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ERIC
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stan guthrie |
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Scientist
Stephen Hawking, one of the smartest men in the world, did not believe
in God. Well, how about other smart scientists—what do they think?
We
often hear these days that there’s a fundamental conflict between
science and religion, and that scientists don’t believe in God. As the
late Stephen Hawking says in his new book, “Brief Answers to the Big
Questions,” “There is no God. No one directs the universe.” There’s only
one problem with this narrative—it’s not true. Don’t believe me; just
ask scientists!
Elaine
Howard Ecklund, director of Rice University’s Religion and Public Life
Program has done just that, and she worries that the posthumously
published words of Hawking, who died earlier this year, may lead you to
believe that most scientists are atheists. Posthumously definition, arising, occurring, or continuing after one's death:
한 과학자의 말에 내 인생/영혼의 운명을 건다는 것을 실로 어처구니 없는 도박이라 하겠다
이미 죽어 사라졌기에 자기말에 책임질 수도 없는 사람에게 운명을 건다는게 현명한 처사인가? 우주의 진리/법칙을 한치라도 바꿀 수 없는 무능력자가 감히 우주의 창조주를 논하시다니...
“Stephen
Hawking left a great scientific legacy,” Ecklund said. “I do not think
it is the intent of this recent work, but it is dangerous for science if
Hawking’s religious legacy is to leave the public with the impression
that scientists are all against God or—worse yet—against religious
people.”
Between
2011 and 2016, Ecklund and her team conducted the first-ever
international survey on what scientists think about religion. They
found, contrary to popular wisdom, that over half of all the scientists
in India, Italy, and Turkey self-identify as religious, and only a
minority of scientists in each region say that science and religion are
in conflict. In the U.S., this number is just 29 percent.
According
to Brandon Vaidyanathan, associate professor and chair of the sociology
department at the Catholic University of America, “We found a
significant portion of scientists can be characterized as having
religious identities, practices or beliefs, and nontrivial proportions
say they have ‘no doubt’ that God exists.”
This
makes sense on a number of levels. First of all, the Bible says that
the heavens declare the glory of God, and that anyone can learn
something of God’s nature /by what He has created. So even though some
scientists say that the theory of evolution has made the idea of God
unnecessary—Richard Dawkins for example once said that “Darwin made it
possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist”—the fact is, people
inherently know that God exists, and they must suppress this truth if
they’re going to claim atheism. This goes for scientists, as well.
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