The survey results

There's been a survey of views among philosophers, and apparently there was widespread participation; it produced some interesting results concerning the distribution of views among philosophers.  As a Carnapian, I was particularly interested to notice that 2/3 of philosophers believe in the analytic/synthetic distinction; apparently people are no longer as impressed with Quine's argument as they once were (assuming they ever were as impressed as is usually reported; there's no survey from a few decades ago to compare).

Of perhaps more general interest, there has been some discussion of the fact that while around 3/4 of philosophers generally are atheists, the numbers are reversed for philosophers of religion.  Trent Dougherty suggests that we should take this as evidence in favor of theism, that the experts lean toward that view.  I'm not so sure.  It's the only area I can find where there's such a sharp difference between the specialists and other philosophers.  Given that the other philosophers are certainly not completely uninformed (it's hard to be completely uninformed on this topic, and certainly anybody who does history of philosophy can't avoid lots of contact with philosophy of religion), it seems unlikely to me that such a big difference could be based solely on the experts having better evidence; their evidence surely isn't that much better.  So I tend to think that there's some other explanation for this pattern, though I don't have a firm opinion as to which of the possible explanations apply.

In addition to proposing that theism among philosophers of religion may be based on good evidence, Trent proposes a more sociological explanation for widespread naturalism.  While there certainly are fashions in philosophy, I actually think philosophers have been more inclined to naturalism than the general public for as long as there has been philosophy.  And I would have thought that the reason that the trend has over the course of the modern era become stronger and more entrenched is surely because of the success of science in progressively explaining more and more of the world.

Comments

[Jim Farmelant]

I would think that the reason why there is such a difference in views, concerning theism, between philosophers of religion and philosophers in general, might simply be one of self-selection. That is people who take religious claims seriously are more likely to become philosophers of religion, while atheistic philosophers are perhaps less likely to see religion as being a peculiarly interesting source of philosophical problems to which they would want to devote their professional careers. In other words, it may be the case that the non-theistic philosophers, who, not taking religious claims so seriously, find other kinds of problems to be of greater interest and so devote their professional careers to doing things other than philosophy of religion.

[www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawnxJ4f7MH5TOcsHH4TXJwXvI_WUBM4iNr8]

It doesn't seem surprising to me that 'philosophers of religion' tend to be believers, no more than if a survey were taken of astrologers and the findings indicated many believed in the influence of the stars and planets on the human personality. It seems like it would be a self-selecting set. Whether it's probative of anything about the claims of religion is another story.