Religion on paper vs. religion in practice
By Thoreau
There’s a study getting some discussion regarding religion and higher education. Although I have not RTFA (I’d have to pay), the most discussed findings are (quoted from the Inside Higher Ed article):
- Being a humanities or a social science major has a statistically significant negative effect on religiosity — measured by either religious attendance and how important students consider the importance of religion in their lives. The impact appears to be strongest in the social sciences.
- Students in education and business show an increase in religiosity over their time at college.
- Majoring in the biological or physical sciences does not affect religious attendance of students, but majoring in the physical sciences does negatively relate to the way students view the importance of religion in their lives.
I often hear people explain that it is simply impossible to be a scientist and religious. They have eloquent arguments for why there shouldn’t be any people who are religious and also accomplished scientists. It’s a great, well-argued, self-consistent theory with impeccable logical foundations. There’s just one problem: The theory predicts that religious scientists shouldn’t exist, yet they do exist, and in significant numbers. As a theoretical evil fiziks type, I hate when data interferes with a perfectly good theory!
I think the problem with the theory is that religion as actually experienced by many people is not about miracles and strict codes written on pages. It is a combination of a personal thing and a social/cultural thing. You can explain all day long why somebody who does science should have no part of it, you can explain all day long that the words on the page are inconsistent with a scientist’s profession, and you can even explain all day long that the non-violent Muslims are failing to adhere to the words on the page (I never get why some idiots do that–do they really want to persuade a Muslim on that point?), but all of these arguments miss what actually matters to many religious believers.
I think this is why majoring in science has less effect on religious belief than majoring in social science or humanities. Spending time studying social and cultural phenomena can change the way you view social and cultural practices, including your own. Studying science? Not so much. Of course, studying science might affect one’s views on miracles and the supernatural, but that’s not what it’s really about for many religious believers.
Comment by Taktix® —
July 28, 2009 @ 12:45 pm
Perhaps the study is not considering that the X and the Y might be reversed, and that religious people may tend to gravitate toward certain majors while the less theologically inclined may look toward a different set.
*Note that I didn’t RTFA either…
Comment by Kief —
July 28, 2009 @ 2:35 pm
No, they want to convince the rest of us that Islam is inherently eee-ville.
Comment by Mark Z. —
July 28, 2009 @ 4:15 pm
(I never get why some idiots do that–do they really want to persuade a Muslim on that point?)
Cui bono? Last time a group of Muslims decided it was their religious duty to massacre Americans, the Right got an excuse to invade Iraq, give giant defense contracts to their cronies, torture people they didn’t like, and smear their “opposition” (such as it was) as a bunch of traitors, defeatists, and cowards. At this point, if there’s another attack, they’ve positioned themselves to be able to blame it directly on Obama in a way that nobody (sane) ever blamed 9/11 on Bush.
So: Yes, they want the relationship between “Muslims” and “America” to be permanently adversarial. Telling “Americans” that Islam is an inherently terroristic religion is part of that. If an actual Muslim happens to believe it, even better.
Comment by dhex —
July 28, 2009 @ 4:37 pm
you guys are actually outlining why having a permanent enemy possessed of a limitless capacity for evil is totally awesome. to which i can only give a thumbs-up and spit in the general direction of the nearest post office.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
July 28, 2009 @ 5:21 pm
I once had one of these people insist to me that he understood Islam better than the lifelong, practicing Muslims who disagreed with him.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
July 28, 2009 @ 5:45 pm
“I once had one of these people insist to me that he understood Islam better than the lifelong, practicing Muslims who disagreed with him.”
Sounds like Robert Spencer. A name I know because a friend seems to devour this Islamophobic crap. In his case it’s not some cynical desire for perpetual war because war is the health of the state, but more a revelling in the evil of the Enemy. It’s not terribly original of me, but I think the psychology is probably similar to that of Islamic terrorists.
Comment by Thoreau —
July 28, 2009 @ 8:47 pm
It’s not terribly original of me, but I think the psychology is probably similar to that of Islamic terrorists.
I’m eternally grateful that Islamic fundamentalists and Islamophobes don’t get along, just as I’m glad that our the 19 percenters don’t like Pashtun tribesmen. If the 19 percenters discovered that Pashtun tribesmen are gun-loving, sexist, religious fanatics who don’t trust book learning and whose leaders have close ties to Saudi Arabia, they might form a coalition against the rest of us. And I’m a latte sipper who doesn’t know how to use an automatic rifle, so I’m pretty much toast if that coalition comes after me.
Comment by EJ —
July 28, 2009 @ 10:12 pm
I once had one of these people insist to me that he understood Islam better than the lifelong, practicing Muslims who disagreed with him.
It’s because in order for their straw man arguments to work, all religious believers need to be fanatical zealots who take every word of their sacred texts absolutely literally, so when confronted with believers who don’t fit thiat mold, they need to fit them in before proceeding.
Comment by Jackmormon —
July 29, 2009 @ 12:25 am
The first time I really got this in a visceral way was during the Romney campaign, when every third day Matthew Ygelsias would muse aloud about how fucking *weird* the Mormon religion was, and every time his comments thread would explode with people who had studied up on the Nicene Creed and were really not interested in hearing about Mormon culture or everyday religious practice. I ended up thinking of them as “armchair theologians”: people who enjoy collecting categories and factoids for two-dimensional imaginary games.
Comment by abb1 —
July 29, 2009 @ 4:56 am
And I’m a latte sipper who doesn’t know how to use an automatic rifle
Man, they don’t call it “automatic” for nothin’. Pull the trigger and hold until everybody around you is good and dead.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
July 29, 2009 @ 10:47 am
I’m not so sure. I think the person I had the exchange with was a fundie Christian, eager to prove that his god was kinder and more humane than the Muslims’ god, so as to justify killing them indiscriminately.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
July 29, 2009 @ 11:12 am
“I think the person I had the exchange with was a fundie Christian, eager to prove that his god was kinder and more humane than the Muslims’ god, so as to justify killing them indiscriminately.”
Yeah, that’s more like my friend, though he’s not a fundie exactly. (It depends on what you mean by fundie). But anyway, a great many of the Islamophobes are Christians who want to relive the Crusades–my friend talks about 1400 years of Muslim perfidy and denies that there is any “moral equivalence” (I hate that term) between the bad things Christians have done and what Muslims have done, etc…
There are also Jews who get into this mindset–I even saw one online who seemed to be downplaying the medieval Christian record of antisemitism, apparently in order to unite us all better in a common hatred of the Muslims.
Comment by matthew h —
July 29, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
Scientists and other alleged rationalists arguing against religion would be like listening to someone trying to convince you that music and poetry ought not be inspiring because rhymes, alliteration, rhythm and harmonic tones are not logical processes. There’s kind of a valid point in there, but it doesn’t matter in the real world.
Comment by Glaivester —
July 29, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
I often hear people explain that it is simply impossible to be a scientist and religious. hey have eloquent arguments for why there shouldn’t be any people who are religious and also accomplished scientists. It’s a great, well-argued, self-consistent theory with impeccable logical foundations.
I think the problem with the theory is that religion as actually experienced by many people is not about miracles and strict codes written on pages.
Translation: It is impossible to be a scientist and to believe in the supernatural, and the logical argument for this is flawless and therefore correct. Scientists can be religious only because they really do nto believe in the theology of their religion, they just find that it is nice to pretend they do.
What is so fascinating abut these types of explanations is how they always seem to essentially concede to secualr humanism, so that in defending religion, they actually subvert it.
I cannot agree with your stance. Whether or not Jesus was physically resurrected is extremely important to Christianity; it’s not a “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” question.
Studying science? Not so much. Of course, studying science might affect one’s views on miracles and the supernatural, but that’s not what it’s really about for many religious believers.
It may affect them, but it doesn’t have to, at least not negatively.
The flaw in the arguments as to why a person cannot be religious and a scientist is that its foundations are not impeccable; it makes one assumption that is eminently open to argument: that nothing exists outside of what can be understood scientifically.
There is no reason why one cannot be a physicist, for example, and still believe in the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Yes, it violates (I would say “supercedes”) the second law of thermodynamics, but that’s why it is a miracle. One can believe in a God who exists above the laws of nature and who can supercede them and still believe that the overwhelming majority of the time, physical laws will govern events (after all, the whole point of miracles is that they are rare, and that most people cannot do them. If everyone could multiply food as Jesus did, what would his doing it have proven?)
Now, you may believe that the miracle of the loaves and fishes is real, or you may not, and studying physical science may affect what you believe about it, but it does not preclude you believing in it.
Put another way, to study the physical world and the laws governing it need not require that one believes that nothing exists outside of the physical world and the laws governing it.
Comment by Thoreau —
July 29, 2009 @ 10:28 pm
A religion is whatever its members believe it is. If what they believe is not always perfectly consistent with words written on paper, that does not mean that they are not religious. Different Christian sects believe different things despite professing that their beliefs are rooted in the same words on the page (well, plus or minus a few books of the Bible, but those books aren’t at the root of their differences). You can insist that some of those Christian sects are doing it wrong, but if your argument is based on the words on the page then you’re missing the point: They already examined those words and formulated a belief system despite the differences between their beliefs and (your interpretation of) the words on the page.
Comment by Glaivester —
July 30, 2009 @ 8:10 pm
A religion is whatever its members believe it is.
You’re missing the point. By summarizing your post as: “Scientists can be religious only because they really do not believe in the theology of their religion, they just find that it is nice to pretend they do,” I am not arguing about whether or not someone who rejects the supernatural elements of the Bible is truly a Christian. (While your point was about religion in general, I am using Christianity as an example because it is what I am most familiar with, and my analysis can easily be transferred to other religions).
My point is that you seem to be arguing that to be an accomplished scientist and a Christian, you must reject the supernatural elements of the Bible and believe only in the moral elements (and possibly historical elements that can be explained non-miraculously).
By “Scientists can be religious only because they really do not believe in the theology of their religion, they just find that it is nice to pretend they do,” I was not referring to scientists who choose a non-supernatural variety of religion. Rather, I was referring to scientists who profess to believe in a variety of faith that includes the supernatural. Your implication seems to be that they do not really believe that part of the religion to be true, they just make believe they do because it helps them with the non-supernatural issues.
For example, I was not arguing over whether a scientist who claims that the resurrection of Jesus was a metaphor is really a Christian or just pretending to be one.
I was arguing that you seem to be implying that any accomplished scientist who claims to believe that Jesus was literally, physically, bodily, resurrected, does not really believe it, but fools himself into thinking he does because it makes it easier to apply Jesus’ teachings to his life.
Moreover, you seem to imply that the literal truth of supernatural elements of religion is of no real importance to religion. I vehemently disagree; while for some people theology and miracles may be secondary, with the real importance being how these ideas get you to behave, this is not universally, or near universally, true. For a great many people the supernatural elements are the essence of their religion. For evangelical Christians, for example, Jesus’ physical resurrection is sine qua non for their belief system, and without it, everything falls apart.
Comment by Win Pollard —
August 2, 2009 @ 9:20 am
Nope. It’s impossible to be a scientist and be a religious fundamentalist.
Comment by Russell —
August 2, 2009 @ 10:53 am
Following Taktix, would be nice to have the base rates rather than only information about change. My sense is that college students sort themselves out long before they choose a major, or even enter college, and that those who major in the biological or physical sciences already take religion less seriously than average.
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Comment by Camels With Hammers —
August 2, 2009 @ 3:00 pm
The claim that religion and science are incompatible is the result of a normative, epistemological argument that when scientists leave the laboratory they should not leave behind the same critical skills that they employ in it.
The data that many scientists actually do leave behind their high standards for belief when they go to church has little does not at all counter the normative epistemological claim. Norms are about what should be done, not what is done. And, yes, in terms of what should be done, all those logical arguments should be persuasive. The simple fact that there are powerful cultural and psychological forces that lead even scientists to participate in, and thereby help prop up, irrationality-based institutions, gives no good reason to think they should do so.
It’s no moral victory for religion if it cannot be defended with epistemolgoical or ethical norms that it nonetheless remains extremely powerful. Might does not make right. And it’s continued stranglehold on aspects of the majority’s souls and minds have far more to do with their centuries of real world power than anything to do with a normatively sound justification.
So, yeah, let all the scientists in the world go to church (but, of course, they don’t all, and collectively they ARE on the West’s vanguard of slowly-but-inexorably-increasing secularism and atheism) and that would still not count one bit as evidence that the thesis that they should not support religious institutions is true.
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