A graph showing the trend lines for belief in the existence of god by general or randomly polled US scientists (o) and for ‘greater’ or National Academy of Science (NAS) member scientists (♦), based on the James Leuba (1912,1924) studies and the Edward Larson and Larry Witham (1996,1998) studies, of over 3,000+ American scientists combined. [3] |
“You clearly can be a scientist and have religious beliefs. But I don’t think you can be a real scientist in the deepest sense of the word because they are such alien categories of knowledge.”— Peter Atkins (1997), commentary the results, shown adjacent, of the 1998 Larson-Witham study on belief, in the existence of god among leading US scientists [4]
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See main: Napoleon on religionIn 1802, the first semi-systematic polling of scientists, in regards religious belief, was conducted beginning by French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte who seemingly went around and polled and queried all of the leading scientists of France—one of which resulted in the famous Napoleon Laplace anecdote, during which time Pierre Laplace told Napoleon that he had no need of the "hypothesis of god" in his formulation of celestial mechanics.
Bonaparte: “How comes it, then, that Laplace was an atheist? At the Institute neither he nor Monge, nor Berthollet, nor Lagrange believed in God. But they do not like to say so.”
Gourgaud: “I own that I believe firmly in God, and cannot conceive how men can be atheists. To proclaim themselves such seems to me mere mental braggadocio.”
Bonaparte: “Bah! Laplace was an atheist, and Berthollet too. At the Institute they all were atheists, and yet Newton and Leibnitz were believers. Atheists compare man to a clock; but the clock-maker is a being of superior intelligence. They grant that creation is the result of matter, as warmth is the effect of fire.”
“I often asked Laplace what he thought of God. He owned he was an atheist. Many crimes have been committed in the name of religion. The oldest religion is the worship of the sun [Ra theology]. Where is the soul of an infant? I cannot remember what I was before I was born; and what will become of my soul after my death? As to my body, it will become carrots or turnips. I have no dread of death. In the army I have seen many men suddenly perish who were talking with me.”
See main: Edison on the soulIn 1910, American inventor Thomas Edison, in an interview with Edward Marshall of The New York Times, famous gave his frank and open views on religion and his religious beliefs, which were pretty much in alignment with those of Bonaparte, albeit Edison elaborates greatly in giving his opinion on the hypothesis of the soul, in relation to force and energy, being a mere speculative theory, that is not completely understood, say the way savages used to consider fire divine: [2]
Edison: “I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul. Heaven? Shall I, if I am good and earn reward, go to heaven when I die? No – no. I am not ‘I’ – I am not an individual – I am an aggregate of cells.”
Edison: “No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life—our desire to go on living—our dread of coming to an end as individuals. I do not dread it, though. Personally I cannot see any use of a future life.”
Marshall: “But the soul!” [I protested] “The soul—.”
Edison: “Soul? Soul? What do you mean by soul? The brain?”
“I do believe that there is a conflict between science and religion, religion more or less defined that way. And in order to bring the question to a position that is easy to discuss,
by making the thing very definite, instead of trying to make a very difficult theological study, I would present a problem which I see happens from time to time. A young man of a religious family goes to the university, say, and studies science. As a consequence of his study of science, he begins, naturally, to doubt as it is necessary in his studies. So first he begins to doubt, and then he begins to disbelieve, perhaps, in his father's god. By ‘God’ I mean the kind of personal god, to which one prays, who has something to do with creation, as one prays for moral values, perhaps. This phenomenon happens often. It is not an isolated or an imaginary case. In fact, I believe, although I have no direct statistics, that more than half of the scientists do not believe in their father's god, or in god in a conventional sense. Most scientists do not believe in it. Why? What happens? By answering this question I think that we will point up most clearly the problems of the relation of religion and science.”