Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:
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Religious belief is apparently much less common
especially if one defines "religious belief" in a way that makes it have actual consequences for the observable world (e.g., a god who actually affects what happens in the world rather than just winding it up and then leaving it alone).
See e.g. this summary of the results of asking scientists about their beliefs and the letter to Nature that the summary is mostly about. (Note: there's some scope for debate about the interpretation of these results, though I find the arguments at the far end of that link extremely unconvincing.)
[EDITED to fix a wrong link; thanks to CCC for pointing it out.]
I notice that their definition of "greater scientists" - which seems to have been what you referred to as "very successful scientists" - was "members of the National Academy of Sciences". While I have no doubt that one needs to be a pretty great scientist to become a member, the results lead me to wonder whether the membership process for joining the Academy has an atheist bias in it somewhere.
I notice that the figures for scientists generally are more constant from 1914 to 1996, with approximately 60% of scientists expressing... (read more)