With little or no room for debate, modern science has its foundation in a Biblical worldview (Eiseley, 1961; Jaki, 2004; Percey and Thaxton, 1994; Richards, Jr., 2004; Stark, 2004). In a recent Lecture on Intelligent Design, Paul Davies, an Australian Physicist, author and non-Christian was quoted as saying, “Science began as an outgrowth of theology and all scientists, whether atheists or theists, accept an essentially theological worldview” (qtd. In D Ratzsch, public presentation, September 21, 2006). According to Nancy Pearson and Charles Thaxton’s book, “The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy,” this is because of six key presuppositions Christianity provides that acted as catalysts for the development of science as we know it today. Briefly, these presuppositions are as follows: nature is real, not imaginary; nature is a “thing,” not a God; nature is worth studying; nature is unified and orderly; the natural order is mathematically precise; and lastly, human minds can discover and understand this natural order.
In short, early Christian minds understood that God is immutable (does not change), and thus His creation must be run by immutable laws as well. Thus, they set out to find them, leading to the formation of modern science and to the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and other branches of science that our very understanding of the world today is based upon. For example, every culture had alchemists and astrologers but only out of Christian societies did Chemists and Astronomers arise (qtd. In D Whitehead, public presentation, October 31, 2006). The list is endless as to the notable scientists whose discoveries changed the world of science and also worshipped the God of the Bible. Some of these include Leanardo DaVinci, Johannes Keplar, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, and Lord Kelvin. So what happened?
Well, before that question can be answered, the existence of the problem must be shown. There is the distinct possibility that the very limited account of the freshman above is indeed just that: an isolated incident in that time and place and no actual societal or cultural trend actual exists where intellectualism is seen in opposition to religiosity. So is that trend evident in society? It certainly does seem that way. Psychological studies conducted as far back as 1934 all the way up through 1980 seem to show some interesting trends in this arena. A 1951 study by Brown and Lowe called “Religious beliefs and personality characteristics of college students,” published in the Journal of Social Psychology found a slightly inversed relationship between IQ and Religiosity. A 1975 study by Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi found that though only 2.1% of the American population reported “None” for religious affiliation, 45% of American scientist reported such an affiliation. More recently and most interestingly, a 1980 study found that as a group, psychologists are the least religious of all academic community groups (Ragan, Malony, and Beit-Hallahmi, 1980).
While looking into the literature, it seems that at about 1980, all studies focusing on these parameters simply stopped. The research since then seems to assume this trend just to be the case and no more research is necessary. Yes, many key studies exist in which these same factors are measured, but generally the two variables of import in this project are merely seen as “other factors of interest.” More specifically, little, if any, research exists since the early 1980s that seeks to primarily measure religiosity and intellectualism/intelligence/IQ. The measures where these factors can be seen together are within larger studies observing broader phenomenon. It just so happens they ask questions pertaining to both religiosity and intellectualism, though neither of these are their chief aims.
This being the case, this study will serve the purpose of exploring if the observed negative trend between intellectualism and religiosity is a reality among those most steeped in the active pursuit of academia – university students; and if so, exploring other measures that may shed light on why this has occurred in this population, even though science – the active participation of intellect and observation, if you will – has at its roots the positive relationship between the factors.
The obvious problem arises with both of these factors to be explored: their definitions. More involved studies have in the past given extensive inventories and tests to evaluate IQ, religiosity, and behaviors pertaining to both. This being an undergraduate research study, with very limited time, resources, funds, and sample groups, the measurement of these two measures and their associated factors will be limited to brief inventories both filled out by hand and online by various members of the population. Operational definitions for both of these factors are based upon the questions in the inventory. Both “intellectualism” and “religiosity” will most likely be positively defined by a combination of self-identification and level of participation in associated behaviors (reading books, engaging in discourse, attending worship services, reading scripture, etc.). More easily to provide to the present audience is a series of negative definitions for both. “Intellectualism” will not merely be a measure of GPA or IQ; it is meant to be broader in scope than just “intelligence” so as to include an entire lifestyle committed to the development and use of one’s ability to think, understand, and reason within the world. Even though this study is motivated by a confusion in the seeming disparity between Biblical thought and intellectualism, “Religiosity” will not be limited to a Christian worldview, unless the self-identification factor in the inventory yields a strong enough result to do so, though it is doubtful that will happen. That being the case, the term “Religiosity” will be a descriptor of one’s participation in a formal structure of spirituality.
As stated above, this study will consist of a fairly simple inventory to be completed by various samples within the population. There will be a distinctly “religious” sample and a distinctly “intellectual” sample. Given the advent of the internet, the primary mode of survey will be through an E-mailed survey to the two samples. The expectation is that a majority of people that are stronger in intellectuality than religiosity will exist and that a negative correlation between intellectualism and religiosity of about -.5 will be expressed in the population.
Method
Participants
Forty students of Virginia Commonwealth University volunteered to participate in the study. Participants were found through the online community website Facebook. The participants were members of two different Groups on Facebook: “vcuintervaristy” (representing the “Religious” sample) and “VCU Atheists and Agnostics” (representing the “Intellectual” sample), the two largest groups of their kind in the VCU Online Community with 135 and 113 members, respectively. Response was lower in the Religious group than in the Intellectual group, with the average response rate being 16%. The members were from various academic disciplines, regions, age groups, economic statuses, and racial groups. No compensation except a sincere thank you was offered to those that volunteered.
Materials
The first material used was the online community known as Facebook. This is a website that students from colleges all over the world use their college E-mail addresses to join particular networks, primarily based around their particular college; this made limiting the sample to VCU students very easy. A search in the “Groups” part of the site for VCU groups concerned with “Religion & Spirituality” yielded about 30 results. A brief perusal of these results helped find the two groups used. The largest Religious Organization at VCU known as Intervarsity Christian Fellowship has the largest Facebook group known as “vcuintervarsity.” This was chosen to be used to represent the Religiosity group. The Facebook chapter of the group “VCU Atheists and Agnostics” was used for the other group.
Participants completed an inventory that asked questions about their religious commitment, intellectual views/behaviors, and various worldviews/personality traits (see Appendix A). The statements in the inventory concerning religiosity were taken from Dr. Everett Worthington’s “Religious Commitment Inventory.” The other items were created by the experimenter. The inventory contained a total of 15 questions. Every group of three statements measured the same pattern of items. First, there was a statement concerning a measure of general interest, political orientation, personality trait, or general worldview; then, an item that acted as a Religiosity measure followed; lastly, the third contained a measure for Intellectualism. The inventory contained five sets of these triplets of items, totaling 15 items.
Procedure
Participants were approached using messages sent through the site Facebook. After the groups were found using the search method outlined above, the administrators for each group were contacted with the desire to use their group in the study. After approval was received, the administrators sent a Facebook “message” to all the members in their group containing the inventory. These messages are similar to E-mail and show up whenever someone logs in to the site. Respondents that chose to volunteer were able to send their responses online to the experimenter. The inventory contained an instruction to respond within three calendar days. Responses were then assembled by the experimenter.
Results
The surveys were answered at returned to the experimenter within the time requested. Average scores representing each person’s “Religiosity” and “Intellectualism” were factored by averaging the participants’ answers to the appropriate questions to come up with a total representative score. These final scores, two for each participant were first put into SPSS as separate groups and a correlational analysis was run. In both groups a negative but insignificant correlation was found. Upon realizing this was due to the sample sizes being to small, the analysis was run again on one group, comprised of both samples, to double the sample size. This time, a negative, strong, and statistically significant correlation of -.695 was found. These findings support the hypothesis that intellectualism is related negatively with religiosity among the population sampled.
Discussion
With the hypothesis having been confirmed, the question is thus begged “why?” What would bring about such a relationship, and does one actually cause the other? If so, which one causes the other? The obvious limitations of correlational studies not withstanding, a brief look into the history of the American Church from its historical foundations to the present seems to shed some light on this interesting and historically contradictory phenomena. The majority of the following analyses and conclusions on the American Evangelical Church come from Mark Knoll’s book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. This book is the authoritative voice on this subject and is recommended for those seeking a much deeper, scholarly, and more academic treatment of this matter.
The American Evangelical Protestant Church has its roots and foundations in two primary areas in History. First, in medieval France with a zealous and passionate young seminarian named Martin Luther and the Reformation he caused. Secondarily, these roots are found in several New England towns where Puritans secluded themselves to attempt to create the perfect Biblical society. One of the primary tenets of the Protestant Reformation was the absolute necessity of education for those of lower classes to aid in the proper understanding of self-evident Biblical truths. With the totality of Scripture now in the hands of the common people and not held by Ecclesiastical Bureaucrats, education and a vital cultivation of the life of the mind was now critical to properly learn, understand, interpret, teach, and most importantly, apply Scripture to every aspect of society, politics, science, and education. The greatest proponents of the Reformation, Martin Luther and John Calvin, both had very ardent stands on this necessity of education for all people so as to stand against the “populist anti-intellectual movements” that existed within the Catholic Church.
The Puritans came directly from this Reformation tradition and sought to bring its values to the New World. They continued this passionate pursuit of learning and applying the Bible to every facet of life possible. In fact, Jonathan Edwards, the most notable of all Puritans, can arguably be called the greatest American Evangelical intellectual who has ever lived. His prolific works spanning volumes cover every topic imaginable from nature to science to politics to economics, all applying the Bible in a fair, that frankly has not been seen since. The downfall for Edwards is the fact that he left no intellectual successor, thus his works and words were not passed down to another generation of intellectuals, but rather were left on shelves for modern scholars to define Edwards. This is why the most uncharacteristic of all Edwards’ sermons is the only one he is known for today: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
The Puritan tradition continued and culminated in the founding of most every Ivy League school. Clergymen made up most of the trustees and ministers were the college presidents. These schools were originally founded to carry on the principles that had marked Protestant education: rigorous training in character and the culmination of the life of the mind, that was absolutely saturated with Christian Biblical ideas. These schools were used to bring up great Christian thinkers that could learn and apply the bible to every subsequent area of this new nation. One humorous story out of this comes from Harvard; the great preacher of the Second Great Awakening, Charles Finney, was actually converted from having to read his Bible that he had to buy to help understand the law codes taught at Harvard. Every single code of law in early American society had a footnote of the Scripture that law based on, and this brought Finney to his conversion.
The synthesis between Intellectualism and Religiosity seems to have been reversed in early America, so one must ask, “What happened?” Knoll points out four major ingredients: Revivalism, American separation of Church and State, Christian-American cultural synthesis, and Fundamentalism. Revivalism began with the First Great Awakening and its effects were massive on the way that the Christian Church functioned in society. It was not an Ecclesiastical move of the Church but a non-traditional move of the Holy Spirit that brought it about, thus it created a sense of anti-traditionalism in which a Christian cultivation of the mind was generally found. It put the Evangelical emphasis more on the ability of a speaker to move a crowd than on the truth inherent in what they said. Critical thinking was suspended for the sake of emotional responses from the populous. It also encouraged a spiritual “immediate gratification” that put emphasis on a one time decision for salvation rather than a life time commitment to pursue this God and all of His truths in every area of life, including the mind.
American separation of Church and State was originally meant to protect the churches from the government, not vice-versa. They wanted to keep politics away from the existing religious structures in order to keep them as “pure” and “grassroots” as possible. Now while this separation of Civic and Ecclesiastical authority is actually precedented in the Old Testament, it did something interesting to the entire landscape of religious thought in America. It suddenly made it so that churches were non longer part of the state; thus, churches now had to compete for members. Gone were the days of being a Baptist or Methodist depending on the State you were living in at the time. Now were the times of competition among churches for members and converts so as to keep themselves alive. This brought the emphasis on theology and doctrinal truth to a minimum for the sake for pragmatic, functional, humanistic theologies. The churches would focus primarily on serving the interests of the individual hoping the people found God somewhere in there. This caused a great lack of deep thought and intellectual pursuit for Biblical truths and their applications in society.
Arguably, one of the most damaging things to ever happen to the Evangelical Church in America is the cultural synthesis between American and Christian ideals. As Revolution loomed ever closer, colonists took on the Didactic philosophical predispositions of the Scottish Enlightenment to justify the impending war. An emphasis on inner moral essence and the ability of the rational mind to know and perceive truth simply on the basis of being human, and thus giving the moral imperative to governments to allow this freedom began to permeate Revolutionary thought. The Protestant Church in America readily jumped on board and fused these humanistic Enlightenment philosophies quickly becoming “America’s ideals” with the ideals already in place within their faith. This meant “Americanism” now was equivocated with Christianity; to be Christian was to be American. Political documents were using religious language, and religious documents were now using political language. What this did was allow colonists and thinkers to unquestioningly suspend thought on politics, economics, and government systems, because their absolute faith was put into the newest of Deified structures: America itself.
Lastly, Fundamentalism came about and this is the ingredient still seen in American culture today. After the first three ingredients took hold, and intellectual pursuits started weakening, Evangelical Protestantism could not stand against the coming Enlightenment and rational philosophies that came about and so the Church began to accommodate to these ideas. Many saw the flaw in this and rose up to fight back: Fundamentalists. They rose up and claimed a few doctrines and tenets of the Bible were the “fundamentals” and then took them all to extremes. For example, their fundamental truth that the Bible was inerrant was taken to the extreme of expecting exact scientific truth from every word of Scripture, forgetting the various literary forms existing within the same book (this eventually brought about the famous “Scopes-Monkey trial”). The fixation on just a few truths of Scripture left room for many humanistic erroneous theologies to come about that served the needs of the Christian culture in the moment. Fundamentalists saw this as okay, though, because none of these theologies were part of the “fundamentals of the faith,” thus they required no real scrutiny, investigation, thought, or defense – just blind faith at all costs.
As the turn of the 18th came about these ingredients had taken hold, and the changes were then rapid for the relationship between intellectualism and the church. New money makers from the Industrial Revolution now wanted influence, so they started taking over the Universities that were formerly established by Christian Evangelicals. The education systems then left that German model of character building and tradition for the sake of the British model of rigorous research and empirical enquiry. Darwin came about and the social implications of his theories began to reign, causing education to become much more practical and concrete so as to make students into the “strong” so they could “survive.” No longer was theology, philosophy, ethics, and morals the centerpiece of education; America’s pragmatic rationalism had taken hold; Man’s mind was becoming God.
In conclusion, though the study above cannot definitively on its own supply the source of causality in the relationship observed, a brief survey of Christian Church history can perhaps give support to one inference. One can see that the intellectual realm that was so at the root of Christian Evangelical thought, practice, and belief was not taken from the Church by the Enlightenment, Darwin, or “mean scientists;” rather, the intellectual imperative placed on all believers was surrendered by those believers and placed in the hands of the secularists. The Church gave it their mind; it was not taken from them. This being the case, when one walks onto a college campus, one should expect to see this strange paradoxical dichotomy of contrasting worlds and the vehement hostilities and polarities that ensue. Further research must be done with larger sample sizes, better inventories, varied groups, and more randomization. This research should try and observe if this trend is real, and if so, is it healthy? Do intellectual pursuits flourish in a mind that has been “renewed” and a will that has been changed by the Gospel of God? Or, should the current trend continue in trying to pull Intellectualism as far away from Religiosity as it possibly can be?
I pray not.
Bibliography & Sources
Ash, C., Crist, C., Salisbury, D., & Dewell, M. (1996). Unilateral and bilateral brain hemispheric advantage on visual matching tasks and their relationship to styles of religiosity. Journal of Psychology & Theology, 24(2), 133-154. Retrieved Sunday, October 01, 2006 from the PsycINFO database.
Davies, Paul. Intelligent Design vs. Evolution.. Public Presentation. Septmebr 21st, 2006.
Eiseley, Loren (1961). Darwin's Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered it. Anchor Books.
FAULKNER, J., & DE JONG, G. (1966). RELIGIOSITY IN 5-D: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS. Social Forces, 45(2), 246-254. Retrieved Sunday, October 01, 2006 from the PsycINFO database.
Jaki, Stanley (2004). Bible & Science. Christendom Press.
Knoll, Mark (1994). The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co..
Nielsen, M., & Fultz, J. (1997). An alternative view of religious complexity. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 7(1), 23-35. Retrieved Sunday, October 01, 2006 from the PsycINFO database.
Pearcey, N., & Thaxton, C. (1994). The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy .Crossway Books.
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Stark, Rodney (2004). For the glory of god: How monotheism led to reformations, science, witch-hunts, and the end of slavery. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Turbott, J. (1996). Religion, spirituality and psychiatry: Conceptual, cultural and personal challenges. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 30(6), 720-727. Retrieved Sunday, October 01, 2006 from the PsycINFO database.
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Whitehead, David. Confessions of an Atheist. Public Presentation. October 31st, 2006.
Young, M. (1986). Religiosity and satisfaction with virginity among college men and women. Journal of College Student Personnel, 27(4), 339-344. Retrieved Sunday, October 01, 2006 from the PsycINFO database.
Appendix A
Hello, my name is Paul Burkhart, and I am conducting a study for my Psyc 317 class. This study is to try and observe any relationships existing among the various factors below. Your help in this study would be greatly appreciated. For the following fifteen statements, please describe on a scale of 1 to 10 how true each statement is for you. One (1) represents a statement that is not true for you at all, while ten (10) represents a statement that is totally true for you. Responding within three calendar days would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time and assistance in this manner.
1. I am a political liberal.
2. I ascribe to a formal structure of religion or spirituality.
3. I am an intellectual.
4. I am a political conservative.
5. My religious beliefs lie behind my whole approach to life.
6. I read more than the average person.
7. I am easily excited.
8. I enjoy spending time with others of my formal religious affiliation.
9. I believe knowledge is derived purely from reason.
10. I believe the future is very hopeful.
11. It is important to me to spend periods of time in private religious thought and reflection.
12. I think beliefs and opinions should be derived solely upon the objective rather than the subjective.
13. I believe life is purposeful.
14. Religious beliefs influence all my dealings in life.
15. My own mind is the primary decision-making authority in my life.
