David Cameron
March 2005
Technology Review

. . .MIT is home to more than a dozen evangelical Christian groups . . . Harvard chaplain and religion professor Peter Gomes told the Boston Globe in 2003 that “there are probably more evangelicals (at Harvard) than at any time since the 17th century.” And this trend has found its way inside the walls of the world’s greatest bastion of science and rationality . . .(snip)


MIT’s board of chaplains currently is made up of three Jews, one Roman Catholic, five mainline Protestants, five Protestant evangelicals, a Mormon, a Muslim, two Hindus, and a Buddhist.

Then there are the more than 30 registered student-led religious organizations. A few of those are ethnic specific, such as the Chinese Bible Fellowship. But most of the organizations represent a denomination of a world religion or, in the case of the student-led group Atheists, Agnostics, and Humanists, of a nonreligion. Twenty-three groups represent different branches of Christianity, including Christian Science and Mormonism, while the remaining groups cover everything from Bahaism to Paganism.

Attendance at religious services and group membership are rising as well. Father Paul Reynolds, MIT’s Roman Catholic chaplain, has seen attendance at Sunday mass services double to about 400 over the last eight years. Rev. Kevin Ford, team leader for the evangelical group Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, has seen a dramatic increase since the early 1990s . . .

FULL TEXT (http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/03/issue/news_feature_faithful.asp)

While this is a worrying trend that appears to be due to specific targeting by religious groups, the approximately 500 particpants as stated in the article still only amounts to 5% of the usual 10,000 enrollments each year at MIT.

It still looks like 95% of these potential scientists are not sufficiently motivated to partake of these religious intrusions.

Worrying trend? Why? It's postive. Lessens the chance of Lysenkoism among other things.

And what is this about "specific targeting"?

MIT students too stupid to figure out what is real and what is a con?

You are right, it is very reassuring that 95% of these scientifically oriented students appear not to be interested in religion.

Where are you? In a time warp back in the Soviet Union?

People can't be believers to do science? We wouldn't have much science if that were true.

People can't be believers to do science?

Apparently at MIT only about 5%.

We wouldn't have much science if that were true.

But most of the science we do have is because scientists generally are not believers.

Science and religion do require opposing attitudes and methods of thinking, i.e. one is faith based while the other is fact based. So it should come as little surprise that those in the scientific arena tend not to be religious, and those who are strongly religious tend not to be scientific.

I find this report totally irrelevant. There don't appear to be significantly more groups of this nature than there were when I was at University in Yorkshire, northern England twenty years ago. I find the anecdotal nature of the apparent increase in attendance unconvincing. Also it seems to me that the membership of these groups is likely to be smaller since the number of groups is larger.

I don't know how ecumenicality of belief avoids Lysenkoism, Muhlenberg.

I can understand why there are so many Mormons in Ivy League schools. The LDS church puts a lot of emphasis on education. LDS parents participate highly in their children’s education. In Utah we spend a lot less than other places per student but our test scores always beat the national average quite handily. One of our tenants is "the Glory of God is intelligence". We believe that one of the reasons we are here is to learn and grow. That means we learn all way can about our world. We believe in truth no matter where it takes us. Any proven fact is as good as church doctrine. There are many highly successful Mormons in business, science, technology, education, politics, sports, entertainment and the arts. During the 2002 Winter Olympics the producers of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies were amazed at such a vast talent pool that exists in Utah from a relatively small population base. Many CEO's are LDS of some of the largest corporations. Five Senators are LDS including Harry Reid the Democrat minority leader, along with Orin Hatch one of the most powerful Senators. Not to mention Mitt Romney the governor of Massachusetts. Twelve congressmen are LDS and there are many past and present advisors to many Presidents. It is because education is such a huge part of our church culture.

Senator Orin Hatch of Utah is a ......... Mormon!??!



:P

Exactly the same thing applies to the Jewish faith, by and large; a lot of emphasis on education.

Silas

Yes we are very similar to Jews in that regard.

As long as that education doesn't conflict with the religion. Being religious is one thing, but the evangelicals often refuse to acknowledge certain areas of science even though the methods are the same in all areas of study. I don't see how it is possible to be a biologist without knowing how evolution works.

spiderman...well those people, few in number, won't go into science will they? There are around 2 billion Christians in the world. Half are Catholic-a faith with an illustrious history of scientific research. Evangelical Christians are a mere splinter of Christendom. Then there are 1.3 billion Moslems followed by Hindus and Buddhists around.

Limiting science to nonbelievers leaves a very small, very self-absorded and potentially very destructive (utilitarian techocrats types) pool from which to draw scientists.

Michael Faraday, arguably the best emperical scientist ever, was a religious nut. A Sandemanian. Believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Said his faith is what drove him to seek order in the physical world. So even the most hard core can be very productive.


"We ought to value the privilege of knowing God's truth far beyond anything we can have in this world"--Michael Faraday

Yes, but Faraday wasn't researching biology. I wouldn't say we should limit who can go into science, but that it seems certain ideologies are self-limiting.

*************
M*W: Aside from our religious opposition, I've been to Utah several times and really appreciate the LDS Genealogy Library. The missionaries were so very willing to be helpful and spent all the time I needed to find the data I was looking for. In the city, Mormons welcomed the tourists and were very hospitable. SLC is clean, the air is fresh, and the valley of the Wasatch was amazing. Also, the food was really good. It's a great place to visit or to live there, and I can't wait to go back! Oh, and I have a lot of respect and admiration for Senator Orrin Hatch.

Medicine Women

I appreciate your sentiments. I'm glad you had a good time in Utah. I hope you will come back soon.

Silas...5% went to church 20 years ago? Wow...when I was in college a decade earlier, I never met anyone who went. Took some courses at Yale Divinity and I doubt 5% of them went. If they did, I haven't a clue which church they attended.

Humans do usually take a break from attending church services during mating season--roughly from the age of 16 to 30. Doesn't mean they don't have faith, just that several other things have their attention.

Didn't say religious belief avoids Lysenkoism, merely that it lessens the chances. No accident Lysenko lived where he did.

If all one acknowledges is the here and now, that becomes paramount. The highest authority is the individual and/or the state. Much easier to be a utilitarian if one has no faith. That is why states such as the one in which Lysenko was raised do all they can to stamp out religion.

I've no idea if they went to church or not, but there was a CathSoc and other Church societies as well as groups who explored other religious alternatives. I didn't know any of these people myself either, but the societies existed and they had members. If you were the sort of person inclined to join such a society, you were likely to find that nearly all your friends would be believers. I do find it hard to believe that at a theological college nobody you knew went to church.

Didn't say religious belief avoids Lysenkoism, merely that it lessens the chances. No accident Lysenko lived where he did.

If all one acknowledges is the here and now, that becomes paramount. The highest authority is the individual and/or the state. Much easier to be a utilitarian if one has no faith. That is why states such as the one in which Lysenko was raised do all they can to stamp out religion.There's a total non-sequitur here - the damage done to Russian agriculture by Lysenko's erroneous genetic theories had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the Soviet State was an atheist one. It was because the State (specifically Stalin) was not sufficiently versed in science that they gave so much credence to someone who was undeserving of any.

Silas...Technology Review, the Boston Globe and, I assumed others, have found this worthy of comment.

I posted it to get a handle on how many Minei Izrailovich Gubel'man (aka E Yaroslavsky) types are on this forum.

Speaking of Catholics, Ohm, Volta, Coulomb, Ampere and Galvani were all members of that faith. Not just nominal members either but what could be considered devout.

Why the heck did anyone name units and modes of electricity after people like that?

spidergoat writes "Yes, but Faraday wasn't researching biology."

When then, how about the monk who developed genetics? That close enough to biology for a claim to be made that people of faith can be trusted to be biologists?

You mean Gregor Mendel? He wasn't crippled by fundamentalism. For a long time, religious schools were the only schools. They might not have realized the theological implications of what they were discovering.

I don't think being religious and scientific is incompatable. If religion is true, then it has nothing to fear from scientific truth.

Yes. But now we are shading this into, well, some Christians can be trusted. Even a celibate monk in a garden.

Catholic doctrine has always been that faith and science cannot be incompatible because there is only one truth. Yet when secularists want an example of religious intolerance to science, they always run right to Galileo (which prompts Catholics and other people of faith to start a history lesson on the Church's endorsement of Copernicus, the politics of the Reformation and why the church had set itself up as a sort of Royal Society to vet scientific research).

Fact is, there are very few Calvin types around anymore--they are a minority of a minority of Protestants and Protestants are just about half of Christendom.

spidergoat...They may not have realized the theological implications of what they were discovering?

My gosh. They were theologicans, many of them. Of course they knew. The Catholic Priest (Georges Lemaitre) who proposed the Big Bang Theory of the creation of the universe certainly was not unaware of the religious implications.

Fundamentalists such as Faraday did science because they knew there was one truth and they wanted to uncover the empirical manifestations of it. They already knew the metaphysical truth.

I was referring mostly to the creationism/evolution debacle.
Can evangelicals keep up with modern evolutionary biology with the same zeal as Mendel?
What if they uncover something contrary to their dogma? Like instead of appearing fully formed and perfect, humans descended from an ape-like creature over millions of years with all the flaws inherent to that process? Sure, the Catholics said "that faith and science cannot be incompatible because there is only one truth", but in practice, they tend to be closed-minded about it.

I'm not saying Christians can't be scientists. It's just the common interpretations of the bible which have a certain intertia that needs to be overcome if science is to proceed.

Galileo is a great example of a revealed scientific truth that the Church could not accept. Why didn't they accept it (the earth revolving around the sun)?

We believe in truth no matter where it takes us. Any proven fact is as good as church doctrine..
just curious,do Mormons accept evolution as a fact?

Scorpius

The LDS Church remains officially neutral on the subject of evolution. At Brigham Young University which is a church owned school they do teach the theory of evolution. We believe that if evolution happened then it was God's way of creation. The six days that were mentioned in Genesis are referring to six periods of time, not literally six of our days. These periods could have been billions of years to us. It is just like if the Big Bang did in fact happen then it was God who caused it and set the Universe in motion. We believe that God does things in natural ways. He controls all laws of physics, but he does not break them. He works with them and commands them. To us science complements our religious beliefs. We believe that scientific discoveries are inspired by God for the benefit of man.

That's a very sensible attitude.