The following two reports are based on the article: E.J. Larson and L. Witham, Scientists are still keeping the faith, Nature 386 (3 April 1997), 435-436. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Posting on the clari.news.religion network... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ LONDON, April 2 (Reuter) - Most U.S. scientists do not believe in a god, but 40 percent do -- the same percentage as did in 1916, researchers reported on Wednesday. The findings show that better and more widespread education has not destroyed the need to believe, Edward Larson, a historian at the University of Georgia and Larry Witham of Seattle's Discovery Institute, said. In 1916, researcher James Leuba shocked the nation with his survey that found only 40 percent of scientists believed in a supreme being. He predicted such ungodliness would spread as education improved. ``To test that belief, we replicated Leuba's survey as exactly as possible,'' Larson and Witham wrote in a commentary for the science journal Nature. ``The result: about 40 percent of scientists still believe in a personal God and an afterlife. In both surveys, roughly 45 percent disbelieved and 15 percent were doubters (agnostic).'' They surveyed 1,000 randomly chosen scientists listed in the reference book ``American Men and Women of Science,'' a later version of the 1910 work Leuba used. The were asked whether they believed in a God who would answer prayers, whether they believed in human immortality and whether they wished for an afterlife of some sort. ``Today, even more than in 1916, most scientists have no use for God or an afterlife,'' they found. ``But to the extent that both surveys are accurate readings, traditional Western theism has not lost its place among U.S. scientists, despite their intellectual preoccupation with material reality,'' they wrote. ``Americans will doubtless be pleased to know that as many as 40 percent of scientists agree with them about God and an afterlife.'' There were notable differences among the disciplines. ``The 1996 survey showed that mathematicians are most inclined to believe in God (44.6 percent),'' they wrote. ``And although biologists showed the highest rate of disbelief for doubt in Leuba's day (69.5 percent), that ranking is now given to physicists and astronomers.'' One scientist, asked whether he desired immortality, answered: ``It is pointless to desire the ridiculous.'' Another said: ``But it would be nice.'' ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From the NY Times web site. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Survey of Scientists Finds Stability of Faith in God By NATALIE ANGIER Scientists have been accused of playing God when they clone sheep, and of naysaying God when they insist that evolution be taught in school, but as a new study indicates, many scientists believe in God by the most mainstream, uppercase definition of the concept. Repeating verbatim a famous survey first conducted in 1916, Edward Larson of the University of Georgia has found that the depth of religious faith among scientists has not budged regardless of whatever scientific and technical advances this century has wrought. Then as now, about 40 percent of the responding biologists, physicists and mathematicians said they believed in a God who, by the survey's strict definition, actively communicates with humankind and to whom one may pray "in expectation of receiving an answer." Roughly 15 percent in both surveys claimed to be agnostic or to have "no definite belief" regarding the question, while about 42 percent in 1916 and about 45 percent today said they did not believe in a God as specified in the questionnaire, although whether they believed in some other definition of a deity or an all-mighty was not addressed. The figure of unqualified believers is considerably lower than that usually cited for Americans as a whole. Gallup polls, for example, have found that about 93 percent of people surveyed profess a belief in God. But those familiar with the survey said that, given the questionnaire's exceedingly restrictive definition of God -- narrower than the standard Gallup question -- and given scientists' training to say exactly what they mean and nothing more, the 40 percent figure in fact is impressively high. More revealing than the figures themselves, experts said, is their stability. Thefact that scientists' private beliefs remained unchanged across almost a century defined by change suggests that orthodox religion is no more disappearing among those considered the intellectual elite than it is among the public at large. The results also indicate that, while science and religion often are depicted as irreconcilable antagonists, each a claimant to the throne of truth, many scientists see no contradiction between a quest to understand the laws of nature, and a belief in a higher deity. The results of Larson's survey, which he conducted with a religion writer, Larry Witham of Burtonsville, Md., appear on Thursday in the journal Nature. Larson did not try to determine whether the scientists he polled were Christian, Jewish, Muslim or any other creed, whether they went to religious services or otherwise attended to the rituals of a particular faith. He merely wanted to see what had happened in the 80-plus years since the renowned psychologist James Leuba asked 1,000 randomly selected scientists if they believed in God. Leuba, a devout atheist, had predicted that a disbelief in God would grow as education spread, and Larson decided to use the psychologist's exact methods to see if the prediction held. He polled the same number of researchers as had Leuba and used the same source for picking his subjects -- the directory "American Men and Women of Science," a compendium of researchers successful enough to win awards and be cited regularly in the scientific literature. He followed Leuba's survey format to the letter, with the same introduction and the same questions written in the same stilted language, even enclosing the same type of return envelope. More than 600 of about 1,000 scientists answered the questionnaire, similar to Leuba's response rate. In addition to the question about a belief in an accessible God, the survey asked whether the respondents believed in personal immortality, and if not, whether they would desire immortality anyway. Here there were some changes in the responses. In Leuba's survey, 50 percent of the scientists said they believed in personal immortality, a puzzling and inconsistent figure given the more modest 40 percent belief in God. Moreover, many doubters confessed to a strong desire for immortality. Larson found that his two statistics, a belief in God and in life everlasting matched; and that those who didn't believe in personal immortality had little wish for it. "I see this as a healthy trend," he said. "People have become more consistent, confident and comfortable with their world views." But of the divination that religion was on its way out, Larson writes, "Leuba misjudged either the human mind or the ability of science to satisfy all human needs." Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington in Seattle, said that because the questions in the Leuba survey are so narrowly phrased, the results probably underestimate the extent of religious sentiment among scientists. Several recent surveys of American college professors, he said, show that professors are almost as likely to express a belief in God as are Americans as a whole. Moreover, he said, when the sample in a study he and his coworkers are now doing is broken down into specialties, teachers of the so-called hard sciences, like math and chemistry, are more likely to be devout than are professors of such softer sciences as anthropology and psychology or of the humanities. Since the analysis is not finished he could not give exact numbers. The reason for the discrepancy may be that, in an odd sort of way, traditional religious dogma suits the mathematically inclined mind, suggested George Marsden, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. "It could be that scientists are used to looking for definite answers, whereas humanists go into their field because they like to deal with ambiguities." Leuba's survey had an enormous impact in its day. William Jennings Bryan, a populist Democratic politician and orator, used the results as ammunition in the Scopes trial of the 1920s, claiming that they showed a scandalous level of atheism among scientists and thus proved the dangers of allowing evolutionary thinking to pollute education. Larson suggests that the updated survey could be used for very different ends, to calm public fears that scientists are godless at heart. Whether the public hungers for the reassurance is another matter. "In 1916, when scientists were emerging as the high priests of a new technological culture, everybody cared about what they thought and believed," Marsden said. "But the prestige of science peaked in 1960 and has been declining ever since. Do people still care whether scientists believe in God? I'm not so sure."