Robin Hanson poses the question, and Jane Galt picks it up, but no one dares an answer. Over lunch I suggested to Robin that professors are supposed to project an image of calm and reasonableness, whether justified or not. This means they will be especially allergic to charismatic religions, such as the so-called religious right. Most professors who do believe in god will be calm about it.
One prediction is that when the only major religions available are calm ones (Sweden?), professors will be less anti-religious than otherwise. Furthermore professors in the hard sciences, where answers can be proven right or wrong, may face the pressure to signal calmness to lesser degree.
Of course it is not obvious that professors are in reality calmer or more reasonable than the general population, especially once we adjust for IQ. So their rage has to come out somewhere. The further prediction is that professors are especially unreasonable toward their colleagues and competitors, and perhaps they are more likely to lose their tempers toward their children and spouses, or to behave more badly, once their tempers are lost.
I really am calm, however.
Could it be a problem of diversity? In many departments there is a decent amount of intolerance towards evangelicals. I’m not sure an evangelical would feel very “comfortable” even applying to many of those departments. Somehow I doubt schools are too concerned about this.
This raises an interesting question about detecting discrimination in general. Is there any measurement one could make to distinguish self-selection from other-selection?
You mean they’re not?
I think that they are religious, just a different religion. What else is communism-socialism, but a religion — and one far more dangerous than all but Islam?
They believe in creating heaven on earth, have an end of days (the dictatorship of the proletariat), believe in forcible conversion, killing of enemies, and completely ignore science and reality in formulating their goals.
If religion is the opiate of the masses, socialism is the religion of the academic elites.
Anecdotal evidence isn’t really evidence, but I’ve never found the professors I’ve known to be more or less religious than the general population. I think that there are some self-segregation effects, particularly with evangelicals (you won’t find any non-religious professors at, say, Wheaton College), but when I was involved with campus ministry, it seemed like I saw a higher than expected* fraction of faculty at the on-campus mass at my secular college (* it was close to the fraction of students, which given that students almost all lived on campus while faculty had a wider range of residences, was a bit surprising).
There are hundreds of small religious colleges across the country. Maybe religious professors prefer to teach at religious colleges.
The question is overly general with respect to religions and overly specific with respect to professors. I’m an Episcopalian, and the Episcopal churches where I’ve been a member have often had a lot of not just professors but big-name prominent professors as members. Especially the campus ministry I attended at Princeton. I am confident that Episcopalians are more, not less represented on college and elite college faculties than in the general population. Ditto for Unitarians and Buddhists and perhaps Jews. Possibly also for Hindus and Muslims due to recent immigration trends, especially in science, medicine, and engineering.
The conclusion one should draw is that college professors disproportionately show the demographic characteristics of elites in American society, i.e. like Presidents they are disproportionately white, male, anglo-saxon, and (mainline) Protestant, with notable concentrations from those immigrant groups whose median income exceeds the national median income. And if you claim that professors aren’t religious or choose particular religions due to their IQ or scientific principles or even peer pressure, IMHO your claim is probably as silly as claiming that most professors choose to be white males.
OTH, some would argue that Episcopalian doesn’t count as religious. I’m not going to get into that.
TC’s assertation is laughable, and GMUSL 3L’s observation is spot-on.
Professors are, by and large, very religious — they usually worship ferverently at the Church of Environmentalism.
As John Kay notes:
Professors are educated. Educated people, people who have been trained at the art of thinking and analyzation are less susceptible to logical fallacies. Religion, by definition, is a logical fallacy. (The whole point of ‘faith’ is that you are believing in something for no reason whatsoever)
I actually just wrote a paper on this very topic. The 1975 Carnegie Foundation National Survey of Higher Education revealed the same basic facts, especially that academics are twice as likely to be atheists. It also revealed that atheism is highest among social scientists, whereas “hard” scientists to not exhibit higher than average levels of atheism. I figure there are four ways to explain this:
1) Academics lack exposure to the business world, and are less moral because of it. Sounds harsh, but this is Adam Smith’s idea.
2) Also from Adam Smith, academics are prone to group-think, and produce sciences which are “a mere useless and pedantick heap of sophistry and nonsense.” Here, the bad science is the secularization thesis, which has dominated the study of religion for 100 years.
3) Academics seek fame more than fortune, and this is at odds with Christian theology.
4) Academics seek to persuade and influence society, partly because their minority views put them at a disadvantage. This applies to atheism as well as extreme political views.
See my blog for more.
Intelligence directly correlates with hubris. Find the wise professors, and see what they believe.
On keeping quiet about it–you know, not everybody thinks that talking about their religion is a good thing. For the Druze, not talking about it is almost a point of doctrine. For Abraham Lincoln, it seemed at least a matter of personal taste; perhaps a matter of conviction. But I concede that the lobby of the quiet ones is not likely to be very noisy.
This string of comments reveals a lot about the readership of this blog compared to, say, Edge.org.
Or, a competing view, professors tend to have been convinced by their own gigantic brains that everything is empirically knowable, therefore they tend away from religion, which creates mysteries rather than certainties, as Manuel alleges, apparently without any experience with real faith.
Religion is about faith at its core. Faith is inherently irrational, that is, it can by definition not be the result of proof. My exposure to professors at an explicitly religious school for some 8 years convinces me that the higher one rises on the university scale, the less one is disposed to believe that some things just aren’t reasonable. There was little faith there; there was even less humility. They knew everything.
I am a person of faith, and I know next to nothing. My life is filled with ignorance, and it doesn’t scare me one bit. The professor next door, now, he’s terrified of everything, especially not being the smartest man in the room. He therefore misses church. A lot. I think he’s afraid that there is actually Someone there that is smarter than he is.
But, as indicated, I’m not very sure I have the answer to any of this. The debate’s fun, though.
I don’t think professors are especially irreligious. I think that they are professionally allergic to priests and ministers. Being a professor is, after all, about thinking for yourself, rather than having somebody else tell you what to think.
I don’t think professors are especially irreligious. I think that they are professionally allergic to priests and ministers. Being a professor is, after all, thinking you know everything, rather than having somebody else remind you that you don’t.
Being a professor is, after all, about thinking for yourself, rather than having somebody else tell you what to think.
Posted by: Brad DeLong at Jan 19, 2007 6:31:13 PM
LOL.
Ironic and funny how academia perceives its own group-think.
Varangy:
You think that I and Tyler Cowen suffer from group-think? You are the first, and probably the only.
1) Religious people like their family and stuff, they can’t spend their whole life at work trying to get tenure.
2) If you decouple IQ, how much of this effect is left anyway?
Brad, everyone thinks you and Tyler suffer from group think.
Faith is a ridiculous reason to claim something exists.
If I have faith breakfast is on the bare table, my wife will think I’m nuts.
If I have faith that the church organ is a kazoo, my priest will tell me I’m nuts.
If I have faith that the Vatican is located at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, the pope himself will tell me I’m nuts.
But if I have faith that some magic dude in the sky makes everything happen, that’s perfectly ok and some how makes it true.
Fundamentalists think they practice the one true faith. Pentecostals think they practice the one true faith. Muslims think they practice the one true faith. But within that, Shi’a think they are the true followers of Mohammed, but the Sunni are sure they are. Jews know they’re actually the real followers of the one true faith. And Hindus are just damn sure it’s them.
My two Christian neighbors can’t stand each other because one is Church of Christ and the other is Unitarian and they disagree over how God thinks they should treat women.
Of all these people, who’s right?
There are only two choices:
1) Either one person out there happens by tremendous luck to be the one in 6 billion who’s actually right thing religiously, or
2) They’re all wrong.
Either way, 99.9999% of people are wrong.
Religion is a crock, and it’s destroying the world.
I would contend that religion is what CREATED the world. The world as it currently stands has had religion in it, well, forever. Wouldn’t it have been easier, if religion really is a crock, for it to have destroyed the world back when there were a lot fewer people? What happened to the natural selection against ignorant people? Or maybe, since the world grew up with religion, and the only thing that has really changed since then is the number of people, that it’s the PEOPLE that are destroying the world? Assuming for a moment that it IS being destroyed, which makes me wonder where it is you live, but let that pass.
You don’t have much of an understanding of faith, do you? It’s not faith that makes a thing exist. You don’t have to believe me when I tell you there is a God. But just so you understand, some things are true whether you believe them or not.
For me, you’re welcome to believe that the organ is a kazoo all you like. I fail to see how that is any harm to anyone but yourself. I think your Church of Christ and Unitarian friends are silly, but I understand that people who are less than certain about their own position need someone to hate to make them feel better. I can’t judge them.
Or you. You don’t sound very happy, and it seems to me that whatever it is you believe is not working out that well for you, but hey, do as you like.
But the actual discussion is about university professors, and I think your contention that they are less likely to be religious because they are less ignorant is almost comical. You don’t seem to think much of my contention that the reason they are irreligious is arrogance, instead. Seems we’re unlikely to agree about this.
“A casual stroll through a madhouse shows that faith proves nothing.”
— Nietzsche
Chris j– natural selection doesn’t select for intelligence or against ignorance, it selects for passing on one’s genes. If intelligence makes that happen, then intelligence is passed on. If an inclination towards faith promotes survival and fecundity or either, then an inclination towards faith is passed on.
If people are more likely to survive to point where they can breed and pass on genes because they have faith in their people’s collective wisdom, for example, and that followed wisdom’ benefits outweighs whatever negative effects on survival faith might have, than an inclination to faith is passed on.
Let’s pretend we know know nothing of bacteria, parasites, virii. Let’s say that I routinely eat beef, and that I know from experience beef requires very little heat, very little cooking, to be totally edible. If the outside is charred, the inside can be more or less raw. Let’s say, also, I’ve just butchered my first hog. Meat is meat, might as well prepare it the same way, except some old fucker in the tribe tells me I’ll get sick. No reason why, just I’ll get sick. Why the should I believe him? Doesn’t give a reason–hell, he hasn’t ever even seen anyone eat undercooked pork, he just was told about by some guy older than him and now six feet under to boot. But if I believe him, if I take his word on faith, then maybe I avoid a nasty case of trichinosis. Who knows, maybe tradition even came about to ban eating pork at all, maybe faith that man shouldn’t eat pork saved a couple lives.
But even if an inclination to faith has been or even still is a genetic characteristic that benefits the species, that doesn’t mean that belief in god/gods/witches/devils/demons/fairies/dragons or any of the multitude of beings that have been or are claimed to exist despite the absence of the tiniest measure of evidence is, in fact, correct.
I’d certainly agree academics tend to be better informed regarding their own area of expertise, but how many are actually experts in religion? Why would people trust that academics are better informed than others about religion? Is it possible that since most religions are based on faith and not on reason, academics lose their comparative advantage and are therefore turned off or feel threatened by it?
There may be a selection bias and path dependency story here as well. It is true that most academics tend to lean left politically. It is also true that those on the left tend to have lower levels of religiosity than the general population. With this being so, could most of the lack of religiosity be explained by the effects of left-leaning political beliefs? (Or maybe vice-versa?) According to the Seattle Times:
Does this also mean that the rest of us should favor the political views of the elite as well? That doesn’t seem to follow. A more plausible story is that Democrats tend to favor the elite being in control of society which empowers those in academia, particularly those in elite institutions. It would make sense from a self-interest perspective for those academics to have a greater incentive to lean left. The more elite the institution, the greater the incentive. Because of the strong correlation between political perspectives and religious beliefs, this would probably result in fewer religious people in academia. (Interestingly, there is little effect of education level or IQ on religious belief, but a big effect from being involved in academia. The implication is that highly educated religious people tend to find jobs outside of academia.)
Read more of my thoughts in this post on my blog, including links to many of my posts on the economics of religion.
DK,
I’m not trying to be flippant but when has a Catholic priest or official told his followers to come to their own conclusions about birth control or abortion? The Church still adheres to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility — which means what is says. Now there are many Catholics who do not appreciate these hard-line stances but they are certainly not encouraged by the Church to publicly register their disapproval and they are not represented in the Church hierarchy.
Mainstream Protestant congregations tend to be much more flexible and accommodating of differences of opinion but these are not the congregations that are growing fastest within the U.S. Incidentally, those congregations that are most broad-minded seem to attract those professors who are religious.
Why can’t you live religion where it belongs, in church or with the priests and at the time to practice it. Education is one thing and religion is something else. Everybody has the right to his own religion but this is private and has nothing to do with education and should never have any impact on anything else but what people believe for themselves privately.
It is nobody’s business and certainly not the school system or the University this becomes worse when you start talking about religion in politics!!!! What kind of hypocrits have you become!!! Don’t mix everything and don’t generalize.
I reject the whole calmness idea. In my experience, the Profs are no more calm in the classroom than students who adhere to the charismatic religions…and the profs are often a good deal less calm outside the classroom. We also are no more rational on subjects outside our expertise, and if anything are more likely to believe our own ability to pontificate outside that area. I say “our” as an atheist prof who rants and flames on occassion myself. OK, maybe more than “on occassion”, if you ask my wife. For example, everything that follows in this comment qualifies as making stuff up on the basis of no data or expertise:
I suspect that the stats on the lack of religiousness among college profs may be strongly influenced by:
a) recent history. I suspect it was not always so, back in the days when universities trained the ministry, for example. The historical artefact aspect is related to extant profs being more likely than the general population to be exposed not only to Darwin, but also Nietzche, Marx, existentialism etc, as undergrads.
b) higher probability of being exposed to others who are not religious by virtue of culture or who were brought up in different religions, due to the international/cosmopolitan nature of scholarship.
c) the correlation between education and atheism others have noted may not be that smarter people reject religion on rational grounds (even if that’s what they tell themselves) so much as self-selection and opportunity costs. Who has time to study scripture when you have grants and papers to write (or whatever workaholics in other professions do)?
I beg to disagree.
I am not religious myself, but I have spent the better part of my career in institutions in which many professors were religious.
I think there is a lot of self-selection going on here. Religious professors don’t feel accepted in many places.
Currently, I am at Southern Utah University. Not all departments here are religious, but the School of Business is heavily LDS. No one is shy about that fact. Being in Utah helps, of course. Having said that, almost every one of those professors has held positions at universities outside of Utah, where religion, and particularly Mormonism are not likely to be seriously advertised. In sum, I think they congregate here out of comfort.
There are two other interesting observations about being a non-Mormon professor in Utah. First, the non-Mormons in the School of Business are also likely to be religious. It’s a small group (5 who are lifetime non-Mormons), but that includes a serious Catholic, a serious Protestant, and a not-so-serious Protestant. My guess is that is a higher proportion than most schools.
I grew up in a secular environment in the northeast. I was shocked when I got my first job at the University of Alabama that there were serious professors there who took their faith seriously as well. Then I went to the economics department at the University of Utah, which has few Mormons but many who act as if Marxism is their faith. Then I went to the University of New Orleans, where the business school was largely secular, but where I met a very good economist with a literal interpretation of scripture. I also worked at Tulane a bit, and found that to be mostly secular as well.
In sum, I think what we are observing is self-selection. Having said that, there also could be a good deal of self-selection at the graduate school level: if your professors aren’t religious, and you are, how likely is it that you’ll complete a Ph.D.?
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