The Bias of Academics
Taken from Dr. Kelly James Clark’s book, God and the Brain: The Rationality of Belief:
There may be underlying biases that nonreflectively incline academics to unbelief. Such biases are often unconsciously activated; later on, though, when considering the beliefs produced by biases, we offer up a rational justification for that belief (and sincerely assume that we acquired that belief on the basis of those good reasons). Although academics fancy themselves immune to the normal psychological biases that affect everyone else, they aren’t immune to such biases and consequent rationalizations.14 Let me suggest one bias that likely affects the prevalence of atheism in the academy: conformity bias.
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While conformity usually affects behaviors, we also conform with respect to beliefs. Through a series of studies, Solomon Asch showed how difficult it is for an individual to maintain her own belief in the midst of a group that expresses a contrary opinion.15
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We find precisely this situation in the academy. If the majority in a highly desirable group holds certain views or manifests certain practices, then you should expect aspiring candidates for that group to mimic those beliefs and practices. As countercultural as professors sometimes can be, you don’t see many male professors with mullets or wearing kilts. And if the majority of the scientific community is atheistic or agnostic, then you should expect to find belief conformity (better, unbelief conformity). Those who aspire to be members of that community will find themselves mimicking the unbelief of the majority on the basis of acceding to this conformity disposition (and not on rational reflection). The cognitive science of religion does not claim that everyone is inclined to a faith that they would die for. It only claims that, given certain cultural influences or other environmental influences, people are inclined to easily acquire and sustain religious beliefs and practices. Religious belief may be widespread and skin deep. And so people might be inclined, due to other cognitive dispositions and in the face of other cultural or environmental influences, to unbelief. Believers and unbelievers alike may have acquired their religious belief/unbelief through a nonreflective, non–truth-conducive cognitive process, not on the basis of rational reflection.
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The social pressures against religious belief in academia aren’t insubstantial. A prominent social scientist friend was an adult convert to Christianity. He kept his convictions mostly private, and he never referred to them in his scholarly work or during presentations. But when word of his conversion leaked out, he was routinely asked by colleagues at meals or even during public presentations if the stories of his conversion were true (usually followed by a snide comment, asking how he could believe something so ludicrous). His colleagues and the audience would laugh as he did his best to offer a response. Imagine the effect of the public derision of this respected scholar’s religious beliefs on students or younger scholars. They got the message.
Expressions of unbelief needn’t be overt. From the selection of antireligious texts for course assignments to the haughty raising of an eyebrow, affirmations of unbelief are abundantly clear. Students learn what questions can be asked and what cannot, what can be said and what should not. A well timed horse laugh, a whispered comment over beers after a lecture, and a derisive snort are much more effective than an extended argument in a scholarly journal. In short, when prestige bias combines with conformity bias, unbelief in the academy is to be expected.17 When a majority of people holds a certain belief, conformity bias tells us how difficult it is for nearly everyone to resist the urge to conform. Pretty soon, with respect to contrary opinions, it is horse laughs all around.
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Of course academics won’t think that their religious unbelief is due to an unconscious psychic urge. (Theist to atheist scholar: “You just reject belief in God because you want so desperately to be accepted by that group.”) No one does. And yet we are all—academic and non-academic, high and low IQ— susceptible to unconscious psychological urges. None of us is immune from biases, including the drive to conform.
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Some academics may insist that they are less subject to conformity biases than the general public. Perhaps so. After all, it is reflection and careful thought—the sort of things that professors do for a living—that help us discover new ways of thinking and acting. So, while there may be some conformity bias that accounts for part of the difference, maybe that is not the whole story. Let us grant that professors are less subject to conformity than the average person. But therein lies another account for their greater-than average atheism: if breaking away from ordinary thinking is a mark of the highly intelligent because they can override conformity (at least in some cases), and if ordinary thinking is theistic, then some may reject theism by virtue of being nonconformist. A similar dynamic may be at play in people with really high IQs being more likely to believe that there is no external world, that causation is an illusion, that minds aren’t real, that humans aren’t free, and that there are no moral truths.