Religion reduces science literacy in America

So, they specifically avoided political hot-button issues to maintain the integrity of the results.

Linky

So, even after correcting for other factors generally associated with scientific literacy there is still an association between fundamentalist religion and scientific illiteracy. This of course suggets that there is something about religiosity that is antithetical to scientific literacy. I wonder which direction the causal arrow runs (assuming there is one), is there something about being a religious fundamentalist which immunizes against scientific learning or is scientific illiteracy somehow a prerequisite for falling closer to the religious fundamentalist end of the slider.

Of course this assumes that there is not some unaccounted for confounding variable that causes both. If that is the case what do you think it could be?

I, as a person who thinks that empirical and theological approaches to knowledge are not compatible, am not surprised that these two types of thinking appear to be in conflict. Theological reasoning, at least of the biblical fundamentalist sort, is a 'top-down' reasoning where the truth is laid out in advance and all conflicting truths either have to be rationalized to fit into the umbrella or discarded as inaccurate without any possibility of change to the overlaying structure. This is different from empirical truths which are 'bottom-up'*. In the empirical approach conflicting truths can either accommodated by changing the overlaying structure or tearing it down and building a new one.

In the places where these two kinds of reasoning come into clear conflict (for example creationism vs. evolution) it's unsurprising that there is such a discrepancy in scientific literacy but this study appears to show that this discrepancy carries over to all areas of science. I would like to know what you all make of this.
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*I realize, of course, that empiricism has it's own set of 'top-down' assumptions which are at the core unalterable, but these are of a sort that also apply to theological thinking and not really the point of what I'm getting at, though I don't expect that you avoid this topic of conversation.

 

i guess i'll go along with the whole "God sucks, atheism rules" now that i've seen this

 

I'm no where near familiar with the subject, but my understanding of the current state of brain science indicates that the brain is very plastic, and every learning experience shapes our development. That would suggest that it's possible for one mode of learning and reasoning to impede or otherwise limit the ability of to accept or conduct other forms of learning or reasoning. The 'use it or lose it' hypothesis.

I think, however, that it would be much more likely that learning opportunities are simply culturally limited (e.g. family, home school, appreciation for education) for Sectarian Protestants and Catholics. There is no room made for learning science, or the emphasis is poor.

 

There are a few things to note. First, WEIT repeatedly implies that religion reduces scores, which isn't at all what the study says. The study found a correlation among some of the more fundamentalist christian subgroups of religious people and low scores on a scientific literacy test.

If you read the actual study, note Table 2, which shows results of the analysis adjusted for other covariates, like age, race, income, etc. The analysis used other Protestants, respondents with no religious identification, and non-Christians as the comparison group in this analysis because the scores for these groups were "virtually identical". This means that when you adjust for demographic information, the scores of non believers are essentially indistinguishable from the scores of Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.

I don't think a propensity towards religious belief necessarily hampers scientific competence. Science is a process and one can engage in proper science while believing whatever the hell one wants.

That being said, I know plenty of religious folk who don't care much for the science. I also know plenty of nonreligious folk who don't care much for the science. The thing these two groups seem to have in common is a mistrust of scientists, and not necessarily science itself.

 

It would be interesting to know if there was some consistency in which particular questions were given wrong answers by each of the groups. For instance, though they are not hot buttons, in and of themselves, a couple of them can be considered in direct conflict with religious beliefs. I'm thinking of questions 9, 10 & 12 specifically.

It would also be interesting to know how the questions were posed and what the format was. Multiple choice? Simple question and answer? Though a literal bibleist might be fully aware of the basic science behind the Big Bang and continental drift, he might intentionally give an answer that reflects his opposition to the theories if the questions were posed in such a way that offered him this option.

 

I'm not at school any more, so I don't have access to the article at the moment. I recall that it did mention a high internal correlation, which suggests that people were fairly consistent in their answers. I'm not sure if this was applied to individually or across all test takers within a specific group. Your second point is interesting too.

I agree.

I think one problem is that science is often presented as though truth is its goal when it isn't. Science is the pursuit of plausible explanations. Instances where truth and plausible explanation happen to coincide is just a happy accident. That and the pursuit of plausible explanation is slightly less romantic than the pursuit of truth.

 

Faith alone isn't enough for most people, so they have to concoct god of the gaps concepts to give god a real place in their world. The problem is, there aren't very many gaps for god to be in anymore. We know where we came from. We know where morality comes from. We know why 'bad things happen to good people'. We know why some people heal while others don't. We know what causes disasters and weather. All of these things previously attributed to a supernatural deity have natural explanations. Even the so-called 'moment of creation' has a fairly convincing scientific hypothesis. In short, the role for god in peoples' understanding of the universe has shrunk to nothing... assuming they're familiar with all the explanations.

If you're ignorant of hypothesis on abiogenesis and the scientific theory of evolution, you don't know where we came from and can still attribute that to god. If you're ignorant of evolutionary behaviorism and sociology and group psychology and philosophy, you don't know where morality comes from and can still attribute that to god. If you're ignorant of cause and effect and statistics, you don't know why bad things happen to good people and can still keep asking god about it. If you're ignorant of modern medicine, you don't know why some people heal and some don't and can attribute the healing to god. If you know about volcanology (not to be confused with vulcanology, the study of Vulcans) and meteorology/climatology, you don't know what cause disasters and bad weather and can attribute it to a vengeful god. General ignorance allows for people to make the fallacy of the god of the gaps, allowing them to replace "I don't know" with "God did it".

It's tremendously dangerous.

 

I think the OP raises the question of whether this ignorance is due to a lack of exposure to scientific principles or some sort of antithetic lock-out mechanism upon exposure, or whether it's not ignorance at all but a willful denial in the face of understanding .

My real interest lies in the "why" and what we can do about the problem because, as you say, it's tremendously dangerous when a significant amount of the population either shuts out or outright rejects all the evidence which fills in these gaps.

God did it, God is in charge, God is punishing us, God will protect us, it's God's plan, God will save his faithful, and all the other beliefs of the irresponsibly religious, prevents us from moving forward on agendas critical to our survival. It doesn't matter if they deny evolution as long as they can be impressed upon to accept the fact that God is not going to throw a Hail Mary pass in the end of the 4th quarter -that the rise in the earth's temperature will continue to pose dire consequences for us if we do nothing, that the earth does not have unlimited resources, and the world's poor will not be provided for unless governments take action against poverty.

If they can't be impressed upon to understand this, their influence in policy making needs to eradicated somehow.

 

so what about the argument that all evil comes from man's own doing and that God only gave us free will, thumbs, and a soul? nobody's blaimg their problems on God, but they still believe in a supernatural being/Creator

 

It's probably at least as scientifically valid as the bulk of string theory.

 

woah... did religion just tie with science in TFP?! fuck me we must be getting all superstitious now

 

So what about it? I think most of the non-devout feel this way. God doesn't impact their daily lives and they don't look to him to fix the problems we encounter. If this is truly the extent of their belief, I would consider them equal to the non-believers, for purposes of the survey.

 

just because the rat in the maze can't see whoever is doing the experiment doesn't mean that nobody is watching.