Atheists Who Go to Church: Doing It for the Children
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A new study out of Rice University has found that 17 percent — about one out of five scientists who describe themselves as either atheists or agnostics — actually go to church, although not too often, and not because they feel a spiritual yearning to join the faithful.
More likely, it’s because of the kids.
What? Why would somebody who doesn’t believe there’s a god want his own offspring wasting their time in an enterprise he believes has no foundation in fact? Especially a scientist.
The study, by sociologists Elaine Howard Ecklund of Rice and Kristen Schultz Lee of the University at Buffalo, found that many atheists want their children exposed to religion so that they can make up their own minds on what to believe. In addition, church may provide a better understanding of morality and ethics, and occasionally attending services may ease the conflict between spouses who disagree over the value of religion to their children, the study contends.
The research, published in the December issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, was based on in-depth interviews with 275 scientists at 21 “elite” research universities in the United States. Sixty-one percent of the participants described themselves as either atheists or agnostics, and 17 percent of the non-believers had attended church more than once in the past year.
In general, their church affiliation followed a similar pattern — most were raised in a family that was not deeply involved in religion, and they did not attend church during early adulthood but established a relationship with a church when they had children of their own. After the children had grown, they attended church less and less, if at all.
But why would someone who believes there is no god want his children exposed to doctrines that he clearly believes to be false?
“Some actually see it as part of their scientific identity,” Ecklund said in a telephone interview. “They want to teach their children to be free thinkers, to give them religious choices, and so they take their children to religious organizations just to give them exposure to religion.”
Let the kids make up their own minds, many of the participants told Ecklund.
Still, it may seem a bit odd for some atheists to perceive church as a desired “community” at a time when many leading atheists are calling on their colleagues to come out of the closet and take a public stand against religion. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, physicist Victor Stenger and others see religion as a source of evil in the world.
They contend that science has moved beyond a belief in the supernatural, partly because science has answered some questions that were previously left up to clerics. Evolution, for example, provides a naturalist explanation for how we got here.
True believers, by contrast, regard atheists as “among the least trusted people” on the planet, according to researchers at the University of British Columbia. These scientists emphasized last month that the right word is “distrust,” not “dislike.”
But however you put it, atheists do have a bit of an image problem. If they feel uncomfortable attending church, that’s nothing compared to entering some aspects of public service. They usually find themselves on the outside looking in.
Columnist Michael Kinsley confessed to being a “nonbeliever” in the Los Angeles Times last month. In an op-ed piece he conceded, “That puts me in the only religious grouping in America whose members are effectively barred from any hope of becoming president, due to widespread public prejudice against them. There will be a Mormon president, a Jewish president, an openly gay president before there will be a president who says publicly that he doesn’t believe in God.”
He contrasted that with the current run for the White House in which “four of this year’s Republican candidates were personally recruited by God to run for president.” That number has since dropped to three.
Ecklund, who has conducted several studies of science and religion, said in the interview that it’s possible for an atheist to become a member of a religious community without feeling like a phony.
“I don’t think they see it as a conflict,” she said. That’s partly because they’ve been out of the mainstream for nearly their entire lives.
“There’s a good deal of difference between the science community and the general public,” she said. “Scientists are less likely to have been raised in religious homes.” When they were, she added, “they were generally raised in homes where religion was not practiced strongly. It was not part of the fabric of life.”
So perhaps a scientist who happens to be an agnostic or an atheist sees no problem with turning to religion, if only for awhile, because it could open new avenues of thought for the children. After all, isn’t that the heart of science?
“The children can decide for themselves what to believe,” Ecklund said.
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Remember: We’re all atheists. When you consider the hundreds (probably thousands) of various gods human beings have worshiped in the last 10,000 years, it seems pretty clear that Zeus and Athena don’t have much of a following anymore. It’s simply a fact: We’re all atheists. It’s just that I believe in one less god than you.
Posted by: Andrew B. | December 7, 2011, 8:40 am 8:40 am
A good teacher of ethics and morality? Yeah let’s bomb people because they’re a different skin color or lynch them because they’re a different religion. Humans cannot continue to live while religion does. Religion must die for humans to live. We have lived too long in a world where important decisions are made by those who make up and believe completely unfounded stories to explain things they don’t understand. “Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking.” “Those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it, are intellectual slave holders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.” “Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think they do” “The solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes at a terrible price.”
Posted by: James | December 7, 2011, 1:52 pm 1:52 pm
From the article:
“Sixty-one percent of the participants described themselves as either atheists *or agnostics,* and 17 percent of the non-believers had attended church more than once in the past year.”
Atheists and agnostics get lumped together far too often. But they aren’t the same thing at all–not even close. Atheists believe there is no god, end of story. Agnostics believe there might be (or might not be) a god, but whether there is or not, and how that god works in the lives of humans (or doesn’t)? That’s unknowable. There is room for both belief or doubt, either way.
So lumping the two groups together as non-believers makes no sense at all. Atheists are non-believers, but agnostics really aren’t. Not-knowing is not the same as not-believing.
What I’d like to know, then, is this: Are agnostics more likely to take their kids to church than atheists? Because from my own (admittedly limited) experience, I suspect this is the case.
Posted by: Jezebel | December 7, 2011, 4:36 pm 4:36 pm
“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
John Milton
Good, kids should learn for themselves what to believe in.
Posted by: Jojo | December 7, 2011, 5:50 pm 5:50 pm
studies have proven the most intelligent people of our time have been atheist or agnostic. and one day everyone on this planet will view christianity the exact way we now view greek mythology (as mere fairy tales and myths). case closed.
Posted by: krissy | December 7, 2011, 11:13 pm 11:13 pm
This is from America remember…they are weird when it comes to religion
Posted by: Burr | December 8, 2011, 1:14 am 1:14 am
I never convinced anybody of anything, and I would be surprised if I would convince you. I just wonder, has anybody found something like a brick, that was not made, that just happened ? To me everything that exist is a miracle, would not be without a creator. Yes we are used to take everything for granted, but without a creator, things would not have been designed, matter would not even exist. And simple things, like an arrow tip, tell archaeologists that there were people that shaped that stones to be arrow tips. Bricks, arrow tips, etc. do not need food, air, water, vitamins, healthy environment, not much. So I would not be so surprised if someone would find one that was not made. It would not die, would not need to multiply, nothing. Yet no scientist has claimed that there was one of the simple things that was not made. I would have to have a greater faith to believe that no creator exist, even for bricks or arrows.
It is against any logic, to equate Scientists with Atheists
As somebody posted before,
Science and religion don’t have to be at odds. The study of whys and wherefores doesn’t preclude that God doesn’t exist. Most scientists, if they are honest, will tell you they don’t know. However, to attend a church doesn’t make one a Christian.
Those out there that don’t believe the bible holds the word of God are missing the point. To believe in God takes faith. That even if we don’t understand how something was done doesn’t mean that it wasn’t done. God wouldn’t be much of a god if he wasn’t way above us in knowledge and power. The very definition of supernatural. God is capable of all things. To create a perfect universe and all the varied life forms is not impossible. Even to melting the hearts of those that hate and despise his name. For God so loved the world,,,,,,
Have faith. God Bless You.
Posted by: nelubrad | December 14, 2011, 2:03 pm 2:03 pm
I would think that it’s something like ‘ getting the flu shot’. Just enought to get them confuse but not enought to learn the real true .
Posted by: Mee | December 23, 2011, 11:42 am 11:42 am
This article seems to imply that scientists cannot believe in God.
That is incorrect.
Plenty of scientists belong to religions that allow them to do their work without a direct conflict with their faith.
Albert Einstein, while untraditional in his beliefs, refused to be labeled an Atheist, and Isaac Newton, whose work became the basis of modern physics, was also not an Atheist. EvenCarl Sagan, who Atheists love to refer to all the time, was NOT actually an atheist. He was an Agnostic, and said “An Atheist has much more information than I do”. That is because an Atheist is someone who believes that there is no God; a claim which has not been conclusively proven by Science.
Without religion, Western Civilization as we know it would not exist.
It was basically responsible for the development of music as we know it, preserved classical literature during the dark ages, and even advanced certain fields of Science, such as Biology.
It has also given people a reason to live moral lives and remain hopeful in desperate times.
Sure, there have been religious conflicts throughout the course of history, but there have also been plenty of other conflicts that had nothing to do with religion. There’s really not that much religious violence going on in the civilized world anymore these days, except for Militant Islam and the persecution of unapproved religious followers in China.
I think it’s hardly right for people like Richard Dawkins to call religion evil and call for its extermination. Any time you call for the extermination of something which is the basis of a people’s identity, THAT is when you’re getting into some evil business.
The main reason that people become atheists is because they don’t want to have to follow the rules of some particular religion and they have a chip on their shoulder. They have no right to judge every single religion on Earth and tell them they’re evil and have to stop.
Posted by: CS | January 28, 2012, 4:05 pm 4:05 pm