Ooh!

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v394/n6691/full/394313a0.html

Nature 394, 313 (23 July 1998) -

Leading scientists still reject God
Edward J. Larson & Larry Witham

The question of religious belief among US scientists has been debated since early in the century. Our latest survey finds that, among the top natural scientists, disbelief is greater than ever — almost total.

Unfortunately you have to pay to see the rest.

(Surely this isn’t the same Larson who did the 1916 study? He’d be over a hundred by now!)

David B. - 25 March 2008 03:32 PM

Renquist - 25 March 2008 01:21 PM

As for my personal opinion, I was talking to a physics student at a party who told me something my flatmate has told me- almost all physicists/ atomic scientists/ I’d give more examples but I don’t know many types of science/ etc. believe in God or some higher power, simply because science can’t explain what they know about the universe. They reach a point where science runs out, doesn’t explain the why. I’m down with that.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3341576

ABC News -

Almost 52 percent of the 1,646 scientists who participated in the study have no current religious affiliation compared with only 14 percent of the general population. More than 31 percent said they do not believe in God, and another 31 percent said they do not know if there is a God and there is no way to find out—a whopping 62 percent of those surveyed.

Mind you the 1916 Larson study of NAS members found that about 65% of biological scientists and 79% of physical scientist did not have a positive belief in God (i.e. were atheist or agnostic, the distinction wasn’t made so strongly then). Interestingly, mathematicians were the most likely to believe in God, but then mathematicians believe all sorts of weird things, so don’t count.

31% do not know if there is a God and there is no way to find out. I wonder if they get skelfs in their arse sitting on the fence

And to be fair I never said ‘scientists’. I specifically singled out physicists, atomic scientists and their ilk (bung mathematicians in there too). Which makes more sense to me actually.

David B. - 23 March 2008 05:23 PM

The main problem seems to be one of communication. When a scientist says ‘theory’, he means a well tested and confirmed explanation of a set of firmly established observations, but a creationist hears ‘guess’. And when he says ‘observation’, he means a systematically applied and quantitative collection of data on a particular event and under specified or controlled conditions, not a noteworthy remark on something noticed or observed.

No, if a theory is ‘confirmed’ it becomes a fact. A theory is a theory because it can still be disproved.

Cracking little (read: big) quote from Hawking on this one:

Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.

Renquist - 25 March 2008 04:11 PM

No, if a theory is ‘confirmed’ it becomes a fact. A theory is a theory because it can still be disproved.

Cracking little (read: big) quote from Hawking on this one:

Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.

Proving my point, confirmed does not mean proven. As Stephen J. Gould puts it “In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.” Hence facts can also - potentially - be disproved.

So what do we call things not quite confirmed to that degree if they’re not facts? Well, Rochester University’s “Introduction to the Scientific Method” puts it like this:

[E]xperimental tests may lead either to the confirmation of the hypothesis, or to the ruling out of the hypothesis. The scientific method requires that an hypothesis be ruled out or modified if its predictions are clearly and repeatedly incompatible with experimental tests. [...] A scientific theory or law represents an hypothesis, or a group of related hypotheses, which has been confirmed through repeated experimental tests. Theories in physics are often formulated in terms of a few concepts and equations, which are identified with “laws of nature,” suggesting their universal applicability.

http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/phy_labs/AppendixE/AppendixE.html