Forum Fridininum

I got a reply by Razib on my earlier post on the book For the Glory of God by Rodney Stark. In this post I cite figures that come from Stark’s book, and are reproduced on Razib’s website. I post his reply here, because I think his remarks are a good basis for further discussion of Stark’s book.

i republished the numbers from the glory of god (the link). please note that i personally believe that dr. stark attempts to cherry pick the numbers to prove his point. further numbers in the link show lower rates of belief for natural scientists, with elite national academy of sciences members with very low rates indeed. stark has responded the lower numbers are do to skewed selection from scientists who tend to work in academia. this is correct, but note that “social scientists” (like anthropologists) have far higher rates of employement in academia than say, chemists. that is, if you get a ph.d. in anthropology, and can’t get an academic job, you probably aren’t going to work in anthropology in the private sector. you will probably go and work in a business or consultancy or do something else with your smarts. on the other hand, if you are a chemist you can find a job in industry.

so, one could suggest that the lower rates of belief by social scientists is a result of the constraint imposed on who gets to be a social scientist (mostly people working in academia, and perhaps a few think tanks).

finally, i enjoy dr. stark’s work, but don’t buy his thesis whole-hog. i suggest this because he makes some gross historical errors while chiding other popularizers for doing the same. to give an explicit example, he praises charles martel’s use of stirrups (debunking the idea of ‘the dark ages’) the page after he talks about he’s discovered all these new facts that the public needs to be aware of. yet, he shows absolutely no awareness of the 30 year old stirrup controversy in reference to charles martel’s battle techniques.

There seems to be some confusion about the figures you mention of the survey of James Leuba in 1914 and 1933, and the replica of his survey by Larson and Witham in 1996. You criticize Stark for not taking into account these figures, which give much lower rates of belief in God than the survey Stark mentions and cites in For the Glory of God.

There are two issues at stake here. First, Leuba has two datasets on which he bases his figures. He has a general set of scientists, and a second much smaller set of “greater” scientists, e.g. top-of -the-bill scientists. Leuba notes that the greater scientists are much more secular than the normal scientists. Larson and Witham reproduced Leuba’s survey in 1996 and reach very similar conclusions, which they publish in two articles: “Scientists are still keeping the faith” and “Leading scientists still reject God”. If you have online access to Nature, you can find follow the links I provided, but here are the figures:

from: Larson and Witham, 1997.

from: Larson and Witham, 1998.

Stark cites the large set of normal scientists and he correctly concludes that the surveys of 1916 and 1996 have unchanged results of almost 40% of the scientists believing in a personal God. The much lower figures you report do not contradict the figures of Stark, but are a result of a much smaller dataset of elite scientists. In fact, these lower figures may even support the thesis of Stark, that science can function as an opposing worldview “in competition with traditional religions” (see my earlier post on this subject). That may not be only the case for the social sciences, but also for the upper layer of scientist. It might be that irreligiousness is a criterium for being labeled as a “greater scientist”. A quote from Larson and Witham (1998), who got the following comment from a “leading scientist”, Peter Atkins, seems to support this competition-thesis:

“You clearly can be a scientist and have religious beliefs. But I don’t think you can be a real scientist in the deepest sense of the word because they are such alien categories of knowledge.”

But this is not yet all. The second issue at stake is the fact that Stark severly criticizes Leuba’s survey for having much too stringent questions on the existence of God. For example, the wording of the question on the personal belief in God is as follows (see page 193 of For the Glory of God:

I believe in a God whom one may pray in the expectation of recieving an answer. By “answer” I mean more than the subjective, psychological effect of prayer

The second question, is as follows:

I do not belief in God as defined above.

Stark correctly notes that “a substantial amount” of clergy would not answer positive to the first question. And, a lot of people answering positive to the second question, probably do belief in a less active deity. So the figures you cite probably involve a substantial amount of believers, even among “leading scientist” (dis)believers.

As of your claim that Stark “makes some gross historical errors while chiding other popularizers for doing the same”: you might be right that he does not know enough of the stirrup controversy, but in his handling of figures on the belief or disbelief of scientist, his methods are correct. He often makes bold claims, but also takes pains to document his claims — as far as i can see — thoroughly. So i don’t agree with you on this issue and would even advise you to be as critical of figures as Stark is.

Bibliography

• Larson, Edward J. and Larry Witham. 1997. “Scientist are still keeping the faith.” Nature 386 (3 april): 435.
• Larson, Edward J. and Larry Witham. 1998. “Leading scientists still reject God.” Nature 394 (23 July): 313.
• Stark, Rodney. 2003. For the glory of God: how monotheism led to reformations, science, witch-hunts and the end of slavery. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

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