This letter is just to correlate with Rudy Bernard's excellent column "Scientists don't need to dismiss religion to be credible, accurate" (SN 3/14), which he wrote in response to John Bice's column, "Evolutionary theory, science needed to vaccinate irrational beliefs" (SN 2/16).

Bice quotes from Elaine Ecklund's survey of 1,646 professors and drew the conclusion that "Natural science faculty were less likely to believe in God than social scientists."

However, a careful reading of Ecklund's paper shows that isn't what she said.

Instead, she asked professors if they agreed more with the statement there is "very little truth in any religion," versus that there are "basic truths in many religions."

Her question probably more accurately measures the higher degree of postmodernism among social scientists versus natural scientists, who are more likely to be modernists.

But all other studies of beliefs of university professors, when asking whether they believe in God, or "a god," have shown a higher belief in God among natural scientists than social scientists.

In fact, the percentages of such belief among both groups has remained virtually unchanged during the past century.

One of my friends wrote his dissertation for his degree from Oxford on this very subject, and it's fair to say that he knows the subject better than Bice.

And he says the survey results are very clear — there is a higher level of belief in God among natural scientists than there is among social scientists.

The other point to note is that it's more important to read the original study, than a given Web site's summary of that article, because such Web sites might omit such nuances as the distinction of whether people believe "there is some truth in every religion" versus the question of whether people believe in God.

Charlie Mack
1976 graduate