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Hola Alberto y Corrala,
En Nature apareció hace ya algún tiempo una carta sobre una encuesta
realizada a científicos acerca de su creencia o no en dios. Su título ya
lo dice todo: "Leading scientists still reject God"
Te la adjunto en texto, si lo quieres en pdf sólo pedirlo
Saludos
El artículo en cuestión:
Nature 394, 313 (1998) © Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
Leading scientists still reject God Sir ? The question of religious belief among US scientists has been
debated since early in the century. Our latest survey finds that, among
the top natural scientists, disbelief is greater than ever ? almost
total.
Research on this topic began with the eminent US psychologist James
H. Leuba and his landmark survey of 1914. He found that 58% of 1,000
randomly selected US scientists expressed disbelief or doubt in the
existence of God, and that this figure rose to near 70% among the 400
"greater" scientists within his sample1. Leuba repeated his survey in
somewhat different form 20 years later, and found that these percentages
had increased to 67 and 85, respectively2.
In 1996, we repeated Leuba's 1914 survey and reported our results in
Nature3. We found little change from 1914 for American scientists
generally, with 60.7% expressing disbelief or doubt. This year, we closely
imitated the second phase of Leuba's 1914 survey to gauge belief among
"greater" scientists, and find the rate of belief lower than ever ? a mere
7% of respondents.
Leuba attributed the higher level of disbelief and doubt among
"greater" scientists to their "superior knowledge, understanding, and
experience"2. Similarly, Oxford University scientist Peter Atkins
commented on our 1996 survey, "You clearly can be a scientist and have
religious beliefs. But I don't think you can be a real scientist in the
deepest sense of the word because they are such alien categories of
knowledge."4 Such comments led us to repeat the second phase of Leuba's
study for an up-to-date comparison of the religious beliefs of "greater"
and "lesser" scientists.
Our chosen group of "greater" scientists were members of the National
Academy of Sciences (NAS). Our survey found near universal rejection of
the transcendent by NAS natural scientists. Disbelief in God and
immortality among NAS biological scientists was 65.2% and 69.0%,
respectively, and among NAS physical scientists it was 79.0% and 76.3%.
Most of the rest were agnostics on both issues, with few believers. We
found the highest percentage of belief among NAS mathematicians (14.3% in
God, 15.0% in immortality). Biological scientists had the lowest rate of
belief (5.5% in God, 7.1% in immortality), with physicists and astronomers
slightly higher (7.5% in God, 7.5% in immortality). Overall comparison
figures for the 1914, 1933 and 1998 surveys appear in Table 1.
Repeating Leuba's methods presented challenges. For his general
surveys, he randomly polled scientists listed in the standard reference
work, American Men of Science (AMS). We used the current edition. In
Leuba's day, AMS editors designated the "great scientists" among their
entries, and Leuba used these to identify his "greater" scientists1,2. The
AMS no longer makes these designations, so we chose as our "greater"
scientists members of the NAS, a status that once assured designation as
"great scientists" in the early AMS. Our method surely generated a more
elite sample than Leuba's method, which (if the quoted comments by Leuba
and Atkins are correct) may explain the extremely low level of belief
among our respondents.
For the 1914 survey, Leuba mailed his brief questionnaire to a random
sample of 400 AMS "great scientists". It asked about the respondent's
belief in "a God in intellectual and affective communication with
humankind" and in "personal immortality". Respondents had the options of
affirming belief, disbelief or agnosticism on each question1. Our survey
contained precisely the same questions and also asked for anonymous
responses.
Leuba sent the 1914 survey to 400 "biological and physical
scientists", with the latter group including mathematicians as well as
physicists and astronomers1. Because of the relatively small size of NAS
membership, we sent our survey to all 517 NAS members in those core
disciplines. Leuba obtained a return rate of about 70% in 1914 and more
than 75% in 1933 whereas our returns stood at about 60% for the 1996
survey and slightly over 50% from NAS members1,2.
As we compiled our findings, the NAS issued a booklet encouraging the
teaching of evolution in public schools, an ongoing source of friction
between the scientific community and some conservative Christians in the
United States. The booklet assures readers, "Whether God exists or not is
a question about which science is neutral"5. NAS president Bruce Alberts
said: "There are many very outstanding members of this academy who are
very religious people, people who believe in evolution, many of them
biologists." Our survey suggests otherwise.
Edward J. Larson
Department of History, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-6012, USA e-mail: edlarson en uga.edu Larry Witham
3816 Lansdale Court, Burtonsville, Maryland 20866, USA References 1. Leuba, J. H. The Belief in God and Immortality: A Psychological, Anthropological and Statistical Study (Sherman, French & Co., Boston, 1916). 2. Leuba, J. H. Harper's Magazine 169, 291-300 (1934). 3. Larson, E. J. & Witham, L. Nature 386, 435-436 (1997). | ISI | 4. Highfield, R. The Daily Telegraph 3 April, p. 4 (1997). 5. National Academy of Sciences Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science (Natl Acad. Press, Washington DC, 1998). -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Francisco
Perfectti
<fperfect en supercable.es>
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