RE: Stephen Hawking an Atheist?
September 5, 2010 at 9:15 am
(This post was last modified: September 5, 2010 at 9:21 am by The Omnissiunt One.)
(September 4, 2010 at 6:43 am)solja247 Wrote: Its going to be interesting to see if other physicists agree with him...
Most do.
Quote:Larson and Witham present the results of a replication of 1913 and 1933 surveys by James H. Leuba. In those surveys, Leuba mailed a questionnaire to leading scientists asking about their belief in "a God in intellectual and affective communication with humankind" and in "personal immortality". Larson and Witham used the same wording [as in the Leuba studies], and sent their questionnaire to 517 members of the [U.S.] National Academy of Sciences from the biological and physical sciences (the latter including mathematicians, physicists and astronomers). The return rate was slightly over 50%.
The results were as follows (figures in %):
BELIEF IN PERSONAL GOD
Personal belief 1914: 27.7 1933: 15 1998: 7.0
Personal disbelief 1914: 52.7 1933: 68 1998: 72.2
Doubt or agnosticism 1914: 20.9 1933: 17 1998: 20.8
BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY
Personal belief 1914: 35.2 1933: 18 1998: 7.9
Personal disbelief 1914: 25.4 1933: 53 1998: 76.7
Doubt or agnosticism 1914: 43.7 1933: 29 1998: 23.3
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sci_relig.htm
'We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.' H.L. Mencken
'False religion' is the ultimate tautology.
'It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.' Mark Twain
'I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.' Abraham Lincoln
'False religion' is the ultimate tautology.
'It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.' Mark Twain
'I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.' Abraham Lincoln
