[escepticos] RE: [escepticos] Info:científicos ateos! (largo)

["Luis Alfonso Gámez" <gamez@...>]

Allá van unas noticias que pueden guiarte (El País publicó la historia en la
página 23 el pasado 29 de julio). Además, tienes material en
http://www.infidels.org/secular_web/feature/1998/newsweek.html


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.
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Posting on the clari.news.religion network...
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   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.''
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>From the NY Times web site.
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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
higherdeity.
      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."

> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: owner-escepticos en dis.ulpgc.es
> [mailto:owner-escepticos en dis.ulpgc.es]En nombre de Hernan Toro
> Enviado el: lunes 28 de septiembre de 1998 17:05
> Para: escepticos en CCDIS.dis.ulpgc.es
> Asunto: [escepticos] Info:cintíficos ateos!
>
>
> Hola a todos...
>
> Hace poco se publicó (no sé dónde) el resultado de una encuesta hecha
> entre la comunidad científica estadinense acerca de su postura
> religiosa, encontrándose un gran aumento del ateísmo y una consecuente
> disminución del Teísmo.
>
> ¿Alguien recuerda dónde apareció esto, y un buen enlace donde pueda leer
> más al respecto?
>
> Saludos.
>
>
>
>