The ongoing and irreconcilable antagonism between science and religion has been taken for granted. And in the wake of recent controversies over teaching Intelligent Design and the ethics of stem cell research, the divide seems to remain as unbridgeable as ever. In Science vs Religion, Elaine Howard Ecklund investigates this unexamined assumption in the first systematic study of what scientists actually think and feel about religion. Ecklund surveyed nearly 1700 scientists, interviewed 275 of them, and centers the book around vivid portraits of 10 representative men and women working in the physical and social sciences at top American research universities. She finds that most of what we believe about the faith lives of elite scientists is wrong. Nearly 50 percent of them are religious. Many others are what she calls "spiritual entrepreneurs," seeking creative ways to work with the tensions between science and faith outside the constraints of traditional religion. Her respondents run the gamut from Margaret, a chemist who teaches a Sunday-school class, to Arik, a physicist who chose not to believe in God well before he decided to become a scientist. Only a small minority are actively hostile to religion. Ecklund reveals how scientists--believers and skeptics alike--are struggling to engage the increasing number of religious students in their classrooms and argues that many scientists are searching for "boundary pioneers" to cross the picket lines separating science and religion. With broad implications for education, science funding, and the thorny ethical questions surrounding stem-cell research, cloning, and other cutting-edge scientific research, Science vs Religion offers a welcome dose of reality to the science and religion debates.

About the Author
Elaine Howard Ecklund is an Assistant Professor of Sociology, and the Associate Director for the Center on Race, Religion, and Urban Life, at Rice University. Ecklund has received awards and grants from the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and John Templeton Foundation and is the author of Korean American Evangelicals: New Models for Civic Life (OUP 2008).

Reviews
Ecklund has rendered a good service to the cause of promoting dialogue between science and religion, and it is hard to disagree with her diagnoses and description of the field. Her recommendations are wise and passionately expressed. * Lluis Oviedo, ESSSAT-News, 21:1, March 2011 *
[This] book will provide an excellent starting point for those who want to know what scientists in the US really think. * Times Higher Education Book of the Week *
it presents an extensive and detailed picture of the thinking about science and religion among the science faculty of 21 top universities in the United States. * Skperd L. Bonting, Reviews in Science and Religion 58 *
This is a very important book for anyone concerned with the place of science in a pluralistic and democratic society. ... For religion scholars, there is awealth of material in this book to ponder, as well as to pillage for lectures and sermons! * Daniel Liechty, Religion *



Book Information
ISBN 9780195392982
Author Elaine Howard Ecklund
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 484g
Dimensions(mm) 238mm * 162mm * 22mm