so it will be at least read.

[_moksha]

What if mathematicians tended to be more asthmatic than the general population or at least had a higher incidence of pocket protectors?

[_truth dancer]

Hi Tarski,

I wonder if scientists who do believe in some sort of personal God go with a more nebulous, spirit, unknown sort of entity rather than the LDS sort of God/man.

In other words, I can see how doctors of mathematics, physics, and related fields come to a conclusion that there is something unknown out there, a mystery of sorts from where our universe originated but I can't for the life of me see how one can come to the conclusion that the creator of our universe is a Caucasian, human male who resembles earthly men at this particular moment in history, (a model for a romance novel no less...smile), who lives on a sphere near Kolob who directs, interferes, commands our world as is described in holy writ.

I think, for people who grasp the complexity of existence (at least at a level of which humans are capable), the LDS God is more difficult to believe in than the God in which much of the world believes.

Could be wrong... (smile),

~td~

PS. I read ALL your posts! :-)

[_zeezrom]

Thanks Tarski for pointing out that post. I had to go find it and enjoyed it.

[_beastie]

Perhaps they're responding to the point/question you SHOULD have made, rather than the one you actually made. They WANTED your point to be: scientists cannot be Mormons.

My favorite statistic about atheism is that the top-tier scientists are even more likely to be atheists than the average pool of scientists. The group that is the most atheistic is, not surprisingly, National Academy of Science biologists, which, in the 1998 survey, were 95% atheist.

Doubt is highest among NAS biologist at 95%. Physicists come in a close second at 93% while mathematicians are at the low end with 86% either atheists or agnostics.

http://www.cosmoetica.com/B98-JH1.htm

http://www.discovery.org/a/10171

[_Trevor]

Finally, I would like to point out that the testimonies found on Mormon Scholars Testify are generally more restrained in tone, generally less assertive of supernatural realities and less expressive of revelatory certainty than most testimonies I have heard given by housewives in testimony meetings that I have attended.

As my mother once pointed out, intellectuals in the church seem to have relatively weaker testimonies and watered down, slightly secularized understandings of the gospel. I think she is on to something.

I like that about MST. I disagree that such testimonies are "weaker," but then I do not equate being simplistic and literal with being stronger.

[_Euthyphro]

Tarski, I love your posts and I hope you keep 'em coming. Most times I don't comment afterward because I'm left with a feeling that adding to anything you said wouldn't really help it.

On another subject I wanted to ask you if you could get me started on researching something. I read that Alan Turing proposed that animals are Turing machines, and it does seem like we've been able to use computers to replicate the behaviors of ants, wasps, and now I think we're up to mice. So our applied science seems to support the idea. An obvious goal would be to come up with machines and programming that emulate a human. Anyway you're especially plugged in to that kind of book and I wonder if you have anything to recommend.

[_zeezrom]

...and it does seem like we've been able to use computers to replicate the behaviors of ants, wasps, and now I think we're up to mice.

This is interesting. http://www.sacredbalance.com/web/antsociety.html

"...recent studies have shown how chaotic elements can perform efficient parallel synchronous computation. For our system under study, the existence of social interactions produces an additional degree of complexity. Nevertheless, we will see that non-linear chaotic individuals lead to predictable behaviour under spatial interaction."

Sorry for the derail.

[_EAllusion]

I'm always a fan of making the point stronger with this:

It's not just that (theistic) religiosity decreases with measures of postgrad academic progression. If you look at the reasons why people think they are justified in believing in God, those reasons invariably are looked low upon by their native academic fields in overwhelming numbers, regardless of the religious status of those scholars. So while 15% or so of Ph.D. biologists are believers in God, you aren't going to find many of even them who buy biological design arguments. In short, if you break down the atheist position* field by field, argument by argument, it is overwhelmingly dominant. I think that's telling in a world that is still overwhelmingly religious where lots of children grow up with substantial indoctrination.


*Here I'm defining the atheist position simply as the rejection of positive cases for the warrant for god-belief.

[Guest]

Of course, at the end of the day, the reason so few biologists buy biological design arguments is that they are terrible and knowing a lot about biology makes it easier to see why. Ditto for moral arguments and so on. It's hard to know a lot about about ethics and not understand the euthyphro dilemma's implications for divine command theory or be familiar with how meaningful metaethical theory is constructed and argued.

[_EAllusion]

Wade's last post is awesome:

This may have been increasingly the case over the last half century or so, but I have my doubts about the several hundred years prior to then. This gives me pause in making much of your implication.

What also gives me pause is that, at least from my experience, most of those who are publically promoting this implication tend not to be leaders in the field of science. :)

It puts me in mind of the white supremacist, who themselves tend not to be at the top of everyone's list of examples of human supremacy.