http://asiaharvest.org/how-many-christians-china-1/
Islam:
- How does Islam introduce themselves and view other religions? http://www.whyislam.org/
- A Breif Illustration Guide to Understanding Islam: http://www.islam-guide.com/
- Sharing the Gospel with Muslims: http://www.answering-islam.org/
ATHEISM
“Do the Polls Show That Science Leads to Atheism?” by Eugene A. Curry — observes that “one of the more common presentations of this argument relies on a 1998 survey of the National Academy of Sciences <www.ow.ly/vPJSD> which indicated that conventional religious beliefs were quite rare among the members of that body.” This approach has been employed by Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Curry points out flaws in the survey, and suggests: “If we wanted to find more recent, more in-depth, and less problematic survey information on this topic, we could turn to the work of Elaine Ecklund, a sociologist at Rice University. In her book Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think,1 she presents the results of a massive study involving both surveys and follow-up interviews
with hundreds of professors of the various sciences at America’s elite universities. Her findings take up many pages, but the bottom line is this: 34% of America’s top scientists are genuine atheists, 30% are agnostics, 8% believe in some sort of vague ‘higher power,’ and 28% believe in God with varying
degrees of confidence. ... “According to the [NAS] survey, disbelief in a God in communication with humanity grew from about 53% in 1914 to about 72% in 1998.” Further, “it seems that the only
post-1914 scientific discoveries to have had any meaningful bearing on the question of God were the discovery of the anthropic fine-tuning of physics and the triumph of Big Bang cosmology. ... “As Robert Jastrow of NASA and then Dartmouth College declared concerning fine-tuning, it is ‘the most theistic result ever to come out of science.’ And when it comes to the Big Bang, it has become a veritable hall mark of theistic apologetics, breathing new life into Al-Ghazali’s Kalam argument and leading Paul Draper, an agnostic professor of philosophy at Purdue University, to grant that ‘on the whole ... twentieth century cosmology supports theism over naturalism.’” Ecklund writes: “For the majority of scientists I interviewed, it is not the engagement with science itself that leads them away from religion. Rather, their reasons for unbelief mirror the circumstances in which other Americans find themselves: they were not raised in a religious home; they have had bad experiences with religion; they disapprove of God or see God as too changeable.” Curry summarizes: “So atheistic scientists have not been pushed toward atheism by science; they have been pushed toward it because as children they were busy playing soccer on Sundays rather than attending church services, or because they had a nasty run-in with an off-putting minister. “Add to that the possibility that a number of selection effects are at play and the 34% atheism rate becomes even more unremarkable.
... “Denis Alexander has speculated that perhaps the high rates of atheism among very accomplished scientists (like the prestigious group who teach in America’s top universities, or the even more prestigious members of the NAS) has more to do with their being very accomplished than with their being scientists. [T]hose scientists who do not divide their time between their work and religiously informed priorities (as many theists do and most atheists do not) are more likely to reach those highest echelons and to therefore find themselves included in the polls we are discussing. “The upshot of all this is that disproportionately many people who embrace atheism for nonscientific reasons (generally in their youth) subsequently enter scientific fields of study and therefore atheism comes
to be statistically overrepresented in the sciences.”
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 65:2 - 2013, pp75-78. <www.ow.ly/vPK1L>
http://www.christianityexplored.org
We produce courses and other materials to help people understand from the Bible who Jesus is, why he came, and what it means to follow him. Our materials have been translated into 20 languages and are being used in 60 countries in all kinds of churches.
No comments:
Post a Comment