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- Title
Inquiry, Not Science, as the Source of Secularization in Higher Education.
- Authors
Evans, John H
- Abstract
The traditional claim in the literature on religion and science is that exposure to science leads to secularity because the claims about the natural world in the two systems are incompatible. More recently, research has narrowed this claim and shown that conflict over knowledge in the USA is primarily limited to one religion—conservative Protestantism—and only to a few fact claims. In this paper, I test this claim using longitudinal data from matched surveys taken in students' first and fourth year of university. I find no evidence that the science is more secularizing than nonscience. I then turn to a distinction in university majors long used by sociologists of education—between majors focused on inquiry versus those focused on applying knowledge—and find that majors focused on inquiry are more likely to secularize than those focused on application. I interpret this to mean that learning to inquire secularizes.
- Subjects
SECULARIZATION (Theology); RELIGION &; science; INQUIRY (Theory of knowledge); HIGHER education; SCIENCE
- Publication
Sociology of Religion, 2022, Vol 83, Issue 1, p102
- ISSN
1069-4404
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/socrel/srab005