The Volokh Conspiracy is ruminating over why so many academics are hostile to some religions rather than others. Todd Zywicki cites data:
According to a study by the Institute of Jewish and Community Research, 53% of professors have an unfavorable view of Evangelical Christians but only 3% have an unfavorable view of Jews. A summary of the study is here. 33% have unfavorable views of Mormons. Muslims, Atheists, and Catholics all score in double-digits.
He goes on to express his astonishment…
It is almost impossible to imagine any identifiable group of Americans today who would hold such a reflexively negative view of other groups of Americans. I can’t imagine that any degree of racial bigotry by any group toward any other group would even approximate this degree of bigotry and prejudice.
Until, of course, his commenters point out an inconvenient fact: this “prejudice” pales next to that against atheists.
Co-blogger Ilya Somin then chimes in with a theory — it’s all just bias against conservatives.
Overall, I think the data confirm my theory that most academics are not hostile to religion as such, but merely to those religious groups that they perceive (for the most part correctly) as politically conservative.
The study Todd cites shows that 53% of academics have an “unfavorable” view of Evangelical Christians and 33% say the same of Mormons. By contrast, only 13% have an unfavorable view of Catholics and 3% towards Jews. As Todd points out, Evangelical Christians and and Mormons are generally seen as politically conservative, while Jews tend to be liberal, and Catholics somewhere in between. Todd may well be right that academics’ views of Evangelicals and Mormons are based on stereotypes rather than personal experience. However, the stereotype that these groups tend to be politically conservative is actually correct.
I have a different theory. What if academics had an unfavorable view of evangelicals and Mormons, and a generally favorable view of Catholics and Jews, because of how those groups view academia? Crazy, I know, but bear with me here. Catholicism and Judaism, whatever their other faults, have long traditions of valuing learning and scholarship, while Mormonism and evangelical Christianity … not so much. (Those are wild generalizations, of course, but the trends are clear.) Perhaps these unfavorable views are not actually prejudices at all, but informed opinions based on empirically verifiable realities?
Just a theory.
I think that Sean is absolutely right about the attitude of academics towards evangelicals. Evangelicals have a tradition of hostility towards science, and this is the main reason for the unfavorable attitude of academics towards evangelicals.
However, I suspect that the situation with Mormons is different. This survey reports that, like most religions, the fraction of academics that have an unfavorable view of Mormons is smaller than the fraction of the general public that has an unfavorable view of Mormons. This hostility toward Mormons is a central theme of Mormon history and was a serious problem for Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful presidential bid. I suspect that the unfavorable attitudes of academics towards Mormons have more to do with this general attitude than any perceived hostility of Mormons towards academics.
My own experience with Mormons tends to confirm the view that they aren’t hostile toward academics, but since the Mormons I know mostly have PhD’s in physics, this may not be a representative sample.
Why do the atheists score in the double digits if academics base their feelings on rationality?
I think an even more interesting question would be why academics are suspicious of Mormons and whether or not that suspicion boils over into bias and discrimination.
Henry Eyring comes to mind….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Eyring
To further poke holes in your “theory” it is also worth noting that his son (now just behind the Church President) holds a bacheler’s degree in physics.
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Exactly how would you quantify this? (My guess is you just made this up out of your biases) When I worked at LANL two of the three main guys at the lab were Mormon and a hugely disproportionate number of group leaders were Mormon. There were two large congregations of Mormons who all primarily worked at the lab.
Many of the top leadership of the LDS faith have PhDs including several in science.
Utah has widely been noted as producing the most scientists per capita for over 60 years. Within Utah Mormons produce more scientists and non-Mormons.
So I’m not quite sure what constitutes “scholarly achievement” for you and why you have the bias you do. It seems if you’re going to make a claim like that in a widely read site the burden is on you to at least be able to back it up.
All religions have had their run-ins with academic freedom. (You may have noticed that I’m not a big fan of religions generally.) But some have countervailing traditions of serious scholarly work, and Catholicism and Judaism are the first that come to mind, at least to Westerners. (A thousand years ago Islam would have been the obvious choice, but times have changed.)
To most people with not much more than a casual knowledge of Mormonism, such as myself, its image is more closely associated with suppressing dissent than with championing free inquiry. I would have been interested to learn differently — an influential stream of Mormon philosophy? a particular academic specialty in which Mormons stood out? important instances in which academic freedom was put before doctrinal correctness? — but “BYU has a lot of physics majors” falls several degrees short of success. This thread has tended to reinforce my previous opinion, if anything.
Otis, I don’t understand how you draw that conclusion at all. Admittedly, science cannot answer all the questions you posed, yet. But that doesn’t mean that those questions fundamentally cannot be answered, and it doesn’t mean that the answers given by the Christian Bible are correct.
1) Let us suppose, just for fun, that the statement “one has to begin with a theistic view of the natural world” is valid. Why, then, is the explanation in the Christian Bible the correct one? What is wrong with the Hindu explanation? Or one of the many Native American explanations? Or Greek/Roman mythology? Can you give me one good reason why the Christian Bible is right aside from your own personal convictions?
2) That statement does not in any way follow logically or otherwise from the questions posed. Also, the Christian Bible is in direct contradiction to science at many points. So basically, I don’t think your argument makes any sense.
Holding an unfavorable opinion of Jews makes someone an antisemite, which, I guess, 97% of academics want to avoid. Similarly, while catholics don’t have the same history of persecution as the Jews, they are still perceived as a minority or even as a victimized religion–not people academics want to pick on. Evangelicals, on the other hand, are seen as the dominant, powerful faith, so there’s nothing wrong with holding an unfavorable opinion of them.
My theory doesn’t work so well explaining why so many Academics hold an unfavorable view of mormonism–it probably has much to do with what others have said–this is a complicated phenomenon.
Also, as has been noted, while “evangelical,” “catholic” and “mormon” all refer to religions, “jewish” can refer to either a religion or a people/ethnicity, so many “jews” are not religious at all.
Another thing is that the correctness of Sean’s assertion that Mormonism doesn’t value scholarship is irrelevant–what matters is what academics think about mormonism. Sean himself is a good example.
Adam, I think what makes Sean’s comments so disappointing is that there is a fundamental disconnect between what espouses and what he does. That is he appears to be labeling Mormons as anti-intellectual without any real justification and further sees the burden of proof as being on Mormons. Certainly it’s true that what matters is perception and as such I suspect Sean is very much representative of many in the academy. But doesn’t this point to a fundamental problem within the academy that goes against its own stated aims? When stereotypes and prejudice become the basis of judgment independent of even an attempt to gather evidence then something fundamental is wrong.
Sean, regarding issues of intellectual freedom (presumably at BYU although you don’t say) I still think that amazingly problematic. It suggests that because a particular Mormon in charge at BYU had one view of academic freedom that therefore all Mormons are anti-intellectual? Doesn’t that bother you in the least? How is that logic different from saying, “I got mugged by a black man therefore all blacks are criminals?”
Further you mischaracterize the evidence that people have brought up as “BYU has a lot of physics majors.” I’d agree that’s irrelevant (and probably not that true, speaking as someone who graduated in physics from BYU). But that’s a strawman. The point was that Mormons disproportionately go into science and presumably are very productive in science. This was a counterpoint to, “distinguished by a history of cultivating scholarly achievement.”
Now it appears that your positions is that because the administration of a single University disagree with you on some issues of academic freedom all Mormons are anti-intellectual. That’s fine if that’s what you belief. I’m just surprised you’d be the type to label millions of people on the basis of the decisions of just a few that don’t really seem related to scholarly achievement.
Just let me expand on that issue of BYU. The big problem of BYU is that it attempts to be a religious school. I can fully and utterly understand why some think that it’s impossible to have a religious school and be committed to the liberal ideal of academics. One might disagree, but I can understand why some see the values to fundamentally be in conflict. Further it seems undeniable that given the tensions between being a religious school and the academic ideal of “write anything and let the chips fall where they may” that people will be upset at what happens at BYU.
All I’d suggest is that even if you think the idea of having a religious school a bad idea it doesn’t follow that those attempting to have a religious school are anti-intellectual. They just disagree with you over what ought be allowed in the university system. Now the Mormons attempting to reconcile the two might well be wrong on political grounds. It doesn’t seem to follow logically in the least that they aren’t committed to scholarship, to academic standards of scholarship, nor to intellectual pursuits.
It just seems a category mistake to assume that because a religion has a religious school that may be problematic that they are anti-intellectual.
Why is the universe rational?
Because it can be described with a logical symbollic language
Why can humans understand it?
Because we created the language
Why are humans rational?
So they can efficiently achieve selfish goals
Why is the universe orderly?
Its not. Its chaotic and random
If the universe is fundamentally mathematical, why can humans do the math?
Once again, because we created the language
Where did the laws come from?
They are due to symmetry
Why those laws and not others?
Because the universe is isotropic and homogeneous at large scales
Why are there laws at all?
Because we exist
Clark, I did not say “all Mormons are anti-intellectual.” This is why arguing on the internet is usually a waste of time, because people would rather argue against something stupid that you didn’t say than confront what you did say.
What I said (mildly re-arranged) was “Mormonism does not have a long tradition of valuing learning and scholarship,” readily noting that this was a wild generalization. I might be wrong; as I willingly admit, my opinion is colored by a handful of cases of stifling academic freedom, plus no personal knowledge of any such tradition (plus some personal knowledge of actual Mormons). I haven’t seen any evidence here to the contrary, just a few anecdotes from partisans.
But anyway, I’m done with it; if anyone would like to enter such evidence into the comments, be my guest.
I have trained with and worked with a number of Mormons within the nuclear community, and in my experience they were all very professional and did not wear their religion on their shoulder.
They never tried to convert anyone, and they were all very intelligent, motivated, kind, open-minded to science, and in general just a pretty good bunch of guys.
I don’t know if that is a representative sampling, but as in most things in life, it is unkind to make overbroad generalizations about groups of people.
I live near a small locality with a pretty large population density of Mormons. I also know a few. They are very polite and nice people. They are very willing to help, have a strong sense of work, of charity and relief. The Mormons were on the ground in New Orleans two days before Bush’s Dept. Homeland Offense (sorry, but I just hate this monstrosity Bush created) deployed FEMA. Further their relief actions were of a logistical efficiency that put the Feds to shame.
I will also say that the theology of Mormonism, which I know a bit about, is utterly absurd. Mormonism takes the absurdism of Christianity and amplifies it in unique ways. One part of it is that they have “prophets” who make pronouncements about things which are beyond question. If I had to make a general observation it is that Mormons are admonished to not ask questions which are outside the boundaries of their faith or what the prophets tell them. This is not very conducive for intellectual development in my opinion.
The religion is comparatively new and is evolving as have all religions. I has in the 20th century evolved to model itself in a neo-orthodox form. I presume this is to make it assume the respectable forms of mainline Protestantism. It may change in time and could become less authoritarian than it has been. It is the fastest growing religion in America and the world. The next fastest growing religion in America is Islam, which has its dubious elements to it as well.
Lawrence B. Crowell
Otis, The Mind of God by Paul Davies is absolutely the classic of intelligent philosophy about “God” in the non-tradition-bound way that is based on reasoning and asking questions (how Aristotle or Plato would handle “Is there a God?” etc.) I don’t agree as much with what he says in “Jackpot” but thanks for the link. But although I like how you bring in philosophical theism, I don’t understand why you relate that to the Bible. The Bible is a collection of sayings of an ancient culture which was more advanced in thought and intuition than their neighbors, but by no means should be considered some sort of message from God. Clara’s challenges are valid as far as that part goes.
FSM, your point about nothingness is one way that modal realism gets off the ground. But they think that “everything exists”, not that this universe is somehow special to exist rather than others. (Look up def. and discussion from my link.) Your points above do nothing to explain why the laws would be just like they are, with the exact constants they are, and not some variation. Who can say with a straight face, considering the scope of what mathematics could define and describe, that the *particulars* of our laws are the unique expression of existence? That’s as silly as saying that the number 23 is reified into real brass numerals among all the numbers, for no good reason.
Yet I have explained elsewhere what sort of horrible problems come from that idea. Hence neither uniqueness nor the opposite extreme of everything existing works, instead there needs to be some ordering principle that selects out some or at least one possible worlds. To me, it’s no coincidence that this example is life-friendly (for example, just the right value of alpha, which has no intrinsic mathematical reason to be about 1/137.) But saying that it is like that because we are here is the fallacy of causal retrodiction. The outcome (like our being here) is of course going to be consistent with whatever initial conditions there were, so outcomes can’t “explain” the initial conditions.
#59 Clark –
When someone who isn’t even Mormon tries to throw you a cookie, it’s best not to throw that person under the bus…. especially when that non-Mormon went to school just north of you….
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-36617644.html
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,665194587,00.html
This post contains some data that illustrates the relatively strong Mormon culture of education, technoloy and bioethics:
http://transfigurism.org/community/blogs/lincoln_cannon/archive/2008/06/15/4648.aspx
Geoff, I looked up the original report. BYU graduated in 2000 only 47 physics bachelors. I’m shocked that figure is so much higher than everyone else. So I can but apologize. I honestly thought every place else did tons better. But we’re usually graduating 2 – 3x more physicists. And I know most of my graduating class went on to either prominent jobs or very excellent grad programs. I’d assume that is typical. I’d have thought MIT would have graduated more but they only had 35 (although their program is obviously better). Harvard was the only one that bested us with 59.
Sean, I apologize if I was reading too much into what you said. However you certainly did appear to be coming off as judging the group in a hasty way. But perhaps I’m guilty of the same in how I reacted to your words.
Neil B
I don’t agree with the characterization of my comments as being related to modal realism. The laws I was referencing would be applicable to any rational philosophical school.
I think everyone is getting mixed up on what “science” is. Mormons do really well in “hard” sciences, especially when talking about freedom of inquiry. What Mormons have a harder time with is “soft” sciences because they are often based more on theory than actual results. If you look at the BYU challenges to academics you will notice most, if not all, come from the arts, English, or history. These are notorious for getting a lot of people upset (and not just Mormons). This shouldn’t be surprising actually even if you stick with stereotypes. Mormons have always been known for practicality over theory.
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It’s also a problem with the precision of your statement. It’s not just people who are going to want to argue with you who are going to translate from “Mormonism does not have a long tradition of valuing learning and scholarship” into “Mormons are anti-intellectual” (and this isn’t the only problem with that statement). It’s also people who are inclined to agree with what you didn’t say. You can argue that’s not your responsibility, but that’d go over more sincerely if it weren’t a fairly short hop between the two statements.
So if this evidence were to exist, what would it look like?
Also, from which evidence did you conclude “the trends are clear?”
It’s hard to discuss this, because it’s not really clear which cases have colored your opinion, but if it’s the Wikipedia entry, there’s a few things that can be said that I think can dovetail with the excellent points Clark made about BYU.
It’s correct to say that academic freedom is constrained at BYU in ways it isn’t constrained at other institutions, but it’s incorrect to characterize it as a heavy, leaden blanket thrown over the entirety of scholarship. The constraints are more or less fenced-off areas of discourse (described fairly clearly in the numbered points under the “University standards” section in the wikipedia article). As Clark said, it’s one thing to argue that this is problematic for anyone strictly loyal to universally unfettered inquiry, and if this is the foundation of suspicion among many academics regarding Mormon educational institutions (in the literal organizational sense as well as the general social sense), it’s reasonably founded.
The problem with generalizing this real suppression of dissent to the entire realm of scholarship is that the rest of the field is so wide, and there really aren’t high profile examples I’m aware of in this much bigger realm (Evensen’s case is something of an exception for me, but this trips over a pretty torrid and tangled triangle involving not only the LDS church and the arts but the arts and academia, so I don’t think it’s germane to this discssion). It’s also arguable and probably demonstrable that serious scholarship is not only largely unfettered, it’s encouraged and supported.
And this is true to limits that I suspect might surprise some people. Sean asked for “important instances in which academic freedom was put before doctrinal correctness.” As is probably not surprising, in the life sciences there’s a history of some conflict between the church and the academy, in particular the fault line between evolution and creationism. But near as I can tell, even when visiting LDS apostles were giving sermons at BYU on how evolution doesn’t line up with LDS cannon (at least as late as 1980), faculty were and still are teaching it. This is sometimes surprising to *me*, given how silly BYU as an institution can be about small matters like facial hair. But I think it’s at least in part because as an institution, the university and the church recognize that the science *isn’t* a small matter. At least inside of LDS academia, there’s a real degree of cultural respect for scientific disciplines, and an understanding that even where there’s apparent conflicts with religious teachings, an accomplished student is going to have to know their stuff by the standards of the scientific discipline.
I think that’s clearly true in how it handles issues central to the church itself (doctrinal and moral issues). Outside of these areas this is much less clear.
Sean:
You are right — that is why BYU (mostly Mormon students) sends so many of its students on to get Ph.D.s around the country (BYUn has very few Ph.D. programs of its own). OK, I am being facetious.
BYU came in 10th in the country for the most students going on to get PhDs — right after UCLA and before MIT. That certainly attests to your thesis. More details here: http://byunews.byu.edu/releases/archive06/Aug/graduates/table.gif (and NSF also has the numbers, though I could not find the latest report)
Evangelical Christians do not have a long history of honoring study & learning? Hmmm….. Exactly who built Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other colleges?
Certainly there are some traditions with Evangelicalism that are anti-intellectual, but not the whole of conservative Protestantism. I think the answer is a bit messier than someone wants to believe.