Why do religious types think that scientists have an anti-religious agenda?

Question

I keep seeing questions & answers that suggest that a large portion of the religious community seriously believes that scientists are working collectively to prove that there is no God.

Seriously, I worry about this kind of belief. Is this really how people think? Does the search for knowledge mean disproving God in religious peoples' eyes?

Also, is this belief based purely on the idea that science is a potential threat to religious beliefs?

Answer 1

Because the overly-religious types want, need, to believe in the Bible as 100% truth. If every word is not true, then they would have to make decisions about which parts to ignore and which parts to believe. They either don't want to or don't know how to do that, so they invent their conspiracy theories to protect them from the fact that the majority of scientists of all religions just don't think that the Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago...and they have some pretty good evidence.

Watch this get a whole bunch of thumbs down.

Answer 2

I think the term "God of the gaps" explains the mentality best - they assume that if something has no explanation, it must be an act of God. Their entire concept of God lies in the unexplained. Unfortunately for them, science is always discovering, and the gaps in knowledge are becoming smaller. It poses a direct threat to their personal concept of God, though not to religion in general.

I think most religious people hold a more enlightened idea of God, but I'm always amazed at how many still cling to ancient myths.

Answer 3

Do they? I think you are generalizing; but its a good generalization. I see evolutionists lambasting christians all the time on the net; I see christians doing the same to proponents of evolution. There I go labeling creationists as christians as if all christians were creationists. On the other hand, most of the people lambasting creationists on the net aren't scientists.

I admit that I tend to equate science with atheism, existentialism etc because science is the study of physical processes: physical causes for physical effects; each time science discovers a physical cause, they are demonstrating that the guiding hand of God is unnecessary to explain existence - one less thing that God is responsible for. Not only have they provided a basic model of how humans and life on earth came about but are attempting to explain cosmology in the same terms. People feel threatened.

Scientists have been on the defensive, since before Newton, attacked by religion.

Many scientists are religious themselves, (Einstein, an excellent example), capable of participating in discovering the abundant processes that clearly do exist in life, which perhaps God is ultimately responsible for. Creation scientists, on the other hand, immediately declare, "Therefore, Super-Natural" cause, as soon as they do not immediately find a clear and discernible physical cause. This is fine and perhaps very beneficial for their own spiritual psych, but completely missing the point of science, which is to search for physical causes. Scientists then state the non validity of this so-called science and are labeled God haters, when most have reconciled the nature of science with their faith.

Science is not a search for Truth, it is a search for physical causes. Religion is not a search for truth, it is a search for super natural causes. Where the name calling comes in is that they both tend to think that 'they' are the search for Truth.

Answer 4

I don't think that scientists have an anti-religious agenda -- not all of them, anyway.

In fact, I know that the Catholic Church has long been a patron of science and of learning -- as evidenced by all those Catholic schools and universities out there.

I think the opposite is more often true -- it seems to me that many champions of science seem to think that religious people have an anti-science agenda.

Answer 5

There are MANY Christian scientists, and notable figures in the public eye.

Fred B. Balzar
Owen Brewster
Ralph Lawrence Carr
Thomas M. Davis
David Dreier
John Ehrlichman - Watergate Figure
Bob Goodlatte--(my Representative)
Henry Paulson
Charles H. Percy
Lamar S. Smith
Stansfield Turner
William Hedgcock Webster
John D. Works-An early, possibly the earliest, example of a Christian Scientist in the US Senate

Answer 6

I think religious types see science as a threat because religion has always been there to explain that which science could not by claiming those gaps in knowledge as belonging to god. But as the gaps in our knowledge get smaller there is less and less space for God, which means less and less reason for religion to be around. This makes them very nervous.

Answer 7

yes believe that some scientist have some anti religious agenda. here is a couple of articles from Chuck Colson describing what is happening.

The late Stephen Jay Gould at Harvard used to describe religion and science as occupying “non-overlapping magisterial authority,” or what he called NOMA. That is, science and religion occupied different “domains,” or areas of life, in which each held “the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution.”

There were many problems with Gould’s approach, but at least a lack of respect for religion and religious people wasn’t one of them. Not so with some of today’s scientists.

The New York Times reported on a conference recently held in Costa Mesa, California, that turned into the secular materialist equivalent of a revival meeting.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg told attendees that “the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief.” According to Weinberg, “anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization.”

Another Nobel laureate, chemist Sir Harold Kroto, suggested that the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion be given to Richard Dawkins for his new book The God Delusion.

Continuing the theme, Carolyn Porco of the Space Science Institute called for teaching “our children from a very young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty.”

In case you were in doubt about which worldview would inform this “catechesis,” she then added: “It is already so much more glorious and awesome—and even comforting—than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know.”

Attempts at a Gould-like détente between religion and science didn’t sit well with this crowd. A presentation by Stanford biologist Joan Roughgarden on how to make evolution more acceptable to Christians was disrupted by Dawkins himself who called it “bad poetry.”

After a while, the rancor and stridency got to be too much for some of the attendees. One scientist called it a “den of vipers” where the only debate is “should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a baseball bat?”

Another, physicist Lawrence Krauss, chided them, saying “science does not make it impossible to believe in God . . . [and] we should recognize that fact . . . and stop being so pompous about it.”

Fat chance. What’s behind all of this animosity? It is a worldview known as “scientism,” the belief that there is no supernatural, only a material world. And it will not countenance any rivals. It is a “jealous god.”

As Weinberg’s comments illustrate, it regards any other belief system other than scientism as irrational and the enemy of progress. Given the chance, as in the former Soviet Union, it wants to eliminate its rivals. It is no respecter of pluralism.

But this really exposes the difference between the worldviews of these scientists and Christians. We welcome science; it’s the healthy exploration of God’s world. The greatest scientists in history have been Christians who believe science was possible only in a world that was orderly and created by God. We don’t rule out any natural phenomenon.

The naturalists, on the other hand, rule out even science that tends to show intelligence, because that might lead to a God. Now, who is narrow-minded?

For Further Reading and Information


Today’s BreakPoint offer: Learn more about the new Wide Angle worldview curriculum and how you can purchase it.

Richard A. Schweder, “Atheists Agonistes,” New York Times, 27 November 2006.

Michael Ruse, “A Separate Peace: Stephen Jay Gould and the Limits of Tolerance,” Science & Spirit.

Travis McSherley, “The Season for the Reason,” The Point, 13 November 2006.

Catherine Claire, “An Unsurprising Revelation,” The Point, 14 November 2006.

Catherina Hurlburt, “Easterbrook on Dawkins,” The Point, 14 November 2006.

BreakPoint Commentary No. 031204, “We’ve Been Lied To: Christianity and the Rise of Science.”

Source(s):

here is more

http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle...

Answer 8

I can think of at least 2 scientists that were firm believers in God :Ampere and Pasteur.God is the Master of all science.Stephen Hawking has done much to bring science and religion closer together.

Answer 9

No not in any way, because faith and reason are not opposed to each other, they are different of course but they are both ways to the truth.

Not all so called scientists are reasonable though (not some religious either)

Answer 10

it is rather complicated, since the main threat to religion is knowledge, that is to say, people who are more educated tend to reject religious theories about creation, existence of God, etc.
but religious people observe that new knowledge comes from science, so they feel threatened by scientists. but the fact is most scientists are indifferent to religion.