Scientists and Religion: A Comparison Between American and Brazilian Schola
Very recently, Elaine Ecklund and collaborators have investigated the case of the conflict between religion and science among American academic scientists and, in the same context, the negotiation strategies of atheists and agnostics related to religion and family.Their research, published as a boo...
| Published in: | Cultural and religious studies |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
David Publishing Company
2014
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| In: |
Cultural and religious studies
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Very recently, Elaine Ecklund and collaborators have investigated the case of the conflict between religion and science among American academic scientists and, in the same context, the negotiation strategies of atheists and agnostics related to religion and family.Their research, published as a book and in three recent issues of Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, found out that in contrast to public opinion and scholarly discourse, most scientists do not perceive a conflict between science and religion. In the same vein, the psychological conflict between science and religion was investigated some years ago in an academic Brazilian sample. Although the Brazilian sample should not be compared with the American on several grounds, the main result of the research seems to be the same: no conscious conflict between science and religion in both samples, in spite of a conflict uncovered at the unconscious level, among the Brazilian scientists. In this paper, a more strict comparison between the American and the Brazilian studies is proposed, regarding subjects, method and results. The main differences regarding the subjects were related to their number and scientific fields, much bigger and more diverse in the American than in the Brazilian sample. The main difference related to method was the general underlying assumption: While in the American study the empirical approach consisted of agree/disagree choices of formulated questions, the Brazilian approach consisted of listening to the subjects, and learning from them the relevant topics of their scientific and religious experience, at their conscious and, indirectly, unconscious level. As a consequence, the American approach was quantitative, and the Brazilian, qualitative. The difference regarding the results was rather conceptual than factual: The American study emphasized spirituality, while the Brazilian subsumed spirituality in religion. Finally, in order to strengthen a cultural understanding of the findings, a brief reference to some non-Western research on the relation between religion and science is added. A prospective post-doctoral research is on the way in Brazil, enlarging the sample of the Universities and the representativeness of the respondents, and using quali-quant methods. |
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| ISSN: | 2328-2177 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Cultural and religious studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.17265/2328-2177/2014.04.006 |