Does Knowledge Destroy Faith?

"Rationality and the ‘Religious Mind’" by Laurence Iannaccone, Rodney Stark, and Roger Finke, in Economic Inquiry (July 1998), Texas A&M Univ., Dept. of Economics, College Station, Texas 77843–4228.

Social scientists have long been inclined to extinction. Everyone knows that as science look upon religion as an irrational vestige of the advances, religion retreats, and that as people premodern world, destined any day now for become more educated, they grow less religious. But research in recent decades shows that "everyone" is wrong, report economist Iannaccone, of Santa Clara University, and sociologists Stark and Finke, of the University of Washington and Purdue University, respectively.

Despite the explosive growth of science and the increase in average education levels during the last half-century, the rates of religious belief and participation in the United States have stayed about the same. It is true, Iannaccone and his colleagues say, after examining extensive surveys from the period 1972–90, that professors and scientists are less religious than the general public. Nineteen percent of the learned professionals reject religion entirely, compared with only seven percent of the public. But, the authors add, most academics "are religious—81 percent say they have a religion, 65 percent believe in an afterlife, 64 percent feel near to God, and 61 percent (claim to) attend church at least several times a year."

Moreover, the gap between the professors and the general public is no wider than it is between men and women, or between whites and blacks. Thus, 37 percent of academics pray daily, compared with 57 percent of the public—but that 20-point difference is less than the 23 points between men (43) and women (66) who pray daily. When sex, race, and other traits are taken into account, the authors note, professors and scientists—overwhelmingly white, largely male—appear only slightly less likely than other people to pray daily. Outright rejection of religion remains more common among academics, however, but that may be because the irreligious are more drawn to the academic life, not because higher education reduces religious belief.

What’s more, observe Iannaccone and his colleagues, a 1969 survey of nearly one-fourth of all the college faculty in America indicates that by church attendance and every other measure, the professors in the "hard" sciences such as physics and mathematics are more religious than their social science counterparts. Those in psychology and anthropology, the two fields most closely associated with the idea that faith is irrational and doomed, "emerge as towers of unbelief." Just a coincidence?