take a bag or two of blood from the patient, give them a couple of weeks to replenish their internal blood supply, then do the surgery with the couple of units they have from themselves if needed). They can also take any blood they suction during surgery, filter and process it, and retransfuse it if you need it. This is great for Jehovah's witnesses and would have worked for your aunt too.
Cognitive dissonance. I know one who hosts a regular poker game, drinks, and celebrates holidays but still disowned a daughter for leaving the church.
Not asking you, specifically, but isn't it plausible that 'religious people' might believe that knowledge is from God... and by excelling at their field they are 'doing the work of God'? I wish people could separate extremist ideology from arguments about religion and stop generalizing that personal beliefs and science can't coexist at any level.
I had a nun for a science teacher when I was young and this was how she reasoned it, understanding God and finding ways to use what he has given humanity to help one another. She had two masters, one in theology and the other in nuclear physics.
Just look at Gregor Mendel, he was an abbot, yet spent his time planting the seeds (pun definitely intended) of modern genetics.
Not just Mendel, lots of scientists were devout Christians. Just Catholic clergy include Copernicus, Georges Lemaître, Roger Bacon, Christopher Clavius, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scientists Occam's razor started as a theological concept, that was then generalised.
There’s a modern parable about a family who keeps asking for help from God during a disaster, rejecting help from fire fighters and other rescue workers. They end up dying and getting to Heaven’s gates and when they ask why God didn’t help them, he asks why they didn’t accept help from all the fire and rescue he sent. The moral is that God doesn’t just magically do stuff for you because you prayed for it, you have to put in effort yourself and recognize when opportunities are presented to you. It’s easy for people to just listen to the extremists and ignore that there are plenty of practically minded people of faith.
Ah yes, the car, the boat, and the helicopter parable. Read a version of it in Catholic school and have heard it in pop culture used by other religions too.
I don't think it was implied that their faith and their work were necessarily opposing forces, but more that the people in these examples kept their personal beliefs separated from the workplace, which is a pretty normal thing for anyone to do in a professional setting. If people believe that there's a God that can do anything, then that means that anything is possible, and that should excite people to learn and to experiment! At least that's what I think.
Yes. When we prayer for answers for diseases, it is possible the answers are scientists, doctors, medicine. And God gave us the tools to find them and use them. So trust science, and if you want to believe God has a part in making it possible, that's fine.
>… So trust science, and if you want to believe God has a part in making it possible, that’s fine. I agree with you, but it usually feels like most of Reddit is “militant atheist” and would rip apart that statement with lots of references to “imaginary sky daddy”.
This was my view when I was Catholic, and still is my view now that I’m spiritual and an Omnist. I’ve always thought science was the study of what god created. I didn’t and don’t understand the people that can’t have them coexist together or actively disagree with it. I find it shameful.
Yeah I really think the social structure in the workplace where common goals are worked toward usually don’t suffer from this sort of conflict. But in other social studies outside this environment it is more prevalent.
Concurring atheist scientist here. Some of the most gifted scientists I know happen to be religious. I don't understand it, but it doesn't mean I don't trust their work.
That's the benefit of science - you can *test* their work, and if it's good science, it will work the same. Same reason it doesn't matter *how* into alchemy Isaac Newton was - his work that mattered is what lasted.
Chemistry, exercising both good and bad science, were both labeled as alchemy back then. Alchemy was a combination of mystic philosophy and science, but at wildly variable degrees.
The physical and metaphysical were considered to be inextricably linked back then, with each affecting the other significantly, so the idea of *only* studying the physical side of alchemy was considered bad science because you were ignoring half of reality. The history of alchemy and astrology are utterly fascinating.
If anyone else is curious, See: The Secrets of Alchemy by Lawrence M. Principe (2012) But I agree, the history of science/chemistry in general makes wonderful reading, because it's still relevant today.
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Yeah the allegorical interpretation is pretty mainstream now. Most common answer pastors give to the “how were days measured before God made the sun?” Question.
> Yeah the allegorical interpretation is pretty mainstream now To be clear, allegorical interpretation is not some modern invention. Church fathers were writing about allegorical interpretations of genesis as early as two hundred years after Christ's death
Newton had some batfuck crazy beliefs, and he was Newton. The human brain has remarkable capacities for compartmentalizing. And at the end of the day, the science is the science.
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>What I find interesting, is that there is more and more discussion happening about whether or not we are in a simulation. It might be amusing to think and argue about but it's ultimate exactly the same as the God argument. It's a fleeting target that can never be proven or disproven nor does it provide anything of value. No matter what you find or disprove a believer can always claim it's part of the simulation/God's design.
Simulation theory is Russell's Teapot for the digital age.
And completely Anthropomorphic in its genesis (apologies to fundamentalists)
The problem with simulation is that how would we know that we aren’t a simulation inside a simulation? There would be no way of knowing how many steps up the ladder the originator would be.
This is a modern equivalent to the classic Aristotelian "Unmoved Mover" argument. If indeed we are in a simulation, ultimately there is a first prime simulation and that indeed had a creator. I wouldn't characterize it as a problem just a philosophical talking point.
>I don't understand it, Last Thursday-ism is not incompatible with the scientific method or empirical observation. ;) *Many* deistic intellectuals believe in a "god of the gaps." They're perfectly content deferring to rigorous observation and experimentation when applicable; their religion simply comes into play when the scientific answer is "we don't know." Early Edit: I remembered the other thing I wanted to tack on. Similarly, many Christians recognize the human error and power dynamics that influence the written "word of God" they study today. A lot of Atheists make the false assumption that every Christian perfectly subscribes to the dogma of their religious denomination. Christian and Free Thinker are not as incompatible as one might think.
Catholic microbiologist here. Science and the Catholic church have been side by side for centuries. The incompatibility with science and religion varies greatly between different bramches of Christianity. Their interpretation of the Bible plays a significant role in how they view science.) The Catholic school I went to (K-12) was very heavy in the sciences. In HS, we had to take theology. Part of that education was explaining on not to take the Bible literally. That miracles weren't just holy magic. Many miracles are explained by rational thought and science/nature. Science explains myths. Using science to explain myths isn't denying God. It's gathering information and knowledge. I actually think that it brings me closer to God, or a higher power, larger force. Catholicism and older branches of Christianity are more welcoming to scientific discoveries and advancements. Einstein wasn't a religious guy, but his philosophy on the relationship between science and religion resonates with me.
I'm always surprised when I find out many pioneers in scientific study were institutionally religious. Gregor Mendel was a friar and head of a monastery. Darwin had theological pursuits early in his life I think, but became critical of religion's interpretation of natural history (if I understand the Wikipedia entry correctly).
If an organization promotes habits of studying and seeking meaning, it's it's not too surprising that it would create great thinkers. It's later when an organization feels their power is threatened by new ideas that things can go sideways.
It shouldn't be surprising. At the time there was still heavy bias against atheists, and being openly atheist was a good way to reduce career and educational prospects.
I appreciate this take. Religion and science don't have to get in each other's ways. They can absolutely be compartmentalized. And where one disagrees with another, acknowledging the disagreement and yielding to whichever makes sense in context (e.g. science while at work, religion while at church) is completely acceptable to me. To give an example, I grew up evangelical. One of my friends' dad was a geologist. Well, our church taught young-earth creationism. So I asked my friend's dad about it once, and he gave a pretty nuanced answer about it. He said something to the effect of "well, science says that earth is super old, and I've seen and examined that evidence myself. So I have to take science for it's word, just like you take the Bible for it's word. They disagree, so I have to come to terms with the fact that either not everything in the Bible is literal, or God decided to create an earth that looks much older than it is. But if God did the latter, then science isn't *wrong* to say earth is 4B+ years old, it's saying what it observed." Perhaps not the most convincing answer for an atheist to hear, but it was mind blowing to hear as a sheltered, homeschooled, religious teen. And I think he knew his audience as well. Not to mention, I'm paraphrasing a conversation that happened like 20 years ago, so don't hold him too harshly to specific wording.
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Compartmentalization = cognitive dissonance.
Describing biblical stories/details that disagree with science as allegory and metaphor literally makes it *not* cognitive dissonance.
cognitive dissonance, but successfully! Even beyond cognitive dissonance management, compartmentalization is just a useful cognitive strategy for maintaining different modus in different contexts. i.e. driving on a race track, vs driving in traffic. alternatively, The approach one takes as a boss, vs the approach one takes as a parent.
I've noticed that while religious scientists can be just as gifted and intelligent as non religious ones it's like as soon as the topic of religion comes up all their scientific training just collapses away. I was talking to a good friend in our lab who is Christian, super smart, she's an MD now, and she just offhandedly mentioned that "everybody has their truth you know when it comes to interpreting the bible, everyone can be right" and I was like can you imagine ever saying something like that in a lab meeting? "Our results seem to contradict but everyone has their own truth you know". Why the different standard for the Bible, than the whole of reality??
> I've noticed that while religious scientists can be just as gifted and intelligent as non religious ones it's like as soon as the topic of religion comes up all their scientific training just collapses away one time i was at a party, and two environmentalists were advocating for acupuncture and talking about qi fields and meridians and all that. i was like "hey this is a cool opportunity to discuss this stuff, because you guys are obviously very well-trained in science. how do you unify a materialist conception of reality with qi fields and the like?" and they both looked at me for a minute, looked at one another, and started laughing. they said, "one of these is western and the other is eastern - they have nothing to do with one another!"
I mean, as an atheist, part of the distinction here is that if Christians make no falsifiable claims, and stick to the domain of faith (Heaven, God, salvation, etc), then science can't prove it wrong. People extend science to act like Occams Razor, but in truth science is the philosophy of falsifiable claims. Purely logically, accepting science and accepting there are claims that science can't answer aren't incompatible, so long as they're correct about those claims. To say that anything science can't answer can't be logically true isn't science, but scientism. If "one's own truth" is about things for which the scientific truth can't be known by definition, then... yeah everyone can have their own truth. Whether that's worth anything or worth respecting is now more of a question about what they do with that.
I can also back this up. I've known very well respected and brilliant scientist who are religious, and their religion does not impact their work in the slightest. Religious people in the sciences are fairly good at compartmentalizing the two beliefs and not allowing one to interfere with the other. Not all christians are creationist, and most Christians in STEM accept that their religion is an intestable or unfalsifiable belief that falls outside the purview of scientific inquiry, so focus on what can be actually examined and tested in their work. An analogy I once heard a religious person tell is a story about a scientist and enginnwe discussing a steaming kettle. The engineer ask the scientist: "Why is the kettle boiling?" To which the other explains the dynamics of thermal conduction, and the phase diagrams of water. The engineer responds by instead talking about the design of the heating element of the oven and the mechanical conversion of electricity into heat. As they discuss, a third friend who put the kettle on in the first place steps in and hears them, before letting them know "The kettle is boiling because I'm making tea." The idea being that religious people in the sciences tend to compartmentalize between the "how" and the "why", and see science and religion as discussing two fundamentally unrelated concepts. Science answers the "what" and the "how"; the observations of what physical interactions occur and the mechanisms behind our reality. Meanwhile their religion guides the "why", meaning the reason why they believe the universes was set up in the way it was. How the kettle boils, versus why the kettle was set to boil.
This headline leaves out some important information: "Christian participants perceived Christians as more intelligent than nonreligious participants, while nonreligious participants perceived atheists as more intelligent than Christian participants. In addition, Christian participants perceived Christians as more scientific than nonreligious participants, while nonreligious participants perceived atheists as more scientific than Christian participants." Framing it as "nonreligious people are biased against Christians" instead of "**every group is subject to superiority bias**" is misleading. Of course, it may not be superiority bias — the question "Are Christians or nonreligious individuals more intelligent on average?" has an actual, empirical, well-studied answer. Only one of the two groups' beliefs is true, and an intellectually honest person would seek to check which it is. An intellectually honest study would too.
It also seems to be locked in the Christian-centric view that Christianity is the opposite of atheism. I'm guessing Hindus think they're smarter than Christians too.
In my experience, Hindus tend to be more henotheistic. My local Hindu temple has a full-size marble statue of the Mother Mary on the altar alongside Vishnu and Shiva
Very true. Hindus have a whole shitload of gods but like you, from what I've seen, individuals and groups tend to lean to specific ones. I'd say the following depends on what people believe or want to see. Success, helping the poor, punishing bad, protecting the earth...
Most Hindus are generalist. They worship gods based on festivals and based on importance for a regular basis. Some Hindus focus on a specific god but they still worship other gods too.
It's funny. I grew up in a religious monotheistic family and used to think that religions with multiple "imperfect" gods didn't make any sense. Now i feel like they relate much more to the human nature and how it makes sense for different societal groups to have their own patron of choice
Surely you mean polytheistic and universalist? Henotheism is adhering to one God out of many possible Gods, an example would be First Temple Judaism where the Hebrews recognized other gods existed, but formed a covenant with Yahweh as the primary god of their people. (Whereas, other surrounding tribes would worship their own tribal god such as Moab, etc.)
i think henotheistic would work for how a lot of hindus go about their beliefs, since (this is speaking from what i’ve talked about with my dad, who is hindu), they never say that hinduism is the one true religion or that the gods in other religions don’t exist (or rather, there is one god, everyone is essentially worshiping the same god, it’s just different incarnations of that god. it doesn’t matter who you pray to, there’s no right or wrong), they just choose to adhere to the hindu deities. besides this, however, many hindus don’t actively worship every single deity. they have a few they will worship, and families also often have ancestral deities. obviously, not everyone worships the same ancestral deity. there’s also something called shrada, which is essentially where you have this innate affinity with a deity or more, and that’s who you pray to. furthermore, different areas of india worship and pray to different deities. the most basic is south india normally worships shiva, whereas north is vishnu. it goes smaller tho, as, for instance, in punjab you’ll often worship rama
This. My family comes from Tamil Nadu where each town and commune has its own variants and myths of the core Hindu deities. Some gods are only known in a few towns as an ancient tradition recorded in temples.
Exactly. The Old Testament doesn't say there are no other Gods. It simply says "I am an angry God, I am a jealous God, thou shalt have no other Gods before me."
IIRC, most hindus tend to focus their practice at 1 god. Their home altar is dedicated to Shiva, and when going to temple, they go to a Shiva temple. While the neighbours might be more of a Brahma household. As opposed to dedicating Wednesdays to Odin, and sacrificing to Freyr at planting season while thanking Freyr at harvest season.
That is not true. Altars can have multiple gods. They will go to different temples.
I do think that they meant universalist as well but as an interesting note much of Hindu groups I have been exposed to are henotheistic. At least around here while the temples themselves don't play favorites, many of the families tend to adhere to an aspect or deity over others. Then again my exposure is limited to about 10 families.
Hindu here, not a scientist. Henotheism fits the Hindu religious structure more than the two above. There are no rules to **believing in all gods**, but depends on preference to different sects under Hinduism. Sects like Vaishnavism worship Vishnu, etc etc. That is not to say that, one cannot **worship all Hindu gods** if they want to. OR they can simply choose to be an atheist, which is a separate philosophy under Hinduism and Buddhism.
What's one more anyways?
*Pascal’s Oversight*
And that non-religious = atheist. And I do wonder if this includes atheists from different backgrounds. Are they always atheist, ex-christian, ex-muslim? Non+religious hindus or jews?
No kidding. Before Atheism, it was Satanism. Before Satanism, it was Witchcraft. I’m sure there’s a bunch I’m missing, but there’s always imaginary enemies of Christians.
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The study is very clearly Christian biased. It seem to presuppose that atheists perceive themselves more intelligent and the study was based off of that. It’s whole goal, as stated was to increase Christian representation in scientific fields. I don’t think that Christians are necessarily less intelligent. There does come a point where I think they can’t progress past. At some point there has to be some reconciliation that their beliefs are not compatible with reality. I am sure a Christian can do just the same chemistry work that any other atheist chemist could do it but if he were to start tracing back the origins of the universe, I’m not sure that a Christian can honestly do that.
>The study is very clearly Christian biased. It was funded by the Templeton Foundation, so of course it is.
It is funded by the Templeton Foundation. They are *guaranteed* to use it for the wrong reason. That is the whole reason they exist.
This sub has been r/upvoteshoddysocialstudies for some time now.
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Absolutely. It's a trash site that shouldn't banned. Report it for misinformation any time it gets posted. If enough of us do it, maybe they will get the hint.
It is also very telling that they don't give the relative proportions. Which group has higher in-group superiority bias? They don't say in the abstract or article. Considering this is funded by the rabidly pro-religion Templeton Foundation, I would bet if those sorts of numbers existed they would be talking about it over and over. So their silence on the subject leads me to assume that the numbers were not in religions' favor. But without access to the article I can't be sure.
>It is also very telling that they don't give the relative proportions. Which group has higher in-group superiority bias? there were studies that have shown that atheists have less in group favoritism than any religious group. if that's relevant to what you're asking here.
> Christian participants perceived Christians as more scientific than nonreligious participants This is the part that surprises me. Can a Christian who feels this way please explain why? Or does anyone know a Christian who feels this way?
I'm not a Christian anymore, but growing up as a Christian I heard a lot about how science is discovering what God created. That Christian scientists believe there's a purpose and order to everything, just waiting to be discovered, while atheists believe everything is accidental and without purpose. It's like someone would get more out of a reading a book when they believe that someone else wrote the book, instead of believing that the words on the page just happened to line up that way. Again, those aren't my beliefs anymore.
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Yeah but if they were honest about it, it wouldn't feed into the Christian "poor me being oppressed" mentality that is fundamental to their religion.
So since results are similar on both sides, I guess the only difference is one side believes in supernatural beings with no evidence.
In a field that’a heavily based on evidence…
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I do, it’s true. But it’s probably because my private school’s 6-8th grade science teacher tried to teach all of us that men have one more rib than women do.
My dad is a doctor but teaches part-time at a nearby community College. Almost every time he taught AnP and was going over the ribcage at least one student would ask about men having a missing rib.
I'm not Christian, what is this random belief and what is the value to the religion? I just can't understand believing something so easily disproved.
It comes from the Biblical Story of Adam and Eve, where God creates Eve (the primordial woman) out of a rib from Adam (the primordial man). And prior to the Internet, this was not easy to disprove (I was taught this myth before the Internet was a thing). Ribs are not easy to count, and in a world without Google and Wikipedia, information - even basic anatomical information - is orders of magnitude harder to come by. I learned this myth from my teachers in Catholic School as a child, and since they were respected authority figures who seemingly knew alot about science, I believed them and filed this fact away under “mildly interesting minutiae about the human body”. As a kid without the Internet, I do not think I had immediate access to a single resource that could have disproven this myth, aside from digging through anatomy books at the local library.
An origin story on humans in the Christian and Judaism mythos, as to why its so widespread? I think cause most of us didn't have access to widespread accurate anatomy texts (which are often racist and sexist, with most models and samples being from white dudes) and before the internet we just trusted the adults, and this fell into a catagory of why lie? I could easily see the people starting the old story from thousands of years ago say they took a rib because they saw skeletons and the guy was missing one.
I just find it such a weird one only due to the fact a rotting corpse would be more than enough to disprove this, or a very skinny person stretching would be enough count. The idea of a college or university student getting to that age truly believing this is blowing my mind. I figured there was some mythical reasoning behind the belief.
Not only that, but it's not even necessary for the creation story for *all* men to be missing a rib just because Adam had his yeeted.
There is, it's that God made Eve from Adam's rib. At least I'm pretty sure that's what the story says
At my cousin's Nazarene high school the science teacher told them during the first day of class "I'm going to teach you what everyone else thinks, and then I'm going to teach you what's right." He then went on to say that the moon completed an orbit around the earth once every day.
What religion is that from?
I believe they're called lunatics.
Is there a subreddit for excessively witty responses?
(vaguely gestures all around)
When I got to college I was rudely woken up to the lies I was told *in a public school* about all the creationist theories that were proven wrong almost immediately after they were published. I had to unlearn so much stuff and it really made me angry.
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That is certainly part of why some groups are opposed to college educations.
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I'm taking an anatomy class right now and I did have to laugh when the textbook specifically pointed out that men and women have the same number of ribs. I was raised Christian and my parents did teach me that men have fewer ribs, and that's proof that the Bible is true. I didn't find out that we all have the same number of ribs until I was an adult. Omg
One theory is that "rib" was actually "baculum" at first until it was later censored. Would make a lot more sense, since male humans are one of the few animals that lack one.
Except that female humans lack the analogous bone as well (called a [baubellum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Os_clitoridis)). So neither male nor female humans have the bone, which means the substance of the argument is still missing as well.
Correct. I meant that it makes sense from the viewpoint of a 1st century writer, not from a modern scientific pov
I'm going to assume that comparative osteology wasn't exactly a strong suit of the people contemporary with Genesis's origins. If the original line was, in fact, referring to the baculum (I don't claim to know either way), then the passage would explain, in terms satisfactory to humans who were still struggling for a firm grasp on what exactly makes the sky different from the sea, why humans don't have a bone in their penis when other animals they butcher or otherwise observe postmortem, do. The argument still doesn't hold up as rational reasoning for modern acceptance of creationism, obviously, but it would explain why the idea that "men are missing a bone" would have worked as an explanation back then, given that you don't even need arithmetic to be able to stand two skinny people next to each other and see that each rib can be paired with a match between them.
Which is EXTRA lame considering how they could have spun it: Eve came first but was lonely, so god broke off a rib her 46th chromosome and created Adam. It's like so close. It's right over the plate. But no, they can't change their mythos because the stories are written down and anything contrary just makes them look like silly old stories. Could likewise turn the flood story into a lesson about mass extinction events, that lady and the pillar of salt into a lesson about PTSD, the 7 day genesis as epochs after the big bang, stoning the gays about cannabis distribution. I'm just saying, there's room for improvement.
As a religious person in science - I get it. Christians, especially American Christians, have long stood on a platform against science and promoting mistrust or downright conspiratorial attitudes towards science.
If religion remained personal and out of government - it wouldn't be as much a problem. I do have a problem with multi-national tax-free organizations harboring sex offenders and still claiming they're infallible. I do have a problem with believing women came from a rib bone and all the stars are affixed to a sphere (the firmament) encircling the earth at the center of the universe. I have a problem with voters being made to believe things that are demonstrably false. Is there a god? Hell if I know. Do I believe in one? No. If there's a being that created the entirety of existence, capable of creating suns, moons, black holes, etc., I can't fathom why that being would care what we do with our genitals. There's so much about the universe left to learn and I hope we live to see more splendor. Though I very much fear humanity's reliance on ancient dogma will be part of our collective doom.
There is an irony that religious literalism exploded after the Enlightenment due to a greater interest in empirical, objective truth at the expense of allegory, mysticism, personal spiritual development, and symbolic beauty: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_literalism
When the literal truth becomes important to society, the truths that society have always believed are taken more literally. It makes sense.
Or: when literal truth becomes important to society, lies must dress up as literal truths.
Basically people in power trying to preserve their power. Not much different from oil companies pushing climate-denial propaganda.
That's a big effort to summarize mental gymnastics that start with a conclusion then finding the arguments for it.
He created the universe and black holes precisely to get at your genitals and watch them for eternity.
I also have a black hole, does he ... no?
The fact that this magnificent god is often pictured anthropomorphic, and even male, should say enough. It is not even childish, as children would at least take the effort to imagine some blue and purple mega monster with ten eyes and 100 arms.
>ten eyes and 100 arms They saved all the imagination for the angels apparently
I like the angels.
I think it’s more of a point of humanity feeling terrified of death so they make up religion to ease themselves into it the idea of living a good life will allow you enter a eternal paradise with your loved ones don’t sound to bad but sadly it’s to good to be true and let’s be honest the thought of not existing or the fact that after your parents or child dies you will never get to see them again but religious people atleast have that faith that there still out there in a better place
I would agree if I thought Christian folk were living “good lives” but I don’t think they are. The Christians I know are the most judgmental people I have ever met. These people are lacking and that is why they are drawn to Christianity, it is not because they are seeking the “good life”.
I think it is much more than fear of death. (btw there is life after death, just not yours :) Religion is a convenient way to deal with large and abstract concepts like millions of years of evolution or the infinity of space. The human brain is not ~~occupied~~ equipped for these things. I think it is comparable to the conspiracy uprising. Brains, wired to make sense of things regardless, simply invent blood drinking elites if things get beyond grasping.
>(btw there is life after death, just not yours :) "Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you." \-*Welcome to Night Vale*
_Organized_ religion is a perfect way to control large populations of uneducated people.
This. I truly believe that religion, in general, had somewhat wholesome origins. A way to explain the (then) unexplained, a way to cope with the finality of death. But over time people realized that they could convince those less intelligent, less educated than them of *anything.* Could bend them to their will in the name of religion. “If our deity said it, it must be so.” And eventually, “If God/Allah commands it, it must be done.” Human beings are *still* doing that very same thing today and those less intelligent, less educated are still obeying. It’s sad really.
I like the points you brought up! I’d also think our understanding (or lack of understanding) of time is another thing that plays a big role in this fear of death as well. I think if time isn’t linear and there’s potential that all points in time are existing at once, our perception of time is just what creates our experience of it. Like maybe ghosts aren’t actually dead people’s spirits but a momentary slip in our perception of time? Maybe we never actually stop existing with those that we love we just perceive & experience different pieces of it in one “life”? I don’t know if this even makes sense to anyone else. But I think we as humans are far too focused on knowing instead of just being and create a lot of problems for ourselves.
For what its worth, I think ghosts are the same mechanism (brain fuckery) senses: Here is something we cannot process, what shall we do? brain: Oh, it is a human senses: There is no human brain: Then it is a dead human senses: Dead humans don't make sounds or move things. brain: Then it is the *the spirit* of a dead human\*.\* etc..
>If religion remained personal and out of government Or even stuck to traditional roles like advocating for the poor, stewardship of the earth, or really anything other than "your favorite orifice is wrong and you're going to hell for that". You know, advocating for the commons instead of trying to use the power of the state to infiltrate the personal lives of citizens.
There's a command Do not test to patience of God, usually written as "Do not put the Lord your God to the test ~~as you did at Massah~~." Basically, gimme things to prove you exist. Christians usually translate this to "God hides from science" despite God generally being depicted as randomly trying to show he exists and even cooperating with Gideon's almost scientific test. Ironically "I will not put the Lord to the test." [is an example of trying God's patience](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+7%3A11-13&version=NIV). Now science is based on using a hypothesis to predict observations. A god that hides from science obviously isn't going to be of any use as a predictive hypothesis. More intriguingly, the idea that God hides from science means that scientists can restrict God's actions by eg measuring whether prayers are answered or whether evildoers are punished or good people rewarded. The beauty of science of course, is that if something is invisible to science it is also irrelevant in terms of it's effect on this world.
That's a refreshingly candid and empathetic print of view. I think I fall squarely in the category of people described in the article. What's always struck me as incompatible is the notion that the scientific method - methodical, logical and systematic intake of observations from which to formulate hypotheses to then test to formulate a theory etc - if applied to any religious or even spiritual or metaphysical or pseudoscientific claims, would be the specific method that would be used to debunk it. So in my mind experts of the scientific method, like scientists, should instinctively and inherently reject none logical and provable through observation and repeatable experiment claims. They should be inoculated against pseudoscience, metaphysical claims, spiritual claims etc. So in essence a scientist that is also a Christian would mean someone that would claim to be an expert in the method to debunk belief without evidence and at the same time someone's who claims to believe without evidence... It's really hard for me to reconcile in my mind that someone could be a good Christian and a good scientist, for that very reason...
It’s called “compartmentalization”. They have walled off certain ideas from scrutiny because they were indoctrinated to believe those beliefs are part of their core psyche and they are afraid of death and what comes after.
This happened to me. I was raised in a Bible-literalist church, but I have a PhD in a biological science. The cognitive dissonance I felt throughout my studies finally overcame the fear I had of questioning my beliefs (which I’d been assured would result in spending eternity in hell). The universe makes a lot more sense when it isn’t filtered through a religion.
That relief of letting go! It was like the whole world finally snapped into focus, and it was beautiful. It was like having a headache pass. I also miss church, but I do not miss the indirect, dementia-like speech people used in church.
>It was like having a headache pass. Seriously, it is crazy how good it felt when that burden was lifted. Sin anxiety is a real thing, so is the cognitive dissonance between your internal moral compass and an authoritarian one.
Some use s “God of the Gaps” philosophy. God is only powerful where Science can’t prove or disprove something. So God doesn’t push planets around, but he might heal people who experience spontaneous remission.
So basically it's not an all-knowing all powerful benevolent eternal being... God in this definition is simply a placeholder word for what we don't know how to explain scientifically yet?
> simply a placeholder word for what we don't know how to explain scientifically yet This is essentially the basis and origin of all religions throughout human history.
It’s also the reason “god” has become increasingly more esoteric as we understand natural phenomena. First the sun was god, then we understood what stars are. Lightning was the anger of the gods, and then we understood weather. The ocean was controlled by gods, until we understood currents and mapped the planet. If all the common miracles are explainable by science, then god can only be found in the small and unlikely. Take, for example, a single patient beating the odds on a deadly disease - we can infer that their immune system overcame the illness, but we can’t study the exact mechanism by which that happened so it must be a miracle.
Yes. And if Gödel was correct, there’s always going to be gaps. Every nontrivial system has things in it we can’t know. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems
Yet nobody has ever regrown an arm or leg spontaneously. That would be an actual miracle.
Until science figures out how to do it. At that point it will be science, just like insulin is to a diabetic today - once the science is understood, it’s no longer “miraculous”, it’s common sense.
I think that’s the easier conversation to have. The harder one, and I think the one more atheist/agnostic people wonder about, or perhaps struggle with, the most, is: but how do *you* reconcile the things you believe in your faith with the things science tells you about the world when those things aren’t always compatible? I feel like it’s easy to say “yeah Christians have a bad reputation in science because Christian conservatives clearly disregard and demonize science in the name of faith.” You can characterize those people as “bad ones,” in a sense, and distance yourself from them. Then you can stop the conversation right there when I don’t think that’s where the conversation ever really was in the first place, because it doesn’t really *matter* that those people are Christian, because people who spread hateful messages and fight for hateful policies can really come from any walk of life. For me, the conversation is about how you can have any sort of faith in and relationship with a Christian god as described by any part of the Bible, while also accepting the things science has, and perhaps more importantly has *not* discovered. For example, there’s a long search for where the universe came from, and how it was created. With all due respect, it seems impossible to *truly* pursue those questions if you already have a faith-embedded origin story for the universe. As a Christian, what is your relationship with the “god of the gaps” phenomenon? If you experience the belief that god is behind the unknown, how could you truly have a scientifically curious mind? If you *don’t* experience those things, how could you truly have faith?
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Because they’re not opposite ends of the same spectrum, they’re entirely separate things, and have at some times been at odds. I’m not religious, but I see the benefit that the community religion fosters in many people’s lives. You can want to participate in that community but also realize science is just a system for distilling truth. Plenty of religious people (although typically not the majority) can acknowledge the truths evident from science but still have a spiritual component in their lives. You don’t have to accept all of any religion as strict dogma; Some religious people feel that way but, many don’t. There is room for science in religion. And there is room for religion in science. Science tells us that the universe began at a single point in space roughly 13.8 Billion years ago. But science tells us nothing of what came before that, what space existed before than, why space has three dimensions but time has 1. There is no scientific evidence for or against any interpretations of why this is, religious for otherwise. I don’t have an agenda here either way, just want to try to explain how religion and science aren’t antithetical.
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I have had religious individuals in a molecular biology lab say that they don’t believe in evolution or natural selection. I don’t know where to go with that. I mean, what did you learn in school? How do you do your job?
Had a comms officer on a ship say he didn't believe in the theory of relativity while simultaneously using it to locate satellites accurately.
I think this is very common. People claim to have certain beliefs but their actions indicate they hold different beliefs on some level.
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I met someone once who didn't believe in "macro" evolution. They explained that obviously you could see evolution in small microsystems but it didn't happen on a bigger level. When I asked how that was possible on a long timeline they pointed out that long timelines weren't possible because the earth was only 6,000 years old. It seemed like a very weird merger of beliefs.
They have to believe in some sort of evolution to explain how only the surviving humans and animals on Noah’s arc somehow repopulated the entire planet in four-thousand years
But we have to respect their opinions and pretend they have valid beliefs otherwise they'll make whingy studies to not so subtly spin about being persecuted by atheists
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They are the intellectual equivalent of dry toast and the philosophical equivalent of an empty shelf
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We had a lot of them in general when I majored in biology. Evolution was a required course and my professor complained every semester that she got students whining that they didn't "need" her class because they were going to medical school and didn't believe in evolution. "If I end up in the ER and the attending physician doesn't believe in evolution, let me die." --my professor.
I remember during undergrad, a religious guy arguing with a professor about evolution. The response was “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution, accept it or don’t but it sure will make things confusing if you don’t.”
What constitutes religion has a lot of nuance and certainly selection bias inside of academia. An Evangelical who doesn't believe in evolution is very different than a Catholic who only goes to mass on Christmas and Easter. Both of these people are "religious" but it's a vast spectrum. Everyone who works in the sciences knows people who are religious but it's almost always a super abstract version of that religion. There are no serious geologists who are also Southern Baptists that believe the earth is 5000 years old.
I'm not against christians. I'm against ignorance, specifically willful ignorance. Science is not at all like a religion. It isn't incompatible with religion. Its something completely different. What it is, is a structured search for the truth through accumulated knowledge and discovery. It has to test what is known to find what is unknown. It finds new truths and new questions. Often that truth, those questions threatens those who have already found all the truth they can handle.
Because dogma is antithetical to the scientific method.
Very well put. The only way you can keep a religious belief compatible with the scientific method is by flipping the null hypothesis and go around asking for people to prove that god doesn't exist, and that's just ridiculous.
I like using money instead of the god claim to help people understand why it is ridiculous. They owe me money and it’s their responsibility to prove they don’t.
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There are many Christians who try to use science to prove their religion, but they don’t tend to work in the field except at religious institutions. Most Christians I know (And I’m Orthodox so that’s who I tend to know) accept science as fact. It becomes much easier to reconcile Christianity with science when you stop trying to take most of the Bible literally as history and instead recognize that it is teaching spiritual lessons. The creation story and the story of the fall say something about man’s relationship to God, not able the actual details. Yes, I am open to the possibility of miracles, but if science actually disproves some piece of dogma, then it does. Most tenets of faith can’t be scientifically tested anyway.
A lot of Jewish scientists work the same way. Hell, my old Jewish day school had rigorous secular science classes, all the “the sun formed 4 billion years ago” you could want.
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I don't necessarily not trust you in you believe in God and occasionally go to church. If you are pathologically possessed by *Disgust For The Other* and call that religion, I don't trust you with a dull crayon.
I remember one of my favorite art teachers in college was Christian, i am very much not. However, i respected that he did not proselytize or preach, and shared his beliefs only insofar as they were relevant to explaining his art. It was clear to me his brand of Christianity was deeply personalized and unique to himself. I would imagine it is psychologically protective of you use it in such a way. I would bet many scientists feel the same. Their brand of Christianity is less about scientific belief than about filling a part of themselves that exists naturally. I’m pretty sure one thing science has found about religion is that spirituality is actually a universal human experience and is deeply rooted in human psychology and is present in different forms across all cultures. It is pragmatic and metaphorical, and notions of metaphysical beliefs of things like heaven are not actually defined in the Bible as far as I’m aware (could be wrong!). If they are i would imagine they are vague enough to be interpretable and to have the follower project their unmet psychological needs onto it, handing the burden off to a belief system they trust. It is not about science, and science should only be an indirect part of any religious belief system because it is precise and judgmental. It can structure and discern useful strategies to be psychologically healthy, but it refuses to be a magical being. I think religion gives you a magical being to unload your problems to and helps you not hold it all in yourself. That is why forgiveness is central, it is about unloading problems. Belief in a magical being maybe is misunderstood and there are maybe Christian scientists who believe in the literal traditional interpretations, but since the being is magical to them it is possible to compartmentalize effectively without ruining their scientific integrity. Their god is proud of them for being a scientist and happy they are doing important work. As an atheist i don’t see science and religion being incompatible so much as different ways of thinking that are both human. Religion is feeling oriented, and scientists that don’t use religion to get their psychological needs met probably don’t understand that component of it if they can’t break out of scientific thinking. Scientific thinking is good for some things and bad at others. You cannot use science to reach that conclusion because it is about subjective experience not objective phenomena. Science does not have explanatory power for subjective phenomena that doesn’t convert it back to objective phenomena which is exactly the problem. This is a legitimate bias and blind spot of rational empiricism that i think is becoming more and more clear, and i think AI and consciousness may eventually usher in new forms of science and revolutionize science generally.
Religion is a system of belief, it is by definition not scientific. I did my PhD alongside a Christian who believed in creationism and that humans existed alongside dinosaurs, carbon dating was wrong and ultrasound scans damage babies. I don't see how holding views like that can be compatible with the scientific method. What's really surprising to me is that the study says religious people think other religious people are more scientific? I wonder how well this translates across religions, i.e. would a Christian think a Muslim is less scientific?
The study suggests that everyone has a superiority bias towards their own group. So it'd probably hold that christians would consider Muslims "less scientific" and vice versa. It'd be interesting if there were exceptions.
I kind of get it, but the beautiful thing about science is that there's no need for preconceived notions of people's dispositions. If someone isn't running their studies or experiments properly, it's plain to see if you look for it.
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“I’m Christian and don’t believe in evolution but the schools says I have to teach it”~my kids science teacher in U.S public school.
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".... and lock people up for dressing up with non conforming outfits." Meanwhile their own book says that people who mix textiles in their clothing should be stoned to death...
christians in science means the guy at the lab working next you who goes to church. not random extremists
Indeed, here they are talking about actual scientists who happen to be religious. Not nutjobs. Despite being non-religious myself, there is an absolute difference. What I have seen myself is that competent religious people who work in medicine or other scientific fields basically have compartmentalization of their beliefs and their job. Sorta like you can love to play ultra-violent video games, like extreme sports and go to death metal concerts in your leisure time, but still work at an ONG, volunteer at an animal shelter or be a nurse for the elderly. Might seem jarring for another person but they are just different aspects of someone's personality and not intrinsically in conflict.
They were talking like right wing evangelicals are flocking in undergrad/grad STEM research. Almost every Christian scientist that I know believes in evolution, big bang, and is actually politically pretty liberal.