A study of college students has found that science majors do not lose their religion as much as humanities students do, suggesting that science is not as corrosive to faith as postmodernism is. From Christianpost.com:
Results from a recent study on the impact of a college student’s major on their religiosity have led researchers to conclude that postmodernism, rather than science, is the greatest antagonist of religiosity.
“Because we consider both the Humanities and many of the Social Sciences particularly strongly imbued with Postmodernism, we take this as evidence for a negative effect of Postmodernism on religiosity,” they state in their report, which was released last month.
Meanwhile, majoring in the Biological Sciences and the Physical Sciences has a much smaller negative or no effects on religiosity.
“My coauthors Colter Mitchell, Arland Thornton, Linda Young-DeMarco and I speculate that Postmodernism (Relativism) has a much bigger negative effect on religiosity than Science because the key ideas of Postmodernism are newer than the key scientific ideas that challenge religion. Religions have had 150 years to develop resistance or tolerance for the ideas of evolution, for example,” said economist Miles Kimball, who co-authored the study.
In the study, postmodernism is defined as a commitment to relativism and to the idea that truth and morality are not absolute but are determined by those who are powerful. It is associated with “epistemological doubt” or the idea that knowledge and certainty are extremely difficult to attain. This conflicts with religious beliefs suggesting the existence of absolute knowledge, truth, and authority rooted in God’s revelation and teachings to human beings.
“Most religions have not gotten as far at developing resistance or tolerance for the ideas of Postmodernism, though one can see it happening, as some religions warn their member about Relativism, while others argue that Postmodernism means that religious belief cannot be disproved,” Kimball noted.
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