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Abstract
ABSTRACTThis study drew on data provided by 11,809 13- to 15-year-old students drawn from the four nations of the UK to explore the level of agreement with the view that science disproves the biblical account odf creation, and to explore the power of five sets of variables to predict individual differences in responses to that opinion. The five sets of variables were personal factors, psychological factors, religious factors, attitudinal factors (including ‘scientific fundamentalism’, understood as an exaggerated, uncritical, and unqualified belief in the inerrancy of science), and theological factors (distinguishing between differing implied theologies of religion). Blockwise multiple regression demonstrated that personal, psychological, religious, and theological factors all held significant power, but that the greatest variance was explained by the attitudinal variables. When the five sets of variables were assessed within the model, 25% of the variance was accounted for. Greater incompatibility between science and religion was associated with scientific fundamentalism (β = .37, p < .001), with anti-religious attitude (β = .16, p < .001), and with atheism (β = .07, p < .001). These findings suggest that young people who believe in science in an unqualified way are more distrustful of religion.
Highlights
There are a number of ways in which the connection between science and religion may be construed within adolescent minds
Recent empirical literatures exploring individual differences in the ways in which adolescents conceive the relationship between science and religion have drawn on five main conceptual frameworks rooted in what may be conveniently distinguished as personal factors, psychological factors, religious factors, attitudinal factors, and theological factors
The first research question is to document the style and level of endorsement among 13- to 15-year-old students of the view that science disproves the biblical account of creation
Summary
There are a number of ways in which the connection between science and religion may be construed within adolescent minds. Both of these formulations were explored by Taber, Billingsley, Riga, and Newdick (2011a) in their survey conducted among 109 11- to 14-year-old students in England (31 from a small city centre in East Anglia, 27 from a suburb of a large city in the South East, 24 from a coastal town in the North East, and 27 from a small rural town in the North) According to this survey, 26% of the participants agreed with the sentiment ‘Science and religion disagree on so many things that you cannot believe both’; 28% of the participants agreed that ‘Religious ideas about how the universe began have been proved wrong by science’; and 22% of the participants agreed that ‘A good scientist cannot believe that life was created by God or a higher being’. These quantitative findings were supported by a second study reporting interviews with 12 13- to 14-year-old students (see Taber, Billingsley, Riga, & Newdick 2011b)
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