Do Scientists Believe in God?

Rice University sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund conducted a statistical survey to understand if scientists were categorically hostile to religious belief: “In broad statistical terms, Ecklund’s results are unsurprising: Scientists tend as a group to be less religious than the general population. About 64 percent of the respondents described themselves as atheists or agnostics, as against only about 6 percent of the general public. ‘Looked at the other way around,’ Ecklund writes, ‘only about 9 percent of scientists say they have no doubt that God exists, compared to well over 60 percent of the general public.'”