More than half of scientists consider themselves to be believers and do not see the conflict between their scientific and religious views.
This is stated in a report published by sociologists from Rice University according to a large-scale survey conducted over the past four years. The research results are published on the university website, briefly reported in a press release.
The study was conducted in eight countries - France, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The authors of the survey attracted physicists and biologists to the study, since it is these sciences that study the origin of man and the Universe, and, according to the authors, religious and scientific views most often do not coincide in these two areas.
The study involved 9,422 people of different sex, age, religious beliefs and status from universities and research institutes.
The study participants answered the questionnaire, then the study authors selected 609 scientists from them and conducted in-depth interviews with them. Among the topics that interested the researchers were the relationship between science and religion, how religion influences the formation of the research program, the interaction of researchers with students and the solution of ethical issues.
It found that more than half of scholars from Hong Kong (54 percent), Italy (57 percent), Taiwan (74 percent), India (79 percent) and Turkey (85 percent) consider themselves religious. Atheists make up the majority among scientists only in France (51 percent). As the researchers suggested, scientists in general are less religious than the general population of the country.
However, there are exceptions. Thus, in Hong Kong, 39 percent of scientists consider themselves religious, while among the entire population of the country, only 20 percent consider themselves religious. In Taiwan, 54 percent of academics are religious, compared with only 44 percent of the country's population.
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Not all scientists believe that scientific and religious views conflict with each other. In the UK and the US, only a third of respondents think so. At the same time, a quarter of Hong Kong, Taiwanese and Indian scientists believe that science and religion can peacefully coexist and complement each other.
According to the Pew Research Center, 5.8 billion people out of 7 billion of the world's population consider themselves followers of one religion or another. Most developed countries and many developing countries are trying to build science infrastructure. Nevertheless, according to the authors of the survey, so far there has been no global research on the influence of science and religion on each other.