Democracy 3 and Religion

The more advanced and educated a person is, especially in the fields of physics, astronomy, and cosmology, the FAR less likely they are to be religious.

The fact that religious people have made great strides in scientific fields does not say that this was because of religion, but in fact often despite religion, and perhaps merely because they happen to belong to a considerable majority of society.

However, even though the majority of people are religious, it should say something that experts in fields of science are significantly less likely to be religious.

There is basically no basis for putting a effect of religion as helping science, in fact, religion has shown time and time again through out history and the present day that it has a strong, almost systematic tendency to subvert science and caricature it. The reason for this should be obvious, science necessarily diminishes the appeal and persuasiveness of religion by taking the mystery of various parts of the natural world and nailing them down with experimentation and observation.

Hi TisAFleshWsound

I agree with you that the majority may not be faithful but many are. A quick look at my bookshelves and my own experience of meeting post grads and lecturers in universities show plenty of faithful scientists who are at the frontier of their fields. These people are not there despite their faith in fact some have come to faith because of science. and are where they are because of their faith or came to their faith because of science. Of course the same can be said vice versa.

John Polkinghorne - former professor Mathematical Physics @ CU
Deborah Haarsma - associate professor Physics & Astronomy @ Calvin College
Francis Collins - Human Genome Project director
Jennifer Wiseman - NASA
Bill Newsome - Neurobiology @ Stanford
Rosalind Picard - Affective Computing Research @ MIT
Ard Louis - Theoretical Physicists @ OU
Alistair Coles - Neuroimminology @ CU

I have only met the two from Cambridge TBH but they’re very passionate about their faith.

Regarding D3’s stance on faith, I strongly agree with hugorune. My tendencies trend towards liberal too. I imagine the sake would be true for most faithful people playing this game TBH.

Also, a state has never, to my knowledge, completely suppressed faith. One only has to look at China or Cambodia to see the massive underground churches. Does the game simulate this with missionaries from faithful in other countries?

@andtsonofbob

  1. While those scientists may be where they are today because of some personal faith-based inspiration, that is not the same thing as religion in general being a positive force on the scientific community. In fact, the opposite has always been true in a broad perspective. Squishy liberal theists obviously don’t have as much of a problem with science, and obviously scientists would tend to be more liberal, just as they tend to be less religious.

  2. You can find almost anyone in almost any field that professes almost any level of belief. That says nothing about the overall tendency or trend within that field.

  3. If your criteria for “completely suppressing faith” is to not have underground churches, I guess you are right, although former soviet Eastern-European countries often have very low belief rates. But that is not what is happening in the game. In the game, religious thought is being undermined by education and science not suppressed by the state.

Hi

I have tweaked religion a bit for those concerned by the game’s stance on religion.

viewtopic.php?f=37&t=8706&p=65393#p65393

I haven’t tested it very well though.