Scientists on religion 2 May 2010 This book looks interesting: empirical work on what scientists actually think about religion… according to the blurb, more than 50% are religious. I’m not sure if this should surprise anyone – most groups in a society will be largely composed of people who match the standards in their society; the real question is to what degree that class deviates from the norms. OUP: If you want to send me a review copy, my details are on the Contact page. Epistemology Religion Science
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Note that – as often happens – this book seems to relate exclusively to scientists in the US. As the US is usually assumed to be the most religious Western society, I wonder if these results can be taken as typical.
Well they will indicate the proportion of scientists who are religious as a fraction of the overall population. One might expect that in less religious societies, scientists will be correspondingly less religious.
An advisor of mine received a review copy the other day, and his first impressions are that it’s largely a good book on a good topic, but that some of the data could have been handled better. For example, while there IS a breakdown of religiosity by field, when comparing the views of scientists to the larger US population no such distinctions appear to be made. All the same, when it hits a general release I’ll be picking it up.