Why Scientists Shouldn't Cast Stones

European visitors to the United States often remark on the surprising power and influence of religion in this country. Religion in Europe is largely a private and individual activity. In the U.S., in contrast, religion continually overflows into politics and other aspects of daily life. We recently had a serious presidential candidate who claimed that God told himto run for office. And strong, vocal groups have been calling for such practices as school prayer and the teaching of Biblical creationism in science classes. All of this is well and good in a country where freedom of religion is a constitutional right And no one would dream of suggesting that scientists should not worship as they see fit. But it was during the well-publicized attempts to enact laws requiring “equal time” for creationism in public schools that I began to wonder just how often scientists themselves hold religious beliefs or positions that conflict with science orthodoxy. Evolution and geology, for example, are simply not compatible with religious fundamentalists’ insistence that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Yet it seemed to me that a large number of the people backing the creationism laws were engineers, chemists, computer scientists, and other professionals with strong backgrounds and education in science. Thus I was particularly intrigued by a recent survey in Industrial Chemist, a McGraw-Hill monthly that is distributed free to tens of thousands of chemists. A popular feature is the “Benchmark Survey” that solicits opinions of the readership on questions usually related to their work. The survey discussed in the November1987 issue, however, asked for opinions on the topic of evolution. A total of 519 readers responded. Of these almost half, 48.3%, answered “yes” to the question “Do you think it is possible that humans evolved in a continuous chain of developments from simple elements in a primordial soup, without supernatural intervention?” But a majority, 51.7%, believed that supernatural intervention played a role. And of these, about half, 22.8% of all respondants, did not think that evolution was possible. A similar number, 20.8%, answered “yes” to the question “Does the theory of evolution conflict with your religious beliefs?” And even more striking, almost half of the respondents, 47.2%, thought that both “scientific” creationism and evolution should be taught in schools. One possible conclusion from this is that the battle against religion masquerading as a scientific theory does not always pit scientists against nonscientists. To paraphrase Walt Kelly’s cartoon character Pogo, we have met the enemy and sometimes he is us. This is admittedly just a small survey of only one group of scientists. But other surveys agree with Industrial Chemises. When, in separate studies, three different researchers solicited opinions on evolution from undergraduate students at three, Ohio university campuses, they discovered that science majors predictably were more inclined to believe in evolution than were nonscience majors. But even among those with majors in biology, almost half thought that both evolution and creationism should be taught in schools. This opinion was most prevalent among students at the predominantly rural Bowling Green State University, less so at urban Ohio State University in Columbus, and least of all at Oberlin, a progressive private school. Nevertheless, our results show that for Ohio students, as for Industrial Chemist readers, a strong belief in the biblical story of man’s beginnings can easily survive a scientific education. Could it be that the text of the creationists, the Bible, is easier to understand than the textbooks used in biology courses? Or that parents and religious figures are more effective and persuasive teachers than are university professors? Possibly. But I suspect that the persistence of religious beliefs in the face of contradictory scientific teachings has a simpler cause. When reason and emotion conflict, emotion is usually the winner. A student who is a devout fundamentalist cannot easily give up what amounts to an entire way of life just because a geology textbook says that the Earth is five million years old, or because a biology professor lectures on evolution. And indeed, a belief in creationism is certainly not a barrier to becoming a good scientist, especially in fields like chemistry and engineering. If there is a moral to these surveys, it would be that scientists should not be so quick to condemn the general public or clinging stubbornly to “nonscientific” religious beliefs. After all, many members of our own profession apparently share these beliefs. Murray Saffran is a professor of biochemistry at the Medical College of Ohio, Toledo. *J. Bergman, “Attitudes of university students toward the teaching of evolution and creation in the schools,” Origins, 6,60-70,1979; PA. Fuerst, “University student understanding of evolutionary biology’s place in the creation/evolution controversy,” Ohio Journal of Science, 84, 218-28, 1984; M. Zimmerman, “The evolution/creation controversy: Opinions from students at a “liberal” liberal arts college," Ohio Journal of Science, 86, 134-9, 1986.

Why Scientists Shouldn't Cast Stones

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