Christian optimism is needed by scientists as never before – its regrettable that leading atheists have been campaigning to try and make faith and even agnosticism something to be embarrassed about on the university campus. How they need the light!!

I also suspect that another reason for the increasingly defensive attitude of scientists is simply that there’s a decline in interest in science itself. Scientists are perceived as nerdish and the number of prospective students taking up some science courses is dropping alarmingly. A year or so ago Exeter University in the UK was in the news because of alarm amongst the Chemistry faculty that there weren’t enough students enrolling to make the course viable. Other universities in the UK have said the same thing. The other problem is that much of the big science that captures the public imagination, like CERN and the other particle accelerators, is very, very expensive, and so subject to government cutbacks.

Regarding the negative view of science articulated by radical Postmodernism and certain forms of feminism, Sokal and Bricmont, the American physics professor and Belgian philosopher, did a very good job of demolishing these arguments in their book, Intellectual Impostures , which critiqued the abuse of science and scientific terminology by radical Postmodernists in order to make their texts more obscure, and so seem more profound than they actually were. One of their arguments is that the radical feminist rejection of science actually was sexist, as it acted to prevent women from taking up careers in science in a way that was extremely similar to the arguments advanced against women being allowed to enter the scientific profession in the Victorian era.

As for Creationism and, more broadly, religious belief being somehow hostile to science, this has been challenged by a number of studies. There have been a number of studies that show that the people least inclined towards superstition and pseudoscience tend to be the traditionally religious. One of the articles I found on the Creationist site, Answers in Genesis , cited papers published in very orthodox science magazines like New Scientist and Sceptical journals that the people with the highest trust in science, who were least superstitious were, paradoxically, Creationists. Of course, Creationism is still very much opposed to the conventional scientific account of the origins of species and the cosmos, but this does show that scepticism about one aspect of science does not necessarily translate into an anti-science viewpoint as a whole.

As for the numbers of people going into science dropping, my guess is that it’s due more to changes in the social and industrial structure of society than anything to do with the rise of scepticism against science. Back in the 1950s when Britain had a much larger manufacturing sector than it does now, many more people would have entered science and engineering courses as there were far more job opportunities in those sectors. Moreover, science was glamorous in a way that it probably isn’t today. There were predictions of a glorious technological future, with advances in aviation, rocketry, trains and unconventional methods of transport like the hovercraft. Now these forms of transport have been around for so long that they’re pretty much taken for granted, and so don’t quite have the wonder they once had.

As for job opportunities, New Scientist reported that most mathematicians ended up working for insurance companies rather than in science. I can believe that – there’s probably better job opportunities and career prospects there. There’s also a lack of science and maths teachers in schools, or there was. I can’t say I’m surprised at that, as there is, or can be, immense pressures on teachers, so recruitment generally has been difficult, and in specialist areas like maths and science it’s not surprising that it’s particularly difficult in these areas.

As for the health scares, one scientist interviewed several years ago now on BBC Radio 4 said she really didn’t blame the public for becoming sceptical about scientists and their claims when something that is declared to be safe or beneficial one year is then declared to be harmful the next. The changes in scientific opinion means that the general public, which looks to scientists for advice and guidance, becomes confused and then sceptical.

The piece about the woman coming back from the dead was very interesting indeed, Ilion. Thanks for linking to it. John Horgan, one of the journalists for the science magazine, Discovery , wrote an entire book a while ago pointing out that modern materialist views of the brain really didn’t explain it or the human mind. It’s another issue I’m going to have to blog on at some point. Also John Hicks in his book, The New Frontier of Science and Religion strongly attacks the notion that contemporary neuroscience has explained away mystical experiences.

It seems to me that scientists have became increasingly defensive in recent decades. Thomas Kuhn popularised the suggestion that science doesn’t always progress through complete objectivity in the early 60s, so why are folk being persecuted for saying the same thing today? Perhaps due to generally higher corruption in science resulting from increasingly fierce competition for funding, and possibly to scientists feeling threatened by the rising level of belief in the supernatural revealed by Gallup polls and the like.

Its to be hoped that the publics declining faith in materialism is God’s will and relates to an increasing frequency of miracles or possible miracles like the recent one Ilion linked us to!