Scientists and Religion

Frank R. Zindler

Back in 1914, a sociologist by the name of James Leuba surveyed scientists and found that 58% of them expressed doubt or disbelief in the existence of a god. Twenty years later, he found this number had increased to 67%. Many years later, in 1996, researchers Edward Larson and Larry Witham repeated Leuba’s survey and found 60.7% of scientists expressing disbelief or doubt. This lack of improvement since 1914 (in fact, a slight worsening of the situation since 1934) has been a cause of consternation among Atheists, for it began to appear as though approximately 40% of humans - regardless of education - were condemned to live lives of religious dementia.

What the modern researchers did not repeat, however, was Leuba’s sub-study of “greater scientists” - men and women whose achievements in scientific discovery had placed them in a rather clearly defined echelon above other scientists. In 1914, Leuba found that 70% of greater scientists disbelieved, as compared to 58% of ordinary scientists. By 1934, disbelief among greater scientists had risen to 85%, while it had risen only to 67% among lesser scientists.

Now, Larson and Witham (Nature, Vol. 394, No. 6691, 23 July 1998, p. 313) surveyed members of the National Academy of Sciences and found that among these greater scientists only 7% believed in a personal god. Biological scientists had the lowest level of belief in a personal god - 5.5% as compared to 7.5% among physicists and astronomers.

This certainly is good news. It demonstrates once again that gods rule only the unknown. For those whose minds dwell in the largest sphere of knowledge, the need for a god is smallest. Indeed, the observed absence of gods from that which is known makes even smaller the likelihood that such a specter lurks in the unknown that yet remains - making rejection of the supernatural even more necessary.

Alas, not everybody lives a life of knowledge and discovery. Politicians, for example. When news of the Larson-Witham survey reached the popular media, Rep. James Traficant (D-OH) seemed to loosen a hinge or two. On 3 August 1998 he took the floor to enter a 60-second diatribe into the Congressional Record. Unaware that the study referred only to greater scientists, Traficant told the Speaker and the House that “a new report says only 7% of scientists believe in God. That is right.” Continuing his rant, he declared that “the reason they gave was that the scientists are ‘super smart’... Most of these absent-minded professors cannot find the toilet. Mr. Speaker, I have one question for these wise guys to constipate over: How can SOME-thing come from Nothing? And while they digest that, Mr. Speaker, let us tell it like it is. Put these super-cerebral master debaters in some foxhole with bombs bursting all around them, and I guarantee they will not be praying to Frankenstein. Beam me up here. My colleagues, all the education in the world is worthless without God and a little bit of common sense...”

After Traficant’s embarrassing outburst of anti-intellectuality, American Atheists President Ellen Johnson chided him in a press release: “If science and rational inquiry are so antithetical to Mr. Traficant’s ‘sensitivities’, he should be true to his beliefs and abandon technology altogether. It’s unfortunate that an elected official would denigrate and belittle the discipline that provides him with telephones, FAXes, computers, his limousine and its fuel - even the very light bulbs that illuminate his office. [Thomas Alva Edison, after all, was an Atheist!] The next time he needs to communicate with someone instantaneously, maybe he should pray instead of spending taxpayer dollars on the latest technology invented by those same ‘master debaters’. If scientists were so stupid, as he claims, he wouldn’t be so dependent upon the results of their ‘super smart’ efforts.”

While it is a fallacy of informal logic to appeal to authority in order to support a philosophy such as Atheism (or any other), it is nevertheless gratifying to be able to point out that the smartest people in America agree with American Atheists in its central claim that there is no evidence adequate to support god-belief. It is further gratifying to have the eminent men and women of the National Academy of Sciences for role-models as we struggle to live lives of reason in an unreasonable world.