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I've chosen an unusual paper for my next journal club discussion. It's a sociological study
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inspired by qdragon's recent response to the Discovery Institute. The DI are asserting
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that there is a strong atheist bias among biologists, and that this bias creates an
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atmosphere hostile to theists, who account for only 10% of biology professors.
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I think this is wrong on several levels, and I want to present this survey data in support
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The title is "The Religiosity of American College and University Professors", the authors
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are sociologists from George Mason and U of BC and it presents an analysis of a 2006 survey
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of professors from across the United States. I'm going to skip on the usual areas of the
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paper such as abstract and introduction, and I'm going to only briefly describe the methods,
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because the interesting points here are in the Results or Data section, and the authors'
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The survey subjects were selected using existing databases of degree granting institutions,
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where one professor from each category of study was selected at each institution. The
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data were stratified to include both elite and non-elite education settings, from Harvard
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and MIT to community colleges. Elite status was determined by the US News and World Report
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Medical and law schools were excluded, as the purpose was to focus on undergraduate
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degree granting institutions. This will obviously exclude the bulk of medical researchers, who
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work at medical centers or schools and research institutions, rather than at 4 year undergrad
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The response rate was 51 percent, which is excellent for this type of survey, and the
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total number of cases used is 1,417. They randomly conducted phone surveys with 100
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nonresponders to determine if there was any bias in responders.
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Here are the results: Table 1 is a belief in God survey. The selection
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of responses was different from studies I've seen in the past, but strong atheists account
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for 9.8 percent, agnostic atheists another 13.1 percent, and an interesting 19.2 percent
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believe in a higher power, which could include pantheists, diests and other groups that classically
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don't believe in a personal god. A good 51.5 percent of professors do believe in God, though,
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even if they admit to some doubt.
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Table 2 is interesting, as it breaks out Table 1 by disciplinary field. The most godless
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groups are psychology and mechanical engineers by far, and the most religious are in finance,
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accounting and elementary education. I'll leave it up to you to pore over the data,
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I want to move on to Table 4, which compares religious orientation by institution type
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Note that the non-elite doctoral degree granting schools actually had the highest non-religious
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responses, and the elite institutions show a broad distribution of different views. In
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the disciplines, experimental sciences show the highest non-religious rates, but the social
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sciences and humanities have similar numbers. Only the health fields show a substantial
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proportion of traditional religious views.
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Table 5 shows that the largest religious affiliation of professors is none, with 31.2% claiming
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no particular group. 15.9% are Catholic, followed by the usual slew of different flavors of
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Christian or Jewish and a few Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus thrown in. I'm willing to bet that
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this same result would not be obtained if medical schools or research institutions were
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included in the survey, where Hindus and Buddhists are very heavily represented.
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Table 6 is regressions coefficients between a variable and a survey result. Negative values
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here represent an inverse relationship, positives a direct. Stars indicate significant correlations.
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For example, if you have a PhD, you are significantly less likely to claim a religious affiliation.
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If you are married, you are more likely to attend church, but if you are white, you are
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less likely. If you are from the NorthEast or West, you are less likely to accept the
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literal truth of the Bible. And it you are a researcher of any kind, you are very, very
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likely not to hold traditional religious views.
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I leave it to you to read the full conclusion of the authors. I've chosen just a few of
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my favorites: "But the hypothesis that the university is
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a secular institution because of the irreligious tendencies of the faculty does not withstand
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empirical scrutiny: it is a secular institution despite the fact that most of
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its key personnel are themselves religious believers."
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Here's another great one: "In light of our findings, one such [secularizing]
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mechanism that might be hypothesized to existóthat students become more secular as their atheist
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professors call into question the value of religionóseems implausible as a broad generalization.
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If anything, our finding that the most secular professors are those focused primarily on
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researchóa minority of all professors ó would suggest that the bulk of the teaching
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function in American colleges and universities is being carried out by academics who are
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personally sympathetic to religion, albeit not in its most traditional forms."
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So, the old narrative about the evil atheist professor corrupting the youth of America
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into godless socialist intellectualism isn't well supported by the demographic survey data.
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Most professors are religious, just not to the same degree or in the same way as America
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as a whole. Married professors are significantly more likely to regularly attend church and
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professors of applied health like nursing or business professors are also more likely
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to be traditionally religious, while professors with a doctoral level degree are less likely
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In just the elite institutions, Only 1% of professors describe themselves as "born again",
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while 13% describe themselves as Jewish, which is the opposite trend at non-elite institutions
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like community colleges, where Born again Christians may represent up to a quarter of
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Only 5.7 percent of all responders were Biblical literalists, 39.5% believed it to be divinely
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inspired, with 48.3% believing the Bible to be ìan ancient book of fables, legends, history,
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and moral precepts.î
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It's true that researchers and physical science professors, who rely heavily on empirical
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data and evidence in their daily work, are a bit less likely to be accepting of a faith
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based religious belief, and much less likely to accept biblical accounts as literally true.
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If the Discovery Institute believes that studying biology and the modern evolutionary synthesis
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automatically leads to atheism, I think they need to explain what about studying psychology
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or sociology or even engineering leads people down that same path. The data really suggests
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that the higher echelons of learning and education are inherently less religious or at least
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less traditionally religious.
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I'm sure that's not the narrative they want. Fortunately for them, they show an amazing
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ability to live in their own imagined reality, rather than the world you or I actually inhabit.
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Thanks for watching.
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