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Tuesday, 4 August 2009: 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.
Researchers at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor drew
the conclusion after finding that majoring in Humanities
or Social Sciences has a significant negative effect on
religious attendance and self-assessed importance of
religion in one’s life.
“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.
The new study, “Emperics on the Origins of Preferences:
The Case of College Major and Religiosity,” is based on
data that has been collected by researchers at the
University of Michigan since 1975. Each year about
16,000 students in approximately 133 public and private
high schools nationwide are interviewed during their
senior year of high school and a randomly-selected
sample from each senior class is followed up bi-annually
after high school.
Researchers set out to examine how exposure to specific
contents of a curriculum affects students’ values, on
the basis that college majors exhibit important
correlations with values and worldviews.
Findings show that students who entered the Humanities
were highly religious but they came out of the major
less religious than they started.
Those who switched into the Social Sciences were on
average less religious and maintained or strengthened
their already low religiosity.
Majoring in the Biological Sciences and the Physical
Sciences did not affect students’ religious attendance
but the Physical Sciences negatively affected the level
importance of religion in their lives.
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