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Asked by LordRolex to Megan, Mzamo, Ola, Olivia, Weiyi on 4 Nov 2016.
Question: Do you believe having a religion affects someone's credibility as a scientist?
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Ola Michalec answered on 4 Nov 2016:
Luckily, no one at university will be quizzing you on your religious views and their exact interpretation. 😉 I think one major human right is to pursue every big, unanswered question that comes to mind – and really science cannot tell you for 100% the following (at least for now):
– does good/bad exist? what happens after death? is there some greater meaning of life?
Religion offers answers to this, however they are not based on research but belief – you just trust that the answer is right and get on with life.Therefore, you are free to to have a religion. However, unless your field of research is theology, you shouldn’t refer to religion in your essays, experiments, papers.
It is because many religious books were written thousands of years ago – when not much was known about how world works. Since then science managed to find answers to many questions – think about evolution for example! also, it is also still debated whether people should read religious texts as metaphors or in a literal way.
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Megan Seymour answered on 4 Nov 2016:
No not at all.
Religion doesn’t really come into the research that my colleagues and I do, and I think it is really important that we have a mixture of people from different backgrounds with different outlooks on life all working together to give us the best possible chance of finding the answers we are looking for. -
Olivia Ashton answered on 7 Nov 2016:
Not at all. I agree with Megan, and that having a diverse group of people to working together is the best way to get a problem solved. Someone having a different opinion or background or religion to me doesn’t affect their position in science.
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Mzamo Shozi answered on 7 Nov 2016:
No it doesn’t. I know of a very good scientist who is a devoted Christian.
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