Fact Check: Most origin of life scientists are religious

A major complaint of the Creationists, those who are committed to a Genesis-based story of origins, is that evolution—and Darwinism in particular—is more than just a scientific theory. They object that too often evolution operates as a kind of secular religion, pushing norms and proposals ...

We interviewed 46 scientists from the Collaborative Research Center 235 “Emergence of Life” (CRC) to explore: (i) how they view the scientific controversies in the origins of life (OoL) field; (ii) their approach to communicate them; and (iii) their attitude towards the relations between science and religion. Although the sample encompasses members of only one research cluster, it is diverse enough to offer a snapshot of the attitudes in the field (see Methods and Sample). The most frequent approach to the OoL controversy is to actively participate in its resolution, particularly among senior scientists.

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Scientific and Religious Beliefs about the Origin of Life and Life after Death: Validation of a Scale ... The belief in God and immortality. A Psychological, Anthropological and Statistical Study represents a study of · the religious beliefs present in American scientists. The · hypothesis to be tested was that the more educated people ... Leuba in 1921. The results obtained coincided with those of Leuba [48], which revealed that most scientists openly proclaim

It is the unresolved questions about nature that mark the fertile areas for new research, propelling the sciences forward -- including those related to human origin studies. Science, as a particular way of knowing, restricts itself to offering natural explanations for the natural world. When scientists find a gap in their understanding of nature, as scientists they cannot say, “Here is where God acts in some miraculous manner.” Instead, scientists seek to look deeper into nature to discover there the answers that fill the gaps. It is worth noting that many religious persons take exception to a “God of the gaps” viewpoint, to the idea that the action of God in creation is limited to those areas where there are gaps in human understanding.

Fig 4. Religion and science in origins of life. (a) Religious composition of the sample, roughly equally divided · between atheists, agnostics, spiritually inclined and religiously affiliated to some degree (N = 46).

Some are claiming that researchers have taken a step toward showing how life could arise from non-life. ... Swedish meteorite said to have triggered mass destruction and opened the way for life’s post-Cambrian explosion. No results found in Origin of Life.

Tour generated some controversy by stating that the researchers were “lying” to their readers. Tour’s comments were made largely in jest, and he has apologized for his choice of a verb, yet assertions in the articles were indeed demonstrably false (here, here, here). The origin of life is not a normal scientific theory, for the belief that life formed purely through natural processes represents a sacrosanct secular creation myth.