(Press-News.org) More than 20 percent of atheist scientists are spiritual, according to new research from Rice University. Though the general public marries spirituality and religion, the study found that spirituality is a separate idea – one that more closely aligns with scientific discovery – for "spiritual atheist" scientists.
The research will be published in the June issue of Sociology of Religion.
Through in-depth interviews with 275 natural and social scientists at elite universities, the Rice researchers found that 72 of the scientists said they have a spirituality that is consistent with science, although they are not formally religious.
"Our results show that scientists hold religion and spirituality as being qualitatively different kinds of constructs," said Elaine Howard Ecklund, assistant professor of sociology at Rice and lead author of the study. "These spiritual atheist scientists are seeking a core sense of truth through spirituality -- one that is generated by and consistent with the work they do as scientists."
For example, these scientists see both science and spirituality as "meaning-making without faith" and as an individual quest for meaning that can never be final. According to the research, they find spirituality congruent with science and separate from religion, because of that quest; where spirituality is open to a scientific journey, religion requires buying into an absolute "absence of empirical evidence."
"There's spirituality among even the most secular scientists," Ecklund said. "Spirituality pervades both the religious and atheist thought. It's not an either/or. This challenges the idea that scientists, and other groups we typically deem as secular, are devoid of those big 'Why am I here?' questions. They too have these basic human questions and a desire to find meaning."
Ecklund co-authored the study with Elizabeth Long, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Rice. In their analysis of the 275 interviews, they discovered that the terms scientists most used to describe religion included "organized, communal, unified and collective." The set of terms used to describe spirituality include "individual, personal and personally constructed." All of the respondents who used collective or individual terms attributed the collective terms to religion and the individual terms to spirituality.
"While the data indicate that spirituality is mainly an individual pursuit for academic scientists, it is not individualistic in the classic sense of making them more focused on themselves," said Ecklund, director of the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice. "In their sense of things, being spiritual motivates them to provide help for others, and it redirects the ways in which they think about and do their work as scientists."
Ecklund and Long noted that the spiritual scientists saw boundaries between themselves and their nonspiritual colleagues because their spirituality facilitated engagement with the world around them. Such engagement, according to the spiritual scientists, generated a different approach to research and teaching: While nonspiritual colleagues might focus on their own research at the expense of student interaction, spiritual scientists' sense of spiritualty provides nonnegotiable reasons for making sure that they help struggling students succeed.
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To interview Ecklund or Long or to receive a copy of the study for news purposes, contact David Ruth, director of national media relations, at druth@rice.edu or 713-348-6327.
Located on a 285-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is known for its "unconventional wisdom." With 3,485 undergraduates and 2,275 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is less than 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 4 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://futureowls.rice.edu/images/futureowls/Rice_Brag_Sheet.pdf.
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May 5, 2011 – (BRONX, NY) – There are no effective treatments for rhabdoid tumors – aggressive childhood cancers that usually strike children under three years old and affect the brain or kidneys. The disease is extremely rare – fewer than 10 cases are diagnosed each year in the U.S. – but is particularly difficult to treat and almost always fatal.
Now scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have identified a target for potential therapies for these tumors: a gene called Aurora A that is vital for tumor growth. The research team was led ...
Researchers at the University of Southampton have designed a new pricing mechanism that could change the way in which electric vehicles are charged.
It is based on an online auction protocol that makes it possible to charge electric vehicles without overloading the local electricity network.
The paper entitled Online Mechanism Design for Electric Vehicle Charging was presented this week at AAMAS 2011 – the Tenth Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, and outlines a system where electric vehicle owners use computerised agents to bid for the power to ...
Boulder, CO, USA – New research posted online in pre-issue publication on 4 May (corresponding to the June 2011 print issue) includes the first record of shelled amoeba living in association with seafloor seeps of methane; trilobites in North China and Spain; logjams and mountain streams in the Colorado Front Range; the discovery of micrometeorites in 240 million-year-old sediments; a revelation by Integrated Ocean Drilling Program of an extensive microbial community in the deep biosphere; and further study in relation to the L'Aquila (2009), Wenchuan (2008), Sumatra-Andaman ...
Reston, Va. (May 5, 2011) – Two articles in the June issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine make a case for maintaining current U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations on the release of patients who undergo radioactive iodine treatments for thyroid cancer, known as I-131. Currently, the NRC recommends outpatient treatment for patients receiving radioactive iodine after total or near-total thyroidectomy; however, several groups have been urging NRC to mandate overnight hospital stays to protect others from a perceived risk of radiation exposure.
The article, ...
Researchers at North Carolina State University have found a specific gene in corn that appears to be associated with resistance to three important plant leaf diseases.
In a paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, NC State plant pathologists and crop scientists pinpoint the gene – glutathione S-transferase – that seems to confer resistance to Southern leaf blight, gray leaf spot and Northern leaf blight, a trio of diseases that cripple corn plants worldwide.
Finding out more about the mechanisms behind complex traits like ...
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The ...
COLLEGE STATION, May 4, 2011 – The so-called "bad cholesterol" – low-density lipoprotein commonly called LDL – may not be so bad after all, shows a Texas A&M University study that casts new light on the cholesterol debate, particularly among adults who exercise.
Steve Riechman, a researcher in the Department of Health and Kinesiology, says the study reveals that LDL is not the evil Darth Vader of health it has been made out to be in recent years and that new attitudes need to be adopted in regards to the substance. His work, with help from colleagues from the University ...
New Rochelle, NY, May 5, 2011—When children or adolescents with asthma and their parents become overly anxious about the disorder, it may impair their ability to manage the asthma effectively. A new, effective tool to assess asthma-related anxiety is described in an article in Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The article is available free online.
A high level of disease-related anxiety among adults with asthma has been associated with an overreaction to asthma symptoms and overuse of medication. ...
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new University of Florida study shows cats are the dominant predator to mockingbird eggs and nestlings in urban areas, prompting conservationists to urge pet owners to keep felines indoors at night.
The findings challenge assumptions that urban areas are places of refuge for nesting mockingbirds, a species researchers say plays an important role in controlling insect pests and serving as environmental indicators for metropolitan areas.
"I thought the cats probably really hammered them [birds] when they were fledglings, but when they were in the ...
Urban search and rescue (USAR) task forces are essential for locating, stabilizing, and extricating people who become trapped in confined spaces following a catastrophic event. Sometimes the search area is too unstable for a live rescue team, so rescuers have turned to robots wielding video cameras. Most recently, the USAR robots have been employed by rescuers following the devastating Japanese earthquake and tsunami. The rescuers control, or teleoperate, from a safe location. Teleoperation can be problematic, as robots frequently become stuck, which can destabilize the ...
