The Volokh Conspiracy is ruminating over why so many academics are hostile to some religions rather than others. Todd Zywicki cites data:
According to a study by the Institute of Jewish and Community Research, 53% of professors have an unfavorable view of Evangelical Christians but only 3% have an unfavorable view of Jews. A summary of the study is here. 33% have unfavorable views of Mormons. Muslims, Atheists, and Catholics all score in double-digits.
He goes on to express his astonishment…
It is almost impossible to imagine any identifiable group of Americans today who would hold such a reflexively negative view of other groups of Americans. I can’t imagine that any degree of racial bigotry by any group toward any other group would even approximate this degree of bigotry and prejudice.
Until, of course, his commenters point out an inconvenient fact: this “prejudice” pales next to that against atheists.
Co-blogger Ilya Somin then chimes in with a theory — it’s all just bias against conservatives.
Overall, I think the data confirm my theory that most academics are not hostile to religion as such, but merely to those religious groups that they perceive (for the most part correctly) as politically conservative.
The study Todd cites shows that 53% of academics have an “unfavorable” view of Evangelical Christians and 33% say the same of Mormons. By contrast, only 13% have an unfavorable view of Catholics and 3% towards Jews. As Todd points out, Evangelical Christians and and Mormons are generally seen as politically conservative, while Jews tend to be liberal, and Catholics somewhere in between. Todd may well be right that academics’ views of Evangelicals and Mormons are based on stereotypes rather than personal experience. However, the stereotype that these groups tend to be politically conservative is actually correct.
I have a different theory. What if academics had an unfavorable view of evangelicals and Mormons, and a generally favorable view of Catholics and Jews, because of how those groups view academia? Crazy, I know, but bear with me here. Catholicism and Judaism, whatever their other faults, have long traditions of valuing learning and scholarship, while Mormonism and evangelical Christianity … not so much. (Those are wild generalizations, of course, but the trends are clear.) Perhaps these unfavorable views are not actually prejudices at all, but informed opinions based on empirically verifiable realities?
Just a theory.
June 20th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Might it not also be that Mormons and evangelicals seem more goofily credulous than Jews and Catholics? I mean, they all technically believe some silly things, but those two groups in particular seem like loonies.
June 20th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
That all may be true. Maybe there is some fear of the unknown here as well. Beliefs of Jews and Catholics are more widely known (and understood?) than those of Evangelicals (many little groups lumped into one word) and Mormons. We look up Mormonism on the Wikipedia and consider ourselves educated on the subject. I would guess that many reasonable Evangelicals get classed in our minds with the vocal, crazy Evangelicals. Mormons may get classed with fundamentalist polygamous groups. Plus, just based on numbers, academics are more likely to personally know and work with Jews and Catholics than with Evangelicals and Mormons. I have always found that nothing breaks my biases like actually getting to know people.
Whatever the reasons, it is disheartening to think that so many prejudices exist among us.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Interesting study, and good point.
In the quotes above I see no evidence of distinction between holding an unfavorable view of particular religions and holding an unfavorable view of the people who belong to those religions (though the quotes are worded to imply that academics hold unfavorable views of the people). This is a crucial difference. Holding an unfavorable opinion of a religion for whatever reason is not bigotry, while holding an unfavorable opinion of the constituents of that religion could be construed as such.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Perhaps the reason that there is only a 3% unfavorable rating towards Jews is because unlike “Evangelical Christians” and “Mormons”, people often identify themselves as Jewish even though they are not religious (I consider myself an Jewish atheist, for example). If the academics were asked their opinion of “Orthodox Jews” then maybe the results would be different. (i.e. Judaism can be considered an ethnicity rather than a religion)
June 20th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I was just browsing through the study. I don’t understand the difference between “those with no religion” and “atheists”.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Sometimes I’m prejudiced by conclusions drawn from the evidence.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
I propose a slightly different theory that unfavorable views held by academics towards religious people are based on a lack of respect for the religious world-view in general. Religious people tend to put enormous stock in faith — or belief without evidence — which goes directly against central themes of respectable academic pursuits. This, in turn, shows a lack of respect by religious people for a more analytic belief structure, and can be manifest as an unfavorable view of academics. So, I suspect that many academics just don’t respect faith of the religious kind, rather than just reciprocating a mutual, unfavorable view.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
It is clear that you actually have no idea what you are talking about. Your claim that mormons do not value education and scholarship is not just a wild generalization, it is completely wrong. I wonder if you even know any mormons, or where you have observed such a trend that is, in your words, clear.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
When was the last time a Catholic or Jew came to your door to let you know you were going to hell? That might have something to do with unfavorable impressions of Evangelicals and Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses for that matter.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
I actually find implicit tarring of entire groups of people like this a bit offensive, Sean. What if people’s skull shapes were empirically verifiably correlated with intelligence? Things like this border on prejudicial stereotypes masquerading as science, and are outside of what science is intended to do (i.e. benefit humanity).
June 20th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
This study illustrates yet another example of strange American culture. In European societies, Mormons and Evangelicals are not even on the radar. They are rightly viewed as extreme fringe lunatics, and very few European academics would have even met a Mormon or an Evangelical.
June 20th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
I cannot believe that only 3% of academics hold negative views of Jews in reality: left-wing academic anti-Semitism is distressingly pervasive. I say this as a liberal, secular Jew who has an ambiguous name and doesn’t “look Jewish:” I’ve heard some pretty vile things said in academic company on the assumption there weren’t any Jews around.
The fact that most of these comments are cloaked as opposition to Israel while “open” anti-Semitism remains socially unacceptable may have skewed the survey results.
June 20th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
I am curious (but not suffienetly so to follow and read the survey results), what the result of a similar study targetting non-academic would show regarding bias. This might give a better relative skew to see how much *more* biased (or less, I am assuming) are towards these religions/belief systems.
June 20th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
To classify opposition to some of Israel’s policies as anti-Semitism is a leap.
June 20th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I think that left-liberal criticisms of Israel, which would surely run much higher than 3%, are precisely that, and are quite distinct from traditional anti-Semitism. They have much more in common with criticisms of British rule Northern Ireland, or apartheid in South Africa.
Re: evangelicals, surely one does have a right to judge someone for the actions of the groups they choose to belong to, in this case the continued battles of the evangelicals against evolution, however keen individuals may be for little Jimmy to get an education as an engineer or lawyer?
June 20th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
“Just a theory.”
ARRRGGHHH!!! To say this on a science blog no less! You mean, “just a conjecture”, right?
June 20th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
It may also have to do with the dogmatism of each of those particular religions when it comes to actually dealing with reality. I once gave an astronomy talk at a multi-faith conference on creation, and I came away impressed with the rabbi who spoke. He emphasized that Judaism is first and foremost a religion of practice, and he was quite happy to accept observational evidence about things like the origin of the universe, age of the earth and so on. I think people may be responding to the fact that jews emphasize their cultural identity and really don’t make much noise about there being any conflict between science and their religion. This is in contrast to the endless litany of boneheaded evangelical christian positions on issues like evolution etc. When you get right down to it, Science is about honesty and humility before the facts - some religious movements are consistent with that philosophy and some are not. If you go around saying the earth was actually created in seven days and no more, then you deserve to be treated like a cretin…
June 20th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
The term “unfavorable view”, perhaps, has at least two components. Some religious people perform or condone acts that I find repulsive - bigotry against homosexuals, for instance. I have a deep-seated “unfavorable view” of such actions.
I have a different sort of “unfavorable view” of those religious people who (defensively, I suppose) try to deny any finding which challenges their cherished beliefs. I feel that life is short, and if those beliefs help them enjoy it: fine, OK. I really don’t care if someone believes that the world was created by a four-headed tomato. But denial of scientific observation will invite a rebuttal by the scientists. So, if I say that this second group should keep their beliefs if they enjoy them, in what way is my view unfavorable? Well, just this:
if there is a creator, he (she) created the universe the WAY IT IS; he (she) did NOT create it the WAY IT ISN’T. If there is a God, he will be found in reallity, not in unreallity.
June 20th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Well, Steven, I grew up in the Mormon church, and while I wouldn’t exactly say Mormons do not value education at all, I do think there is a general sense among the faithful that the “wrong” kind of education can turn someone away from the True Path (I’ve been told this almost verbatim a number of times). I think it’s fair to characterize the Mormon position as something like “faith is more important than education” (especially for women, I’m sorry to say). One example is the missionary tradition that interrupts college for many young people — I’d be interested to see statistics on how many return to finish their undergraduate degrees. Another is the fact that most clergymen (bishops, etc.) are laypeople with no seminary training.
To assert this is not to ignore the fact that there are many Mormon scholars; it is only to recognize that a formal education is not emphasized as strongly among Mormons as in some other religions. I suspect this difference is partly a result of Mormonism’s more recent origins among working-class people who were not themselves well educated, as opposed to older religions with a long monastic/rabbinical tradition.
June 20th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Noah Feldman, professor of law at Harvard, also tackled the issue of the public perception of Mormonism. You may find his observations useful.
June 21st, 2008 at 1:05 am
You may be interested to know that for a time BYU was producing the second largest number of undergraduate physics degrees and by far the largest number of physics teachers per year.
June 21st, 2008 at 1:16 am
Oh, I almost forgot…. Kip Thorne is a very well known ex-Mormon and has said that he became interested in astronomy/astrophysics/cosmology/gr etc. after he attended a sky viewing session held at his church. Kip Thorne also coauthored a text (a warm-up exercise, really for MTW) with B.K. Harrison (of Harrison-Wheeler equation of state fame…) on gravitational collapse. Wheeler describes Harrison as one of his best students in his book “Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam”.
June 21st, 2008 at 1:47 am
I guess if there was once an ex-Mormon who became a successful physicist, I was wrong.
Look, I said very explicitly that it was a wild generalization. Mormonism is not distinguished by a history of cultivating scholarly achievement, and instances where academic freedom have been suppressed are not at all hard to find. Simple as that.
Ellipsis, I confess that I don’t get your point. If there was an empirically verifiable relationship between skull shapes and intelligence, then … such a relation would exist. So what? I think I’m making a pretty straightforward observation here: people who highly value a certain set of traits tend to “look unfavorably” on groups of people who, in broad brush, don’t value those traits as much as they do. Not sure where skull shapes come in.
Certain groups do not come associated with ideas like “fierce advocates of intellectual and scholarly freedom.” If members of those groups would like to cast off such pernicious impressions, then fiercely advocating for intellectual and scholarly freedom would be a good place to start.
ollie, I really did mean just a theory, although it was somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
June 21st, 2008 at 2:56 am
In the interest of fairness, I would say that Catholics have a significantly longer tradition of not fiercely advocating for intellectual or scholarly freedom
Examples are not that hard to find….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair
As someone who bought your book (full price! and quite good by the way), I must say I’m somewhat surprised to see you prone to “wild generalizations”. But I am curious to know how many counterexamples you need to overturn a theory.
June 21st, 2008 at 4:47 am
Well, I see *all* adult, religious people as trapped in delusions, even if I am forced to be often silent on the subject for social reasons.
And I can’t understand how can you call it bigotry. It is no more bigot than thinking one with regular hallucinations has some mental problem. It’s practically the same thing.
June 21st, 2008 at 5:58 am
Sean: you mean, of course, “just a hypothesis.” ;)
June 21st, 2008 at 6:24 am
It is interesting to see what is the attitude of people toward “Islam”, is there any result about that?
I think the most important thing which control the outcomes is personal experiences. Most of people have not studied religions and related issues and most of imformation they have is obtained through society they grown up there or media or people they encountered before.
From my point of view the theory which relates mentioned statistics to the relation between religions and science is partially true! While I can hardly think of a friendly relation between catholic church history and science! I know lots of good Jewish scientists which is much more than what is expected from Jews population. As someone whose religion is “Science”, this point make me a little bit more positive about Jews!
I guess the positive attitude of people toward catholics could be understood by noting majority of responding people have been catholics!! (25%)
June 21st, 2008 at 7:54 am
At least your realistic enough to say that you are speaking about gross generalizations, not the actual stances.
To even generally compare Evangelical Christians and the LDS (mormons) is blatantly wrong, especially when you look at how each of them view our world, science and academics.
I’d be interested in seeing where you’ve encountered the LDS Church having a hostile view towards academia. One of core beliefs of a Mormon’s life is to gain as much education as possible. I think you’d be hard pressed to find any single privately funded group that invests more in education than the Mormons.
June 21st, 2008 at 8:23 am
Catholicism is a difficult thing. In toto the catholic church has been anti rational and highly dogmatic throughout the years, at the same time it is very intellectual. That said, in Europe you’d be unlikely to find such a positive opinion of catholicism. Especially in Spain and Italy where its socially conservative dogma still is very much alive and influential.
June 21st, 2008 at 9:57 am
To further the two theories, perhaps there is a correlation between conservative opinions (and the groups that tend to hold such viewpoints) and a respect for academia.
However, there is also a historical consideration: the Catholic church, and many other churches besides (including Judaism) were the centers of scholarship (and hence, academia) throughout many of the ages. The Mormons, as pointed out by Rational Zen, are highly educated, and value such education highly. I think that neither of these theories encompass the reality, and that further (and historically realized) theories are needed to gain a full view. I don’t have the history though, so I’m sorry to say that for now, I’m just a debunker.
June 21st, 2008 at 11:19 am
A different observation immediately leaped out at me. Academics have an unfavorable view of those religious groups who possess political power and are responsible for anti-intellectual policies.
In the USA, at least, Catholics and Jews have founded colleges and mostly stayed out of politics. Evangelicals have founded low-quality and unaccredited colleges and gotten their fingers in politics as much as possible. Mormons are in between, having founded a fairly top-notch university, but aligning as a bloc with evangelicals on political issues.
June 21st, 2008 at 12:06 pm
It’s the re-election, stupid!
I know that my husband and I have negative opinions of evangelicals because we believe they tipped the election to Bush in 2004. I found and still find the idea of Bush being blessed and chosen by god to be extremely disturbing. In fact, I find religious influence on politics always disturbing, in any form.
typical evangelical on electing Bush in 2004:
I really can’t trust any politicians that claim they have been chosen by god to lead, that’s grandiose thinking typical of a sociopath.
June 21st, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Fundamentalists and other radical sects have to be anti-intellectual. When their members get good educations, they become apostates. Long-established denominations are less vulnerable to this trap because they have become far more moderate and reasonable over time, albeit at the cost of losing the dynamism (and church attendance!) that goes along with rip-roaring, balls-out superstition.
June 21st, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Sean, I think you’re on to something with noting the academic views of some religions are somewhat “retaliatory” with respect to those religions’ view of academia.
The cited quotes use words like “bigotry” and “prejudice.” I think one has to be careful with these words. When someone has feelings towards or makes assumptions about, say, women in general, this is rightfully frowned upon because it ignores the diversity among women and lumps them all together based on some stereotype.
In the case of religion, there is no presumption — it seems to me perfectly OK to presume that a Mormon adheres to the tenets of that faith. I could be a real hypocrite or jerk for frowning upon Mormons for what they believe, but this is very different than if I held certain views about, say, women in general.
Of course there is diversity in belief among the members of religious denominations, but I think if critics were more careful with their speech they would make clear they are criticizing the religion, and the behavior of those who follow the orthodoxy, and not people who might claim to belong to the religion but really don’t represent the orthodoxy.
June 21st, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I think you should focus on specific actions and policies of religions that you find problematic, rather than attempting to justify hostile or prejudicious views toward people who are often just born into them. The analogy was merely a reference to the wide use of “scientific studies” in the early part of the 20th century to justify discrimination, and worse.
June 21st, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Sean, thanks for acknowledging that Catholicism has a long and strong scholarly tradition. Of course prior (and many current) attitudes, corruption, and repressions were awful, but many know that a great education in logic and rhetoric can be had at Catholic institutions. I think your theory is about right overall.
June 21st, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I searched for the word evolution in the report. Not a single mention. I think at least amongst science faculty the widespread opposition to Darwinian evolution theory, is the principal reason for the unfavourable view of evangelical Christians. They have written 97 pages and not understood anything. Oh yes, of course, I am sure there is no mention of “Young Earth Creationism” in the report.
June 21st, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Just for the background, I am a Jewish college student, I study math at a very well-respected university, and am an aspiring prof. and an agnostic. I grew up in Rural Utah. My best friends are mostly Mormons and evangelical Christians.
I do think there is unfair hostility to some religions among academia. It’s quite ironic to see educated people belittling a demographic en masse for their closed-mindedness. It’s quite ironic, to my mind, to see atheists mock religious people for being blindly certain of their beliefs. The evangelican friend I know best, and the group of my Mormon friends taken as a whole, have a great deal of respect for science and learning. They’re certainly not the drones I fear too many would write them off as for being Mormon or evangelical Christian.
They are not unaware of the scorn they are often held in by the academic community, and it does hurt them. They don’t fully understand why they are looked down on for what is to them a personal characteristic and an important part of their lives. One of them has told me directly he feels unwelcome and unwanted among the academic community, which is a shame, because he is one of the smartest and most creative people I know.
Instances of religious people’s hostility to science are much better documented, and if the topic were that I could write a much longer screed - being a Jew in rural Utah brings you face-to-face with the worst as well as the best of the religions which predominate. You just have to remember there are intolerant and obnoxious people amongst any demographic. To my mind that is the important thing to take away from a discussion like this: No demographic index, including education, can be a reliable predictor for the traits of closed-mindedness and obnoxiousness. You’ll find it anywhere. We could all do with being a little more tolerant and decent towards other people.
June 21st, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Why the 20% difference between Mormons and evangelical xtians? AFAICS both are completely at odds with academics view of the world and equally hostile to academia perse.
I personally prefer to discriminate against all these religions equally. So they’re all 100% unfavorable in my view. I’m tempted to give Jews and Budhists a bit of a respite, b/c they have accomplished so much for academia and they’re generically harmless, but that seems to me to be a bit of a fallacy so they both get lumped in as well.
June 21st, 2008 at 6:22 pm
[…] strikes me as obviously wrongheaded. Sean Carroll points out that Evangelicals and Mormons are, generally, some of the most agressive anti-intellectuals out […]
June 21st, 2008 at 8:17 pm
There is, I believe, a much better theory as to why secular academics dislike evangelical Christians. This same group that dislikes evangelicals also has a tendency toward leftist politics. That is no accident. As government funding of education and research has grown, so has the number of academics who depend on that funding. The result is a group of academics who view government as the source of their prosperity. It is not surprising that this group would have a socialist leaning Another prominent example of a similar group with a decidedly socialist leaning is the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the US.
Government funded education and research is a wonderful thing, providing knowledge of the natural world and contributing to overall prosperity. But it does have this unintended consequence. Many academics imagine that evangelicals are hostile to education and scholarship, and are therefore a threat to their way life. This is unfortunate and, in my view, reflects badly on those academics. Evangelical Christians have a high regard for education and scholarship. They have many very good colleges and universities. I recently read a news report that Christian colleges are growing in enrollment while state universities, in general, have declining enrollments.
I am an evangelical Christian and I know the evangelical community well. I can say that the unfavorable views toward evangelicals described by Sean can best be explained as uninformed prejudice.
Anthropologist Scott Atran has observed this particular prejudice of secular academics and termed it “tribal atheism.” You can hear his remarks at the 2007 version of “Beyond Belief” conference. At the conference he saw a mostly atheist, mostly academic group and observed their primitive “us versus them” behavior. I believe that is what is in play here.
Otis
June 21st, 2008 at 11:32 pm
math man, while I agree that it seems a little unfair to “write someone off” immediately because of their religion, without stopping to consider any of their scientific thoughts/skills, I must confess I don’t understand why it is “ironic” for atheists to “mock religious people for being blindly certain of their beliefs.” I suppose if said atheists are just as dogmatically certain of the non-existence of God as their religious counterparts are of the existence of God, the irony is definitely there. But, in my experience, atheists (myself included) are so because the evidence simply points to a Godless universe. Being an atheist is like believing in quantum theory… so just as it would seem weird to believe that there are little men with hammers preventing electrons from spiraling into the centers of atoms in a tiny fraction of a second, it seems weird to believe that there is a big man up in the sky somewhere controlling the entire universe.
On a slightly different note, I would just like to state that I have some difficulty understanding religious scientists in general. I suppose many such scientists are not so religious, so there’s not so much conflict, but there ARE creationist biologists out there (and they must be the most interviewed biologists in the world… fundies LOVE them), and that just seems like complete double think to me.
To end lightly, did you hear about the dyslexic, agnostic insomniac? He stayed up all night wondering if there really was a Dog.
June 22nd, 2008 at 7:27 am
The forms of fundamentalist religion we have today are completely different from those in the past. We have what might be called media religion. Just as televized messages are able to convince people to buy things in a one minute advert or to “cover” news in two minute sound bites, modern religion is a similar system of quick messages which frame people’s minds. Many of these fundamentalist churches have their own evangelical programs on the CBN or other networks, or even their own channels. The media system has in some ways reprogrammed our minds or rewired our brains to think in patterns which have little precedent in the past. Religion has entered this as well. It has to in order to keep the “God meme” alive.
George Orwell wrote of this in his treatise on totalitarian government within a novel format — 1984. In restructuring language and the usage of language the ability of people to think and form statements of significant depth is curtailed. Religion has been buffeted by science in the last couple of centuries, and its ability to really challenge science has been reduced to nil. The recent intelligent design controversy is case in point. That thesis has been found to be lacking not only in its demonstrable evidence, but is also not properly a scientific theory. However, the purpose of this has been established. ID arguments are here to stay and they will continue as “sound bite” theology expounded on evangelical programs and from pulpits. As a result old falisfied creationist canards continue to be sounded. If the message is reduced to a two minute expose, with all the depth seen in selling Coca-Cola, the message will continue to gel in people’s minds.
Lawrence B. Crowell
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:15 am
“But, in my experience, atheists (myself included) are so because the evidence simply points to a Godless universe.”
I agree with the sentiment, but I would be careful with the use of the word evidence.
I think you might be better off stating that philosophy and science have concluded that the existance of God can not be explained rationally.
All existing evidence indicates that all the workings of the universe can be explained rationally.
Therefore God cannot exist within any construction of the universe. Thus, the existance of God can only be viewed as an irrational construct “existing” outside the bounds of the universe, and has no real physical form.
Or as, in street terms, “Its all in our heads”
And now for a joke:
So a creationalist dies and goes to purgatory.
While waiting he bumps into the devil, who offers the creationalist a chance to see hell for a day and see what its like, no strings attached.
The creationist figures it might be worth seeing who ended up in hell, and all the horribles things that were being done to them, so he agrees to the journey.
When he gets to hell, it’s the complete opposite to what he expected. Everyone is having a great time, there is plenty of food to eat, and everything is gleamingly clean.
“Wow!” exclaims the creationalist, “This is awesome, I never thought hell would be like this!”
At the end of the day, the devil takes the creationalist back to purgatory. The creationalist, now faced with a long wait to get into heaven, turns to the devil and asks if he could just spend eternity in hell.
The devil is a little hesitant at first, but spends the night listening to the creationalist’s pleas, eventually he relents and pulls out a contract and has the creationalist sign.
The devil and the creationalist then journey back to hell. Once they get there, the creationalist is suddenly horrified to find himself amidst the most dreadful horrors, straight out of Dante’s inferno.
Confused he turns to the devil and demands an explanation.
The devil smiles and explains, “You see, yesturday you were a candidate. Today you are staff.”
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Another creationist goes straight to Heaven and is surprised to be greeted by God himself. God leaves briefly and then returns with some baloney and cheese sandwiches and Coca Cola. An awkward silence follows while the man eats, frankly afraid to say anything that might be perceived as gauche.
Finally, God clears his throat and asks, “So, do you have any wishes that I could grant?”
“Well,” the man says, “Maybe this is a strange request: but could I just see what Hell looks like. I don’t want to visit, just see it from afar so that I can revel in the fact that the sinners are finally getting their justice.”
“OK, look,” says God somewhat sheepishly opening up a trap door in the floor. To the creationist’s amazement, he sees a sumptuous party, filled with all sorts of fine cuisine and drink. All the “guests” seem to be laughing and enjoying themselves. God closes the trap door.
Feeling a bit annoyed and disappointed, the creationist throws caution to the wind and vents. “All those heathens and debaucherers enjoy loving comaraderie and the finest food down there while I come here and get cold sandwiches and soft drinks. I don’t understand.” God looks a bit embarassed and finally says in a low voice, “It’s just really hard with so few people.”
June 22nd, 2008 at 8:12 pm
FSM: “All existing evidence indicates that all the workings of the universe can be explained rationally.” This shows that you (and like-minded) do not understand the point of modern style philosophical theology, of the sort done by Paul Davies. The issue is why the universe is like it is, not how the workings come from the laws that are already there (almost a mere tautology, so what), why does this universe exist instead of other possible worlds that could be “platonically modeled”, why indeed is there anything substantially “in existence” at all (or even, per modal realism, whether such existence distinct from being a conceptual description is even possible.)
June 22nd, 2008 at 8:22 pm
……..”Catholicism and Judaism, whatever their other faults, have long traditions of valuing learning and scholarship, while Mormonism and evangelical Christianity … not so much. (Those are wild generalizations, of course, but the trends are clear.)”
Those are very wild generalizations!! Facts, statistics or just stereotypes perhaps?? Now maybe I am just biased because I am Mormon, but I thought that Utah has one of the highest high school graduation rates in the nation and also is ranked 2nd in proportion of the population who are high school graduates. Have you ever heard of BYU? The lds church owns three Universities, plus various other schools. Our leaders constantly stress us to get as much education as possible. So can you please expound on how you came to the conclusion that the LDS church values academia less than Jews or Catholics?
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:48 am
“why indeed is there anything substantially “in existence” at all”
Until someone can properly articulate the alternative, it seems obvious that it exists because there is no alternative. I have yet to see someone produce a self consistent definition of nothingness.
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:19 am
FSM,
Okay, okay, I shall rephrase: “But, in my experience, atheists (myself included) are so because rational scientific thinking (most notably Occam’s razor), and theories that explain the existence of life and the universe, which are well-backed by scientific evidence, point to a Godless universe as the most likely possibility.” Is that better?
Lawrence B. Crowell, I wholeheartedly agree with your statements about “soundbyte” theology, and I would like to add the observation that religions have largely gone from being God-fearing (think Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God), to feel-good God-loves-everyone institutions. I would like to think that this is a sign that religion is on its way out… the idea being that if churches have to promise a cushy eternity in heaven for just about everyone to get people to follow, they can’t be far from losing their followings altogether. Also, in my personal experience with (mostly young) people, it seems that large numbers of them are becoming disillusioned with religion… but that might change when they get older, I don’t know. Unfortunately, I think the possibility exists that feel-good religion is more an artifact of our culture (people are too lazy or too busy to put much energy into being good and Godly, but they don’t want to be told that being devoted to their careers or televisions means they can’t go to heaven), and not so much a sign that people want to let go of God… just to let go of the part where they have to work hard to win God’s favor. I’m rooting for the first interpretation though.
I can’t think of another relevant joke at moment, so I instead choose to quote from my favorite atheist ever:
“The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this:
“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. Q.E.D.”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
“Oh, that was easy,” says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:39 am
FSM has written: “All existing evidence indicates that all the workings of the universe can be explained rationally. Therefore God cannot exist within any construction of the universe. Thus, the existence of God can only be viewed as an irrational construct “existing” outside the bounds of the universe, and has no real physical form.”
What FSM has written begs these questions: Why is the universe rational? Why can humans understand it? Why are humans rational? Why is the universe orderly? If the universe is fundamentally mathematical, why can humans do the math? Where did the laws come from? Why those laws and not others? Why are there laws at all?
In order to do science at all, one has to begin with a theistic view of the natural world. The Christian Bible answers all of the above questions and establishes the conditions under which humans can do science.
Paul Davies has written about this and despite taking a log of abuse, he is correct. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opinion/24davies.html?scp=1&sq=%27taking+science+on+faith%27&st=nyt)
God is a necessary being and he is not going away.
Otis
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:49 am
I think that Sean is absolutely right about the attitude of academics towards evangelicals. Evangelicals have a tradition of hostility towards science, and this is the main reason for the unfavorable attitude of academics towards evangelicals.
However, I suspect that the situation with Mormons is different. This survey reports that, like most religions, the fraction of academics that have an unfavorable view of Mormons is smaller than the fraction of the general public that has an unfavorable view of Mormons. This hostility toward Mormons is a central theme of Mormon history and was a serious problem for Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful presidential bid. I suspect that the unfavorable attitudes of academics towards Mormons have more to do with this general attitude than any perceived hostility of Mormons towards academics.
My own experience with Mormons tends to confirm the view that they aren’t hostile toward academics, but since the Mormons I know mostly have PhD’s in physics, this may not be a representative sample.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Why do the atheists score in the double digits if academics base their feelings on rationality?
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I think an even more interesting question would be why academics are suspicious of Mormons and whether or not that suspicion boils over into bias and discrimination.
Henry Eyring comes to mind….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Eyring
To further poke holes in your “theory” it is also worth noting that his son (now just behind the Church President) holds a bacheler’s degree in physics.
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
[…] Academics and Religion at Cosmic Variance. They talk about Mormons a lot. It’s in reference to a Volokh Conspiracy post. Kind of interesting since in physics in some places like LANL there’s an abundance of Mormons. […]
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Exactly how would you quantify this? (My guess is you just made this up out of your biases) When I worked at LANL two of the three main guys at the lab were Mormon and a hugely disproportionate number of group leaders were Mormon. There were two large congregations of Mormons who all primarily worked at the lab.
Many of the top leadership of the LDS faith have PhDs including several in science.
Utah has widely been noted as producing the most scientists per capita for over 60 years. Within Utah Mormons produce more scientists and non-Mormons.
So I’m not quite sure what constitutes “scholarly achievement” for you and why you have the bias you do. It seems if you’re going to make a claim like that in a widely read site the burden is on you to at least be able to back it up.
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:03 pm
All religions have had their run-ins with academic freedom. (You may have noticed that I’m not a big fan of religions generally.) But some have countervailing traditions of serious scholarly work, and Catholicism and Judaism are the first that come to mind, at least to Westerners. (A thousand years ago Islam would have been the obvious choice, but times have changed.)
To most people with not much more than a casual knowledge of Mormonism, such as myself, its image is more closely associated with suppressing dissent than with championing free inquiry. I would have been interested to learn differently — an influential stream of Mormon philosophy? a particular academic specialty in which Mormons stood out? important instances in which academic freedom was put before doctrinal correctness? — but “BYU has a lot of physics majors” falls several degrees short of success. This thread has tended to reinforce my previous opinion, if anything.
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Otis, I don’t understand how you draw that conclusion at all. Admittedly, science cannot answer all the questions you posed, yet. But that doesn’t mean that those questions fundamentally cannot be answered, and it doesn’t mean that the answers given by the Christian Bible are correct.
1) Let us suppose, just for fun, that the statement “one has to begin with a theistic view of the natural world” is valid. Why, then, is the explanation in the Christian Bible the correct one? What is wrong with the Hindu explanation? Or one of the many Native American explanations? Or Greek/Roman mythology? Can you give me one good reason why the Christian Bible is right aside from your own personal convictions?
2) That statement does not in any way follow logically or otherwise from the questions posed. Also, the Christian Bible is in direct contradiction to science at many points. So basically, I don’t think your argument makes any sense.
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Holding an unfavorable opinion of Jews makes someone an antisemite, which, I guess, 97% of academics want to avoid. Similarly, while catholics don’t have the same history of persecution as the Jews, they are still perceived as a minority or even as a victimized religion–not people academics want to pick on. Evangelicals, on the other hand, are seen as the dominant, powerful faith, so there’s nothing wrong with holding an unfavorable opinion of them.
My theory doesn’t work so well explaining why so many Academics hold an unfavorable view of mormonism–it probably has much to do with what others have said–this is a complicated phenomenon.
Also, as has been noted, while “evangelical,” “catholic” and “mormon” all refer to religions, “jewish” can refer to either a religion or a people/ethnicity, so many “jews” are not religious at all.
Another thing is that the correctness of Sean’s assertion that Mormonism doesn’t value scholarship is irrelevant–what matters is what academics think about mormonism. Sean himself is a good example.
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Adam, I think what makes Sean’s comments so disappointing is that there is a fundamental disconnect between what espouses and what he does. That is he appears to be labeling Mormons as anti-intellectual without any real justification and further sees the burden of proof as being on Mormons. Certainly it’s true that what matters is perception and as such I suspect Sean is very much representative of many in the academy. But doesn’t this point to a fundamental problem within the academy that goes against its own stated aims? When stereotypes and prejudice become the basis of judgment independent of even an attempt to gather evidence then something fundamental is wrong.
Sean, regarding issues of intellectual freedom (presumably at BYU although you don’t say) I still think that amazingly problematic. It suggests that because a particular Mormon in charge at BYU had one view of academic freedom that therefore all Mormons are anti-intellectual? Doesn’t that bother you in the least? How is that logic different from saying, “I got mugged by a black man therefore all blacks are criminals?”
Further you mischaracterize the evidence that people have brought up as “BYU has a lot of physics majors.” I’d agree that’s irrelevant (and probably not that true, speaking as someone who graduated in physics from BYU). But that’s a strawman. The point was that Mormons disproportionately go into science and presumably are very productive in science. This was a counterpoint to, “distinguished by a history of cultivating scholarly achievement.”
Now it appears that your positions is that because the administration of a single University disagree with you on some issues of academic freedom all Mormons are anti-intellectual. That’s fine if that’s what you belief. I’m just surprised you’d be the type to label millions of people on the basis of the decisions of just a few that don’t really seem related to scholarly achievement.
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Just let me expand on that issue of BYU. The big problem of BYU is that it attempts to be a religious school. I can fully and utterly understand why some think that it’s impossible to have a religious school and be committed to the liberal ideal of academics. One might disagree, but I can understand why some see the values to fundamentally be in conflict. Further it seems undeniable that given the tensions between being a religious school and the academic ideal of “write anything and let the chips fall where they may” that people will be upset at what happens at BYU.
All I’d suggest is that even if you think the idea of having a religious school a bad idea it doesn’t follow that those attempting to have a religious school are anti-intellectual. They just disagree with you over what ought be allowed in the university system. Now the Mormons attempting to reconcile the two might well be wrong on political grounds. It doesn’t seem to follow logically in the least that they aren’t committed to scholarship, to academic standards of scholarship, nor to intellectual pursuits.
It just seems a category mistake to assume that because a religion has a religious school that may be problematic that they are anti-intellectual.
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Why is the universe rational?
Because it can be described with a logical symbollic language
Why can humans understand it?
Because we created the language
Why are humans rational?
So they can efficiently achieve selfish goals
Why is the universe orderly?
Its not. Its chaotic and random
If the universe is fundamentally mathematical, why can humans do the math?
Once again, because we created the language
Where did the laws come from?
They are due to symmetry
Why those laws and not others?
Because the universe is isotropic and homogeneous at large scales
Why are there laws at all?
Because we exist
June 23rd, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Clark, I did not say “all Mormons are anti-intellectual.” This is why arguing on the internet is usually a waste of time, because people would rather argue against something stupid that you didn’t say than confront what you did say.
What I said (mildly re-arranged) was “Mormonism does not have a long tradition of valuing learning and scholarship,” readily noting that this was a wild generalization. I might be wrong; as I willingly admit, my opinion is colored by a handful of cases of stifling academic freedom, plus no personal knowledge of any such tradition (plus some personal knowledge of actual Mormons). I haven’t seen any evidence here to the contrary, just a few anecdotes from partisans.
But anyway, I’m done with it; if anyone would like to enter such evidence into the comments, be my guest.
June 23rd, 2008 at 6:30 pm
I have trained with and worked with a number of Mormons within the nuclear community, and in my experience they were all very professional and did not wear their religion on their shoulder.
They never tried to convert anyone, and they were all very intelligent, motivated, kind, open-minded to science, and in general just a pretty good bunch of guys.
I don’t know if that is a representative sampling, but as in most things in life, it is unkind to make overbroad generalizations about groups of people.
June 23rd, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I live near a small locality with a pretty large population density of Mormons. I also know a few. They are very polite and nice people. They are very willing to help, have a strong sense of work, of charity and relief. The Mormons were on the ground in New Orleans two days before Bush’s Dept. Homeland Offense (sorry, but I just hate this monstrosity Bush created) deployed FEMA. Further their relief actions were of a logistical efficiency that put the Feds to shame.
I will also say that the theology of Mormonism, which I know a bit about, is utterly absurd. Mormonism takes the absurdism of Christianity and amplifies it in unique ways. One part of it is that they have “prophets” who make pronouncements about things which are beyond question. If I had to make a general observation it is that Mormons are admonished to not ask questions which are outside the boundaries of their faith or what the prophets tell them. This is not very conducive for intellectual development in my opinion.
The religion is comparatively new and is evolving as have all religions. I has in the 20th century evolved to model itself in a neo-orthodox form. I presume this is to make it assume the respectable forms of mainline Protestantism. It may change in time and could become less authoritarian than it has been. It is the fastest growing religion in America and the world. The next fastest growing religion in America is Islam, which has its dubious elements to it as well.
Lawrence B. Crowell
June 23rd, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Otis, The Mind of God by Paul Davies is absolutely the classic of intelligent philosophy about “God” in the non-tradition-bound way that is based on reasoning and asking questions (how Aristotle or Plato would handle “Is there a God?” etc.) I don’t agree as much with what he says in “Jackpot” but thanks for the link. But although I like how you bring in philosophical theism, I don’t understand why you relate that to the Bible. The Bible is a collection of sayings of an ancient culture which was more advanced in thought and intuition than their neighbors, but by no means should be considered some sort of message from God. Clara’s challenges are valid as far as that part goes.
FSM, your point about nothingness is one way that modal realism gets off the ground. But they think that “everything exists”, not that this universe is somehow special to exist rather than others. (Look up def. and discussion from my link.) Your points above do nothing to explain why the laws would be just like they are, with the exact constants they are, and not some variation. Who can say with a straight face, considering the scope of what mathematics could define and describe, that the *particulars* of our laws are the unique expression of existence? That’s as silly as saying that the number 23 is reified into real brass numerals among all the numbers, for no good reason.
Yet I have explained elsewhere what sort of horrible problems come from that idea. Hence neither uniqueness nor the opposite extreme of everything existing works, instead there needs to be some ordering principle that selects out some or at least one possible worlds. To me, it’s no coincidence that this example is life-friendly (for example, just the right value of alpha, which has no intrinsic mathematical reason to be about 1/137.) But saying that it is like that because we are here is the fallacy of causal retrodiction. The outcome (like our being here) is of course going to be consistent with whatever initial conditions there were, so outcomes can’t “explain” the initial conditions.
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:53 pm
#59 Clark -
When someone who isn’t even Mormon tries to throw you a cookie, it’s best not to throw that person under the bus…. especially when that non-Mormon went to school just north of you….
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-36617644.html
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,665194587,00.html
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:13 pm
This post contains some data that illustrates the relatively strong Mormon culture of education, technoloy and bioethics:
http://transfigurism.org/community/blogs/lincoln_cannon/archive/2008/06/15/4648.aspx
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Geoff, I looked up the original report. BYU graduated in 2000 only 47 physics bachelors. I’m shocked that figure is so much higher than everyone else. So I can but apologize. I honestly thought every place else did tons better. But we’re usually graduating 2 - 3x more physicists. And I know most of my graduating class went on to either prominent jobs or very excellent grad programs. I’d assume that is typical. I’d have thought MIT would have graduated more but they only had 35 (although their program is obviously better). Harvard was the only one that bested us with 59.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Sean, I apologize if I was reading too much into what you said. However you certainly did appear to be coming off as judging the group in a hasty way. But perhaps I’m guilty of the same in how I reacted to your words.
June 24th, 2008 at 4:56 am
Neil B
I don’t agree with the characterization of my comments as being related to modal realism. The laws I was referencing would be applicable to any rational philosophical school.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:44 am
I think everyone is getting mixed up on what “science” is. Mormons do really well in “hard” sciences, especially when talking about freedom of inquiry. What Mormons have a harder time with is “soft” sciences because they are often based more on theory than actual results. If you look at the BYU challenges to academics you will notice most, if not all, come from the arts, English, or history. These are notorious for getting a lot of people upset (and not just Mormons). This shouldn’t be surprising actually even if you stick with stereotypes. Mormons have always been known for practicality over theory.
June 24th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
[…] negatively view evangelicals based on ignorance. I also disagree with Sean Carroll’s opinion that academics dislike evangelicals because evangelicals dislike academia. Many evangelicals have […]
June 25th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
It’s also a problem with the precision of your statement. It’s not just people who are going to want to argue with you who are going to translate from “Mormonism does not have a long tradition of valuing learning and scholarship” into “Mormons are anti-intellectual” (and this isn’t the only problem with that statement). It’s also people who are inclined to agree with what you didn’t say. You can argue that’s not your responsibility, but that’d go over more sincerely if it weren’t a fairly short hop between the two statements.
So if this evidence were to exist, what would it look like?
Also, from which evidence did you conclude “the trends are clear?”
It’s hard to discuss this, because it’s not really clear which cases have colored your opinion, but if it’s the Wikipedia entry, there’s a few things that can be said that I think can dovetail with the excellent points Clark made about BYU.
It’s correct to say that academic freedom is constrained at BYU in ways it isn’t constrained at other institutions, but it’s incorrect to characterize it as a heavy, leaden blanket thrown over the entirety of scholarship. The constraints are more or less fenced-off areas of discourse (described fairly clearly in the numbered points under the “University standards” section in the wikipedia article). As Clark said, it’s one thing to argue that this is problematic for anyone strictly loyal to universally unfettered inquiry, and if this is the foundation of suspicion among many academics regarding Mormon educational institutions (in the literal organizational sense as well as the general social sense), it’s reasonably founded.
The problem with generalizing this real suppression of dissent to the entire realm of scholarship is that the rest of the field is so wide, and there really aren’t high profile examples I’m aware of in this much bigger realm (Evensen’s case is something of an exception for me, but this trips over a pretty torrid and tangled triangle involving not only the LDS church and the arts but the arts and academia, so I don’t think it’s germane to this discssion). It’s also arguable and probably demonstrable that serious scholarship is not only largely unfettered, it’s encouraged and supported.
And this is true to limits that I suspect might surprise some people. Sean asked for “important instances in which academic freedom was put before doctrinal correctness.” As is probably not surprising, in the life sciences there’s a history of some conflict between the church and the academy, in particular the fault line between evolution and creationism. But near as I can tell, even when visiting LDS apostles were giving sermons at BYU on how evolution doesn’t line up with LDS cannon (at least as late as 1980), faculty were and still are teaching it. This is sometimes surprising to *me*, given how silly BYU as an institution can be about small matters like facial hair. But I think it’s at least in part because as an institution, the university and the church recognize that the science *isn’t* a small matter. At least inside of LDS academia, there’s a real degree of cultural respect for scientific disciplines, and an understanding that even where there’s apparent conflicts with religious teachings, an accomplished student is going to have to know their stuff by the standards of the scientific discipline.
I think that’s clearly true in how it handles issues central to the church itself (doctrinal and moral issues). Outside of these areas this is much less clear.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:45 am
Sean:
You are right — that is why BYU (mostly Mormon students) sends so many of its students on to get Ph.D.s around the country (BYUn has very few Ph.D. programs of its own). OK, I am being facetious.
BYU came in 10th in the country for the most students going on to get PhDs — right after UCLA and before MIT. That certainly attests to your thesis. More details here: http://byunews.byu.edu/releases/archive06/Aug/graduates/table.gif (and NSF also has the numbers, though I could not find the latest report)
June 30th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Evangelical Christians do not have a long history of honoring study & learning? Hmmm….. Exactly who built Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other colleges?
Certainly there are some traditions with Evangelicalism that are anti-intellectual, but not the whole of conservative Protestantism. I think the answer is a bit messier than someone wants to believe.
July 1st, 2008 at 8:46 am
[…] at Cosmic Variance, Sean Carroll opines that academics dislike evangelicals because evangelicals dislike academia. However, most […]
July 1st, 2008 at 11:26 am
#51 Dave brought up an important point in comparing academics’ perception toward Mormons to the perception of the overall population toward them. Why the perception is such might still be interesting but have nothing to do with academia without a control group. Now if academics have a statistically different opinion than an otherwise similar demographic group, then that is a starting point for a discussion involving academia. Otherwise if the queried group is redheads you would be trying to figure out what about redheads makes them anti-mormon. Or how does the perception change between academic departments including a Mormon (or Jew or Evangelical, etc) and those without?