Are there irreconcilable differences between faith and science? Not in the opinion of prominent scientists who participated in a five-year study by Rice University.<\/p>\n
Researchers there\u00a0found that\u00a0only a minority of scientists questioned at major research universities\u00a0say that\u00a0religion and science required distinct boundaries.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to questions about the meaning of life, ways of understanding reality, origins of Earth and how life developed on it, many have seen religion and science as being at odds and even in irreconcilable conflict,\u201d says Rice sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund.<\/p>\n
On the contrary,\u00a0a majority of the scientists interviewed said they view both religion and science as \u201cvalid avenues of knowledge\u201d that can bring broader understanding to important questions, says Ecklund.<\/p>\n
She\u00a0summarizes her findings in \u201cScientists Negotiate Boundaries Between Religion and Science,\u201d in the September issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.<\/em> Her co-authors are sociologists Jerry Park of Baylor University and Katherine Sorrell, a former postbaccalaureate fellow at Rice and current Ph.D. student at the University of Notre Dame.<\/p>\n They interviewed a scientifically selected sample of 275 participants, pulled from a survey of 2,198 tenured and tenure-track faculty in the natural and social sciences at 21 elite U.S. research universities. Only 15 percent of those surveyed said they view religion and science as always in conflict. Another 15 percent said the two are never in conflict,\u00a0while 70 percent said they\u00a0believe religion and science are only sometimes in conflict.<\/p>\n Approximately half of the original survey population expressed some form of religious identity, whereas the other half did not, according to Ecklund, who is the author of Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think,<\/em>published by Oxford University Press last year.<\/p>\n The study was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation\u00a0with additional funding from Rice University.<\/p>\n \u201cMuch of the public believes that as science becomes more prominent, secularization increases and religion decreases,\u201d\u00a0she says. \u201cFindings like these among elite scientists, who many individuals believe are most likely to be secular in their beliefs, definitely call into question ideas about the relationship between secularization and science.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of those surveyed cited issues in the public realm (teaching of creationism versus evolution, stem cell research) as reasons for believing there is conflict between the two. The study showed that these individuals generally have a particular kind of religion in mind (and religious people and institutions) when they say that religion and science are in conflict.<\/p>\n Other findings in the study:\u00a0<\/p>\n Scientists as a whole are substantially different from the American public in how they view teaching “intelligent design” in public schools. Nearly all of the scientists \u2013 religious and nonreligious alike \u2013 have a negative impression of the theory of intelligent design.<\/p>\n Sixty-eight percent of scientists surveyed consider themselves spiritual to some degree.<\/p>\n Scientists who view themselves as spiritual\/religious are less likely to see religion and science in conflict.<\/p>\n Overall, under some circumstances even the most religious of scientists were described in very positive terms by their nonreligious peers; this suggests that the integration of religion and science is not so distasteful to all scientists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Are there irreconcilable differences between faith and science? Not in the opinion of prominent scientists who participated in a five-year study by Rice University. Researchers there\u00a0found that\u00a0only a minority of scientists questioned at major research universities\u00a0say that\u00a0religion and science required distinct boundaries. \u201cWhen it comes to questions about the meaning of life, ways of understanding…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[365,381,366],"class_list":["post-2520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-elaine-howard-ecklund","tag-news","tag-rice-university"],"yoast_head":"\n