Science vs. Religion What Scientists Really Think

by Ecklund, Elaine Howard

• ISBN13: 9780195392982
• ISBN10: 0195392981
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-05-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The ongoing and irreconcilable antagonism between science and religion has been taken for granted. And in the wake of recent controversies over teaching Intelligent Design and the ethics of stem cell research, the divide seems to remain as unbridgeable as ever. In Science vs Religion, Elaine Howard Ecklund investigates this unexamined assumption in the first systematic study of what scientists actually think and feel about religion. Ecklund surveyed nearly 1700 scientists, interviewed 275 of them, and centers the book around vivid portraits of 10 representative men and women working in the physical and social sciences at top American research universities. She finds that most of what we believe about the faith lives of elite scientists is wrong. Nearly 50 percent of them are religious. Many others are what she calls "spiritual entrepreneurs," seeking creative ways to work with the tensions between science and faith outside the constraints of traditional religion. Her respondents run the gamut from Margaret, a chemist who teaches a Sunday-school class, to Arik, a physicist who chose not to believe in God well before he decided to become a scientist. Only a small minority are actively hostile to religion. Ecklund reveals how scientists--believers and skeptics alike--are struggling to engage the increasing number of religious students in their classrooms and argues that many scientists are searching for "boundary pioneers" to cross the picket lines separating science and religion. With broad implications for education, science funding, and the thorny ethical questions surrounding stem-cell research, cloning, and other cutting-edge scientific research, Science vs Religion offers a welcome dose of reality to the science and religion debates.

Author Biography

Elaine Howard Ecklund is an Assistant Professor of Sociology, and the Associate Director for the Center on Race, Religion, and Urban Life, at Rice University. Ecklund has received awards and grants from the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and John Templeton Foundation and is the author of Korean American Evangelicals: New Models for Civic Life (OUP 2008).

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Crossing the Picket Lines: The Personal Faith of Scientists
The Real Religious Lives of Scientists	p. 3
The Voice of Science	p. 13
The Voice of Faith	p. 29
Spiritual Entrepreneurs	p. 51
Society and Broader Publics
Suppression or Engagement: How Scientists Handle Religion in the Classroom	p. 71
No God on the Quad: Efforts Toward a Purely Secular University	p. 87
God on the Quad: Making Room for Faith on Campus	p. 107
What Scientists Are Doing Wrong That They Could Be Doing Right	p. 127
Shattering Myths, Toward Dialogue	p. 149
The Study	p. 157
Web and Phone Survey	p. 167
Long Interview Guide	p. 181
Notes	p. 185
Bibliography	p. 211
Index	p. 223
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