An argument against God

But Mr. Laplace, what on earth? I have no need of this hypothesis, said the astronomer Pierre Simmons Marquis de Laplace when he explained to Napoleon his theory of the formation of the solar system

By all accounts, scientists are human. This seemingly trivial observation requires a very strong explanation. When it comes to non-scientific fields, many scientists feel the need to express themselves. This is the same journey that led Kuhn (1970) to propose the idea that the scientific initiative is examined primarily in the social context in which it occurs, a position known as "relational rationalism" by John Castey (1989). Despite the fact that Kuhn then examined ways to establish a series of paradigms that would be "better", his philosophy of science is fundamentally superior to any idea of ​​knowledge about external reality.
Continuing the argument a little further leads to the absurdity of Paul Firband (1975), a relative irrationalist who believes that there is no such thing as the scientific method, and that science has the same existential status as astrology and mysticism.
As a practical scientist, I could not possibly disagree more with Kuhn or Pirband. I do not mean to deny the fact that science is a human activity, and as such, it is subject to the whole spectrum of human weakness, including irrational and emotional thought, not to mention cheating (Gould, 1981). Furthermore, Mada remains by far the only set of tools for studying and knowing the natural world and predicting its behavior. Moreover, science is the human activity with the greatest capacity for self-correction when tested against the real world. This is why, for example, scientists are so stubbornly opposed to allowing equal time for the teaching of creationism alongside Darwinism in biology courses.
There is, nevertheless, one island of irrationalism that has hardly been touched by scientists, a charming continent known as religion.
In the words of Probin (1988), if you are a scientist and you go to church you must check your brain upon entering the church. In what follows, I will explore why these two examples of scientists dealing with religion. I hope to develop a brief discussion about the dynamics of the phenomenon, as well as offer reasonable suggestions for a solution.

Scientists still do not believe in God
Edward Larson, the historian of science at the University of Georgia, and Larry Whitman, a Washington Times writer, published a very interesting article in the April 3, 1997 issue of Nature. The title of the article was 'Scientists Still Keeping Faith'. In the book, the two scientists try to repeat a classic experiment carried out by psychologist James Leuba in 1916. Leuba tested the hypothesis that the more educated people are, the less they believe in God. He asked a thousand American scientists about their beliefs and his results confirmed the view that scientists as a group are less likely to believe in God than the general public. Luba attributed this to the better education of the scientists and tried to predict that as time passed and the general education of the public increased, religious beliefs would become more and more rare.
Larson Whitman tried to repeat his experiment as close as possible. For example, they chose the same number of scientists, according to the same division between biologists, physicists and mathematicians, and took the sample from the same source used by Luba - the "Americans in Science" guide. The attempt to repeat the original experiment caused some problems, as the authors themselves admitted. For example, in Luba's time the sample of a thousand scientists represented 20 percent of all those listed in the guide, while today this number represents only 3 percent. This increases the likelihood of statistical errors compared to the other two studies. Furthermore, Luba distinguished between "great" scientists and ordinary scientists, and found that belief in God was distinctly low among the great scientists. Such a diagnosis no longer exists in the manual. Nevertheless, it was possible to rank the scientists according to several criteria (the time devoted to study versus the time devoted to research, the number and quality of articles, etc.). Larson and Whitman did not seek to force their study to be a mirror image of the initial study, but as close as possible. There is also some discussion about the level of accuracy of the quoted questions. Larson Whitman wanted to follow Luba's definitions of God as "Hearer of prayers and Healer of the sick". They sensed, however, that some of the interviewees would answer differently if a less traditional and more modern definition of the definition of God was given. Maybe. Unfortunately, they had to choose whether to replicate research done 80 years ago or start from scratch. It seems that the attempt of the two to wait for Luba's research can be disputed.
In answer to the question "Do you believe in a personal God", the result was quite clear as they wanted, but their interpretation is more open compared to the alternative views. The fact is, the scientists haven't changed their mind much. True, the physicists took the place of the biologists as a bunch of atheists, but more or less the same percentage of scientists reported atheism in Luba's 1916 study. Larson Whitman's conclusion is that the scientists kept their faith after 80 years. My conclusion can be that most scientists are faithless people. Why? As also reported by Luba, scientists are less inclined than the general public to believe in God, and this figure has remained unchanged over the past 80 years. It seems more logical to use the general public as a "control group" and claim that the control group and the experimental group maintained their ratio between believers and non-believers, than to turn things around by defining that the believing scientists maintained a minority position within their groups.
Second, Luba's original hypothesis is very difficult to test by simply repeating his experiment. His argument was that the more widespread the education, the less inclined people would be to believe in God. Since scientists are supposed to be among the most learned people, his decision to test scientists makes sense, and the results are consistent with the hypothesis. In any case, to repeat the research after 80 years some tricks are required. One of the emphasized assumptions is that knowledge accumulates, and that education improves, for scientists across the spectrum. But this can be investigated. While our knowledge of the physical universe has indeed improved over the course of the twentieth century, the general education level of most scientists is equal to or even somewhat less than what scientists had 80 years ago. Our general view of the universe has not changed dramatically (unlike in Galileo's time). We then already had the theory of evolution, astronomy had long ago removed the earth from the center of the world and the center of the galaxy, and the ancient age of the earth became accepted knowledge when Luba performed the experiment. Quantum theory and molecular biology really caused a revolution in physics and biology respectively, but did they change anything for the educated person, and his understanding that there is very little place for God in the real universe?
Furthermore, Luba's original prediction was based on a logical assumption that educating the general public would lead to progress and eventually everyone would understand that God's place is in the same place as astrology or telepathy. There are two problems with this line of thought. First, despite the fact that more people than ever are graduating from college, belief in astrology, parapsychology, and the occult is at an all-time high. It is clear that there is no correlation between the general public's level of general knowledge (as opposed to scientific knowledge) and their ability to distinguish between imagination and reality. As for science education, while it rose in the XNUMXs and XNUMXs as a result of a national effort to catch up with the Russians in the space race, any school science teacher will tell you that the standard of science education today is unsatisfactory.
Second, what is the practical meaning of "be more educated"? My experience in the American education system is that this translates into the acquisition of very unique knowledge in one field, usually a practical field such as business administration. What is the connection between your ability to run a bottom-line company and a profound aspect into the eternal question about life, the universe and everything (Adams 1986)? I don't blame Luba for anything. He approached the problem from the optimistic point of view of one who had witnessed the work of Darwin and Freud. The education he had in mind is first of all universal, wide-ranging, and will almost certainly lead to a better understanding of who we are, and where we came from. The vision was incomparably more liberal than the most liberal education currently under fire in the US. Since then the Republican Party and the Christian Right have more power. (Shoris 1997).

In a 1997 survey, scientists were asked about their belief in the immortality of the human soul (foundation in most religions). The result was exactly according to the line of Luba's prediction. The number of believers dropped from 51 percent to 38 percent. The last question reflected the desire for immortal life. While 34 percent of Luba's interviewees said they wanted to be immortal in some way, only 10 percent of today's scientists said yes. Furthermore, although the answer to the central question has not changed significantly, there is much evidence to support the conclusion that belief in a personal God similar to that found in mainstream religions has declined among scientists (but not among the general public). Furthermore, the same low proportion of scientists seem to believe in God, but their concept of such a being has become more refined and more abstract (usually the first step towards atheism (Smith 1991).
Given this, I feel justified in reversing Larson Whitman's conclusion. Instead of concluding that the scientists "keep their faith" (implying that this is not an irrational thing to do), I would suggest that the two studies dramatically point to a general failure of the education system. We do not become more educated, we simply acquire more knowledge. There is a very basic difference between the two. Ironically, Luba's research contributed to this sad state of affairs. His findings were one of the causes of William James Byrne's crusade against the teaching of evolution in the 1925s, as cited in the famous Trail trial in Tennessee in XNUMX (the monkey trial).

Massimo Pigalucci, Skeptic.com

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