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I am actually good friends with a highly intelligent man who is a math professor. He is also a fundamentalist Christian and far-right politically. He was adopted as a child and raised by parents who are the same. However, it is fairly obvious to us (his friends) that he struggles with these things. We don't mention it, of course (in fact, he has no idea I'm an atheist and liberal), but it seems to be there. I sometimes wonder if he's overcompensating to fit in with the norm in this part of the country.
That being said, I could be completely wrong about him, and maybe he really is a far-right, fundamentalist Christian. But his apparent thought process and awkwardness when speaking of such things seems extremely unnatural, like it's not really "him". Years ago I was just like him, and somewhere along the way I made a complete 180. So who knows?
I'm a mathematician and an atheist, I've never met a deeply religious mathematician and I'm surrounded by hundreds of them.
The "large segment" claim is of course fallacy from anecdote followed by confirmation bias. I've yet to know of any large scale polls carried out to answer this question but I suspect that a lot of them will be agnostics, deists or atheists. Mathematics, at least the pure aspects of it, has the tendency to destroy conventional notions of religion with it's philosophy.
I have several mathematician friends, they say the same thing in almost the same words. "I work in logic, not myth".
There is a difference between believing in a higher power and being "drawn to religion". The phrase implies they are drawn to organized religion which can be completely different from being religious or believing in a higher power. In my experience (and being an engineer myself, I know many educated people), well educated and intelligent people are evenly split among being religious, drawn to organized religion, and atheist.
The reason why so many educated people are one of the former two is because smart people like rules. They like guidelines and they like precedent. It's an irony that many really smart people do not like breaking the mold and would rather stick with what works or be conservative and rationalize saying "well if one exists, it's better to believe in something than nothing at all." Only the really smart and original people break the mold and dare to go against one of the oldest establishments in human history - religion.
An interesting aside totally unrelated to this discussion is that many engineers are also conservative leaning and vote Republican more often than not. However, that is purely a USA phenomenon, again in my experience. Many engineers I've met from outside the US are staunchly democratic.
I was reading a thread in relationships and someone said their ideal man must be educated, intelligent and preferably an athiest. Most of the extremely intelligent people I have met had advanced degrees featuring statistics, chemistry and engineering etc, and they had studied religion and/or were theologists and believed in a greater being.
Why do you think a large segment of this group of highly intelligent people are drawn to religion?
Please note: I used "some" and "segment" so I am not stating that everyone with a high IQ or mathematician is religious so no torching please.... Thank you.
I went to the IIT. Well, it's the IIT, it's something the reputation of which goes ahead in advance, before I even visit the place. Now I've walked into the Silicon valley, Manhattan or the like, the moment people point out that I'm from the IIT, every head in the room turns with a WoW factor.
The IIT is a powerhouse of some of the best intellectuals, elitists of the planet. A fair share of them are overwhelmingly religious. I used to sit in class, smelling the aroma of the staunchest agragaras one can ever run into, the most hardcore brahmins on the planet These people don't even eat chicken for fear of animal meat dampening the brilliance of their minds. My parents made sure I was predominantly a veggie till I became an adult for fear of losing out with respect to the others.
But there's also a word of caution here. The term mathematician is largely misunderstood. People think they're mathematicians if they get around a quadratic equation. They're not. You're not a mathematician unless you're 50 or 60 with 30 solid years of pioneering.
Besides, these old school mathematicians are a relic of the past. There's only one mathematician in the world today - the computer. My computer can calculate Laplace or Fourier transforms or any kind of statistical distribution at the drop of a hat. We're entering googleton territory here.
For the record, when I first came on here, I was impressed by some of the members here and what they write. When I later learned that they were using google for it, it just killed the reputation.
Now, I don't wanna name them all, but let's look at some "true" mathematicians. Let's not toy ourselves with 20-something kids sitting in the IIT, the Sorbonnes or the MIT for that matter. They don't have a clue of what general or professional life is until they hit into their mid-life in the real world and re-configure their ideologies. A personal eeeeww factor of mine is that 80% of these are clueless obamatrons (today's equivalent of those mindless woodstockers of the 60s, those who still live in a delusion that they changed the world)
Gauss (He's all over Physics and Mathematics)
Laplace (One of the greatest of all time, Laplace transforms for example)
Newton (Not really mathematical, but the true father of Physics) Didn't Gauss say that Math is the queen of science, it just cuts across.
Leibniz (the famous Leibniz theorem in Calculus)
Euler (one of the greatest of mathmen, he taught the world what f(x) is, he popularized pi, then comes the giant of complex numbers, euler's partial derivatives, he rules the roost all over complex engineering math)
Fourier (well, the Fourier series)
I'm obsessed with these men because I've been living them since I was at least 6 or 7. My father was a teacher/lecturer of advanced mathematics. Making me master calculus by 12 or something was his personal challenge and goal.
While living their works, I also had serious curiosity into their personal lives. These are very personally religious men of God, if not the Fulk of Neuilly kind. Each of them took pain in crossing over to philosophy, theology and other kinds of soft studies, and have written tons of volumes in the process.
It's also worth noting that several of these were educated by the religious institutions of their day. Even though a lot of thinkers regularly locked horns with the religious establishment, they were clearly a product of the education set-up of the religious system of their day. Even to this day, there's no one on earth who can teach like the Jesuits.
I had the opportunity of knowing a lot and the common unwritten rule is that many mathematicians (true ones), those who made history, and who will transcend across millennia, had a serious stint in theology/philosophy. Serious theology develops the mind like nothing else. Irrespective of the subject at hand, it enhances the mind's polemic/thinking sense.
Over to the other side, hindu intellectuals are ardent students of the Vedas and the Upanishads. When I was home, I had the opportunity of meeting the father of our nuclear weapons programme. The general perception in the rest of the world (the West, in particular) is that this is a maniacal, dangerous man. He also served as the president for five years. He famously told all of us he sleeps beside his rack containing his most favourite books - the upanishads, the Bible and the Quran. He's a muslim by birth.
You can comfortably say the mathematicians are strongly drawn to religion, the polemics part in particular. They just love to use a paper and let their words flow over. The same can't be said of computers, they're stupid. Even I used to tell them how to function in my youth.
Well, as mathematicians they are playing the odds... ever heard of Pascal's Wager?
Goes a bit like this:
"...even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because so living has everything to gain, and nothing to lose..."
Of course there are also counter wagers... naturally, LOL!
Bottom line is, no one knows definitively, or there'd be no debate, LOL!
That's why the religious types talk about things like "faith" and "free will"... because they can't definitively prove the existence of their god.
You can comfortably say the mathematicians are strongly drawn to religion, the polemics part in particular. They just love to use a paper and let their words flow over. The same can't be said of computers, they're stupid. Even I used to tell them how to function in my youth.
Theres no question that you are a bright person, and also appearantly a religious person.
But I don't think you can "comfortably say" that mathematicians are strongly drawn to religion, at least if you mean compared to the general population.
Instead, I think we can comfortably say that people who don't study anything at all are more likely to be religious than mathmaticians, and the more you study math (or any science) the less likely you are to believe in a personal God.
Actually I think the studies, even the ones cited here, do indicate mathematicians are more likely to be religious than other kinds of scientists. Although it's much lower than the general populace
"We found the highest percentage of belief among NAS mathematicians (14.3% in "God" [sic, by "God" they mean only "a God in intellectual and affective communication with humankind"], 15.0% in immortality)"
Leaving aside the myriad problems with this study it does indicate mathematicians are less unbelieving.
Pew's survey of scientists indicates those in chemistry are the scientists most likely to believe in God, but they don't deal with mathematicians. (And as I remember some of the most ignorant atheists react with hostility to the word "Pew" I will repeat that this is not a religious group. "Pew" is the surname of the philanthropist that started the research center)
It doesn't seem too hard to see why math and chemistry would have more theistic or religious people. Math does not directly have to say anything about the natural world or its evolution. I think there'd be no logical paradox between even being a Fundamentalist and working on number theory. Chemistry might be a bit harder to explain, but it also may relate less to religious issues.
Possibly more important though is evidence that atheists are more attracted to going into science in the first place. (In other words science doesn't make you atheistic, but atheism may make one scientistic) In the case of math it might not necessarily be much more attractive to atheists. For example conservative types likely are more encouraging of their kid going into math or economics as it's deemed more "practical" and conservative types tend to be more religious. It might also be less true of chemistry as a good deal of industrial jobs are associated to chemistry. Religious parents might be less encouraging of their kids going into other sciences, deeming them threatening or impractical.
Interestingly scientists also tend to be more politically liberal according to Pew. This isn't just on social issues either. They are more likely to reject the idea government is wasteful and that businesses strike a fair balance between profit and the public good. They are more skeptical of "peace through military strength" and more favorable toward equal rights causes.
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These people don't even eat chicken for fear of animal meat dampening the brilliance of their minds. My parents made sure I was predominantly a veggie till I became an adult for fear of losing out with respect to the others.
