There have been many surveys of the religious belief (or lack thereof) of scientists. While certain factors vary, the overall pattern is strikingly consistent: scientists on the whole are less likely to be religious than the general population. And elite scientists (e.g. members of the NAS or Royal Society; nobel laureates, etc.) are less likely to be religious than the general population of scientists. So there seems to be a correlation between increase in scientific knowledge and decrease in religiosity.
In my experience many people seem to reason tacitly from this statistical pattern to draw some general conclusions about the evidence (or lack thereof) for key religious claims. The reasoning seems to go like this:
(1) The more scientific knowledge you have the less likely you are to have religious beliefs.
(2) Therefore, scientific knowledge is somehow incompatible with religious belief.
Or perhaps the move is more like this:
(1) The more scientific knowledge you have the less likely you are to have religious beliefs.
(2′) Therefore, scientists must have good scientific reasons for lacking religious belief.
Let’s focus on this second formulation of the argument. Since (1) is true, we focus on (2′). Here I’ll simply make two observations to throw (2′) into significant doubt.
Observation 1: Opining outside one’s area of expertise
If you are visiting your proctologist you don’t say “Oh by the way doc, my left eye has been blurry lately.” You see, proctologists aren’t particularly equipped to provide insight on your eyes. Their expertise lies, ahem, elsewhere.
Of course a mere proctologist is not an elite scientist. So let’s make this harder for ourselves. Let’s consider instead a world expert on tropical diseases who works for the CDC. (Let’s call him Dr. Knowmuch.) He has written over a hundred research papers on various tropical diseases and their treatment. Let’s say you had Dr. Knowmuch over for a nice dinner. Would you expect him to provide expert opinion on your blurry vision? Of course not.
But wait. Let’s up the ante. Dr. Knowmuch has just won the nobel prize in medicine for his work on tropical diseases. Now would you solicit his opinion on your blurry vision? You might, but don’t be surprised that he knows enough to give you a referral to a colleague, or perhaps sends you back to your family doctor.
We wouldn’t expect Dr. Knowmuch the nobel laureate to have an expert opinion on the causes of blurry eye-sight. And we certainly wouldn’t expect him to have an expert opinion on the best economic policies for avoiding a recession. So why would we think his opinions on theology and metaphysics are worth taking especially seriously?
Observation 2: Scientists as the paragon of reason?
It is unfortunate that we often slip into the inexcusably simplistic practice of labelling people as rational or irrational. But nobody is wholly rational, and very few if any are wholly irrational. Moreover, the degree of rationality that we evince in our beliefs and belief practices is not evenly distributed across the spectrum of our opinion. For example, it is common for us to demonstrate more critical introspection about some beliefs than others. And we are often more irrational in our acceptance, or dismissal, of certain claims than others.
This brings us back to (2′). There is no good reason a priori to think that scientists have good scientific reasons for lacking religious belief. And until such reasons are profferred (i.e. scientists explain the reasons why they do not hold religious belief and we conclude that those are indeed good reasons) there is no reason to think (2′) is true.
There is a simpler reason to explain the lower levels of religiosity among scientists. In the same way that those born and raised in Saudi Arabia are more likely to be Muslim, and those born and raised in the Ozarks are more likely to be Baptist, and those born and raised in India are more likely to be Hindu, so those born and raised in a skeptical religious climate are more likely to adopt the skeptical religious views of their peers.
