Hot Air linked to this Pew Research poll about the beliefs and attitudes of researchers in the scientific fields.
Excerpt:
More than half of the scientists surveyed (55%) say they are Democrats, compared with 35% of the public. Fully 52% of the scientists call themselves liberals; among the public, just 20% describe themselves as liberals. Many of the scientists surveyed mentioned in their open-ended comments that they were optimistic about the Obama administration’s likely impact on science.
For its part, the public does not perceive scientists as a particularly liberal group. When asked whether they think of scientists as liberal, conservative or neither in particular, nearly two-thirds (64%) choose the latter option. Just 20% say they think of scientists as politically liberal. However, a majority of scientists (56%) do see members of their profession as liberal.
Most scientists had heard at least a little about claims that government scientists were not allowed to report research findings that conflicted with the Bush administration’s point of view. And the vast majority (77%) says that these claims are true. By contrast, these claims barely registered with the public – more than half heard nothing at all about this issue. Only about a quarter of the public (28%) said they thought the claims were true.
Both scientists and the public overwhelmingly say it is appropriate for scientists to become active in political debates about such issues as nuclear power or stem cell research. Virtually all scientists (97%) endorse their participation in debates about these issues, while 76% of the public agrees.
I think it helps to make the point I was making earlier about the fraudulent science used to support global warming and Darwinian evolution. Many scientists have an agenda. They get paid by the government. The bigger government is, the better they get paid. Therefore, many are Democrats. Scientists tend to be biased in favor of material entities and explanations. Morality is non-material. Scientists therefore tend to resent the idea that moral claims are knowledge. They prefer to have autonomy from non-material moral rules. Therefore, many are atheists.
There are some dissenters of course. But these are rare.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Good point; I’m not sure why so many people blindly give journalists and scientists a pass when it comes to being biased.
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Politically motivated scientists? Not in this new era of Hope and Change!
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/07/15/study-in-contrasts-christian-scientist-vs-eco-mad-scientist/
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Don’t too excited. Collins is a theistic evolutionist who is pro-abortion and pro-ESCR, if I am not mistaken.
On the plus side, he accepts all cosmological and fine-tuning arguments for God’s existence. Maybe he can tell them to Obama.
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Maybe scientist consider themselves liberal because they don’t look to god to explain all tough questions (and I’m being serious). When the majority of the country truly believes in a deity that is working behind the scenes and you don’t then you are a liberal thinker by all definitions of the word.
As for being dems, they tend to be the group most likely to fund research so it’s only natural to support that group. My wife was working in a major study that found some evidence that could negatively impact some major Industries during the bush years and they lost all of their funding. So why would you support a group (the reds) that wants to censor science. Ifthe findings were wrong then peer review and validation will point that out
Science by it’s very definition will want material explantions. How do you verify “god did it”? And when do you know when to accept that and move on vs continuing research because all true believers will want to end any and all research that could throw their belief systems into doubt/question
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You verify “God did it” by showing that material processes didn’t do it. With it being the origin of the universe, the fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the big bang, the origin of biological information, the origin of all phyla in the Cambrian, the origin of mind, objective morality, the resurrection of Jesus, galactic habitability, stellar habitability, etc.
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But your explanation excludes the progress of science. Imagine 500 years ago if we just gave up on science because the best science of the time couldn’t explain hurricanes – we would be living today thinking as they did centuries ago – that we were being punished for sins/wickedness. But since we ruled out divine causes and allowed scientists to say “We don’t know yet”, we have found the true causes.
I see you posted an article from Science Daily – a site I’m a bit shocked you read, anyways, it’s featured a lot of articles in the past couple months that have talked about how scientist have started to prove and make accurate predictions from String theory (something I didn’t think would happen this quickly). And you know what follows from String Theory don’t you? So each one of those questions to science you pose now may not be answerable with our current technology, but that doesn’t mean that we should just believe god did it. Let the churches teach that while we let the institutes of science and higher learning go down the scientific route.
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Is it possible that the progress of science could reveal that God did it, because the natural mechanisms could not have done it?
Are there any effects that we observe in nature, like software written by you, that defy natural explanation?
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you said…
“Scientists therefore tend to resent the idea that moral claims are knowledge.”
This is a faulty premise. Did you actually mean to replace the word “moral” with “religious”?
Some of the most moral people I ever met were Atheists and Agnostics.
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No, I meant what I wrote.
Scientists have a bias in favor of material explanations and entities. Moral values, human rights, moral obligations, meaning and purpose are are non-material. Therefore, scientists discount the reality of morality since it is non-material and cannot be studied by science.
Atheism does not ground morality rationally. See this post for more information.
There is no such thing as morality if atheism is true, only personal prerferences and arbitrary social conventions that vary by time and place.
Here are some prominent atheists who will help you to understand that there is no such thing as morality if atheism is true:
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As WK said above, but just to close the loop a bit:
“Some of the most moral people I ever met were Atheists and Agnostics.”
That is no doubt true. But it does not mean that they acted rationally, or that the basis for their moral action is their atheism.
Christians cannot claim either from scripture or from experience that non-Christians are incapable of acting morally, that’s not really in view overall. What is in view for the article above is that worldview and dogmatics are both appearant and functionally very important in driving direction of research and granting of grants.
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