May 15, 2021 11:06 PM
https://academictimes.com/studying-scien...religious/
EXCERPTS: . . . a new study that breaks with the traditional claim that exposure to science leads people away from religion.
The study, published April 29 in Sociology of Religion, found that while 11% of students in inquiry-based majors such as philosophy become more secular, only 8% of students in majors that apply knowledge, such as education, do. This effect holds true even for white, conservative Protestants, who are more likely to secularize if they study an inquiry-based field...
[...] The traditional claim that studying science leads to loss of religiosity stems from the idea that science and religion have different views on the natural world and its development — systems that people claim are incompatible, according to John H. Evans, author of the paper and professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego. "Therefore," he said, "the idea would be that people who learn biology or physics in college would lose their faith because they're being taught a different set of — a different approach to — claims about the natural world."
This research, Evans said, shows that those assumptions are inaccurate. [...] "It's not anything about methods of making claims about the natural world," Evans said. "Rather, it's about learning to question the assumptions of what you've learned to this point in your life."
The college majors with the highest effect on secularization were women's studies, anthropology, physics and philosophy, while the majors with the lowest effect were physical education, nursing, theology and kinesiology. Pre-law studies ranked the absolute lowest.
[...] "One thing that I have repeatedly found in numerous research projects," Evans said, "is that any conflict between religion and science in contemporary America is most likely over morals, and not about fact claims about nature. … If you look at contemporary conflicts between religion and science, they are typically more motivated by moral and trust issues than anything having to do with facts about the natural world."
Evans cautioned, though, that college students are a very particular subset of the general population... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: . . . a new study that breaks with the traditional claim that exposure to science leads people away from religion.
The study, published April 29 in Sociology of Religion, found that while 11% of students in inquiry-based majors such as philosophy become more secular, only 8% of students in majors that apply knowledge, such as education, do. This effect holds true even for white, conservative Protestants, who are more likely to secularize if they study an inquiry-based field...
[...] The traditional claim that studying science leads to loss of religiosity stems from the idea that science and religion have different views on the natural world and its development — systems that people claim are incompatible, according to John H. Evans, author of the paper and professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego. "Therefore," he said, "the idea would be that people who learn biology or physics in college would lose their faith because they're being taught a different set of — a different approach to — claims about the natural world."
This research, Evans said, shows that those assumptions are inaccurate. [...] "It's not anything about methods of making claims about the natural world," Evans said. "Rather, it's about learning to question the assumptions of what you've learned to this point in your life."
The college majors with the highest effect on secularization were women's studies, anthropology, physics and philosophy, while the majors with the lowest effect were physical education, nursing, theology and kinesiology. Pre-law studies ranked the absolute lowest.
[...] "One thing that I have repeatedly found in numerous research projects," Evans said, "is that any conflict between religion and science in contemporary America is most likely over morals, and not about fact claims about nature. … If you look at contemporary conflicts between religion and science, they are typically more motivated by moral and trust issues than anything having to do with facts about the natural world."
Evans cautioned, though, that college students are a very particular subset of the general population... (MORE - missing details)
