Often I hear atheists say things like “How can you be a scientist and a theist?” or “Most scientists are atheists.”
Being a good skeptic, I always want my beliefs to line up with the facts about the real world. So what are the facts about the general question “How many professional scientists are atheists?” Also, because I love philosophy, I have decided to include the data for philosophers as well.
A recent study by Elaine Howard Ecklund tries to answer the question. Her methods seem very good. She surveyed almost 1,700 professional scientists and asked them about their “spiritual” beliefs. Over half seemed to be completely non-religious, and only about 14% were part of a conservative religious tradition. However, this number is still smaller than the different, earlier study of National Academy of sciences scientists found that only about 7% of NAS scientists expressed a belief in a “personal” (what does that mean?!?) god. Obviously, these two studies measure different things. Ecklund studied a broad range of scientists (anyone who taught at one of 21 universities), while the NAS studied only top-flight “honorific” scientists-members of the NAS. (I am in no way saying that earning a PhD and landing a teaching job at a university is not a great accomplishment-far from it. However election into the NAS is an “above-and-beyond” type of accomplishment).
For philosophers, there seem to be even more explicit atheists. Of the top 99 philosophy departments in the world, about 75% are “atheists, agnostics, or lean toward atheism,” while only 15% are “theists or lean towards theism.”
What do these numbers mean? They are simply measurements of the beliefs of professional scientists and philosophers, so I do not accept them alone as a reason why atheism is right. However, I believe that a justified true belief about the world, is that no religion has presented us with a coherent conception of a god. I got here by the use of human reason. Science certainly informs this view, but the philosophical process of reasoning helped me get here, too. I think that the numbers seem to communicate that we are on the right track, being atheists.
