The Social Imaginary of Science and Nonreligion: Narrating the Connection in the Anglophone West

Data collection

Using a combination of social media advertising and sharing invitations to participate via electronic mailing lists (including professional scientific ones), we built up a pool of participants from which to select interviewees for the research study. Each volunteer completed a prescreen survey which included questions on education level, work status, gender, ethnicity, and religiosity (or the absence thereof). This enabled purposive sampling. We were able to recruit a proportionate sample of interviewees in terms of age, gender, religiosity, perspective on science and religion, and, to an extent, race and ethnicity in line with each country’s demographics.¹ It was much more difficult to recruit people without degree-level education and so extra steps were taken to boost the pools in each country (face-to-face recruitment in the UK and mailed out interview requests in Canada). Yet, the sample still skews somewhat toward more educated professionals relative to each country’s demographics. Interviews were to a large extent geographically concentrated in England and Wales in the UK and the Greater Toronto Area in Canada.

Table 1. shows the total number of interviewees, broken down by country, religious status (religious or nonreligious), and science status (scientist or member of the public).²

We interviewed life scientists (for whom evolutionary science formed part of their work) and members of the public in each country for the study, including a mix of nonreligious and religious people. Whilst this article concentrates upon nonreligious participants, religious participants’ references were also reviewed, checking for similarities and differences.

The split between religious and nonreligious interviews was roughly in keeping with the demographics for each country, though nonreligious people were slightly underrepresented in the UK sample where 53 per cent of the population identifies as nonreligious.³ In Canada, approximately a quarter of the population identifies as nonreligious (Thiessen and Wilkins-Laflamme 2020). We went with people’s self-description of how they identified in terms of nonreligion (e.g., agnostic/atheist/Humanist), or, if they did not identify with a particular label, categorized them as ‘nonreligious’ based upon their answers to questions about religious belief, identification, and practice in the prescreen survey and interview. Stephen Jones and Tom Kaden conducted the interviews at times and locations convenient to interviewees. The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. They then coded the transcripts using the computer-aided qualitative data analysis program NVivo.

Coding and analysis

The schedule for interviews comprised nonleading, open-ended questions about views and practices/experience related to: belief; religion; science in general; evolutionary science specifically, and public discourse on religion and evolution. Interviewers did not ask participants directly about the conflict narrative, or science and nonreligion. An initial coding structure was developed and agreed based upon the schedule. This was then expanded and refined in a collaborative, iterative process based upon the data. Data coded to the node ‘science and religion’ constitutes the basis for the analysis and discussion presented below. Matrix queries were run to sort between religious and nonreligious life scientists and publics’ responses coded to ‘science and religion’. The content of all these references was systematically reviewed, and themes and patterns identified.

With our approach to interviewee recruitment, there was always the risk of selection bias: recruiting people with an established interest in the topic of science and religion, despite concerted efforts to sample the uninterested too. However, this bias applies equally to religious as well as nonreligious participants. This observation serves as a reminder that findings presented are indicative rather than generalizable, with potential relevance to other contexts and situations (Small 2009).

Invoking the conflict narrative

The conflict narrative was invoked by numerous nonreligious participants. This can be seen in Lukasz’s response on his views about the relationship between science and religion or belief. Lukasz is a scientist in the UK who describes himself as an atheist and says:

Science is rational, logical, and requires proof. Dogma does not, and Lukasz would mistrust anyone who believes without the burden of proof (despite this being something everyone does daily; Haidt 2013).

Lukasz has himself researched cultural evolution and religion. On the basis of this research, he acknowledges that religion-like behaviors appear in every society. He sees their function as generating social cohesion, meaning, well-being, and satisfaction ‘in people’s lives who otherwise wouldn’t have any.’ This is a ‘wonderful’ purpose for Lukasz. He also talked about Christian relatives who are not dogmatic and thus demonstrate the diversity of belief that exists. The incompatibility between science and religion is far from absolute for Lukasz. He acknowledges that there is a risk of talented religious people being put off the sciences by a wider cultural narrative of science as incompatible with belief. However, Lukasz also observes that he tends to associate atheism with intellectualism, meaning that it is, for him, ‘hard to see this [the absence of religious scientists] as a big loss.’

Joanne is, like Lukasz, a scientist who describes herself as an atheist, yet based in Canada. Also like Lukasz, Joanne regards science and religion as incompatible whilst recognizing other people’s need for the latter. They need ‘social structures and inclusiveness and community.’ However, Joanne considers herself rational and evidence-oriented. For her, there is no evidence that the world works as Christians imagine it to, and she is very surprised when she discovers a colleague is not an atheist. For Joanne, decisions about how to run society ought to be based upon ‘the rationalist view’. Religion goes too far when it tries to dictate what happens in the public sphere. So again, there is a sense of ultimate incompatibility between science and religion because of beliefs and yet seeing some social value in religion, as long as it stays in its lane, as it were.

Bradley also lives in Canada. Unlike Joanne and Lukasz, he is not a scientist, but nevertheless interested in scientific developments. Bradley describes himself as an ‘agnostic atheist’. He was raised Catholic and became agnostic through involvement in the debate club at his university and having to argue secular approaches to social issues such as contraception and homosexuality. He then subsequently dissociated himself from a freethinkers’ group at university as he found them too hostile. Bradley also finds Richard Dawkins overly confrontational. He summarizes his view on the public debates around science and religion in this way: ‘I really agree with a lot of the things you say and I hate the way you say them.’ For Bradley, religion has generated a ‘communication schism’ and very negative consequences for society. He references Christianity’s relationship to slavery and racism specifically (whilst not considering science’s own historic connection to both; Seth 2014).

Similarities in these and other nonreligious interviewees’ narratives suggest this is not random or simply by chance: the conflict narrative is a rhetorical resource to draw upon– in Canada and the UK and inside and outside of institutional science. In response to questions about science and religion in interviews, discussion frequently and quickly moved to the association between science and nonreligion for an array of nonreligious individuals.

In line with the plurality of nonreligion, it is not a case of crude antireligious attitudes. Yet, a perceived divide between science and religion where the former is judged as superior consistently recurs: the conflict narrative figures as an important cultural frame. A general pattern emerges in the views of atheist, atheist agnostic, Humanist, and broadly nonreligious scientists and members of the public: 1. A presumption that religion is irrational; 2. That religion is therefore incompatible with science, which is rational; 3. That religion is damaging to society because it hampers rational thinking and thereby limits scientific progress (which is presumed to be always good for society), and reinforces ignorance and prejudice. Thus, religious people become constructed as a less scientific outgroup, and science idealized, with little critical reflection on its own historic dark sides or ideologies.

How nonreligious participants connect science and nonreligion

Given, then, that the tension between science and religion persists for nonreligious scientists and members of the public in both Canada and the UK in a way related to their personal form of nonreligion, how do they associate their nonreligion with a commitment to science? How do they articulate this connection? Answers to these questions have already been foreshadowed by preceding examples from the data. A pattern in the structure of how the association gets expressed has been established: linking science and nonreligion with rationality, evidence, and morality in contrast to belief. Sindy gets frustrated by religious colleagues at work. Lukasz is not overly concerned by the risk of religious people being put off scientific careers by its association with atheism. Joanne assumes colleagues will also be atheists. The connection between science and nonreligion plays out in participants’ daily lives, in different spaces and relationships.

Kaye is a retired school teacher in the UK. She describes herself as a skeptic and active in her local Humanist group. She was briefly involved with Christianity as a teenager, though raised by nonreligious parents. Whilst at high school, Kaye aimed to be a scientist, but then studied Philosophy at college instead. Yet, studying Philosophy of Science helped her maintain her interest in science. Indeed, she has set up a local science reading group in retirement. Science and religion sometimes come up in family conversations for Kaye. For example, she recounted a family argument about the origins of the universe the Sunday before her interview. Her cousin was arguing that because what happened before the Big Bang is unknown, then it could be attributed to God. Kaye continues:

Again, there is an emphasis upon evidence, and a view of how educated people ought to address their own ignorance on any given topic. Kaye argues for science and nonreligion with her relatives and engages in social activities focused upon nonreligion and science, in retirement from teaching. The two are connected in her daily life.

The classroom was a key space for reflecting upon and shaping views about science, religion, and nonreligion for some nonreligious participants, both as student and teacher. Davis teaches Biology at a Catholic high school in Canada and describes himself as an agnostic Catholic. He was raised by parents who had recently converted to a conservative form of Catholicism. Davis experienced internal conflict in high school when his interest in science collided with his own conservative religious beliefs. He consequently moved away from those beliefs as he studied Biology at college. During this time: ‘…I’d had conversations with very deeply religious people and having grown up in that environment I tried not to be hostile most of the time, but I’d really fallen in love with the quantitative, objective side of science.’ In this quote Davis connects social interactions and emotion to his commitment to science, and movement away from Catholic belief. In this way, Davis’ reflections on his feelings towards science and rationality, echo Lee’s (2019) work on nonreligion, where she finds participants articulate both emotional and embodied attachments towards science as well as intellectual ones, revealing the many dimensions that the science and nonreligion affinity can take, beyond a purely intellectual connection. Yet, Davis remains communally attached to Catholicism through his work, family, and old family priest. Nonreligious friends assume he is anti-evolution because he teaches at a Catholic school, whilst he describes working to challenge anti-evolution perspectives in his classroom.

James is a science professor in the UK and an atheist. He regards public acceptance and understanding of evolutionary science as important for society. Consequently, he also supports critique of religious views in the public sphere:

James’ perception is that the work of Dawkins and others has made it socially acceptable to question religion when it was previously taboo to do so. Yet, despite describing himself as ‘the bullish type and happy to confront’, reflecting on his classroom experience and how he engages with these topics therein, James says: ‘…I’m aware and therefore do think about what I might or might not say. I think I make it reasonably obvious to students where I stand on it [science and religion], but that doesn’t mean I’ll say anything, because I will try and think about those students who are there and who might be sensitive to that…’

Kaye’s commitment to science and her nonreligion emerges in family arguments about science and religion and social activities. Davis’ passion for science developed at school, and alongside it his agnosticism. In friendships and the classroom, he can experience tensions related to science and religion. James’ atheism and commitment to evolutionary science are connected for him, in vehement opposition to religion. However, in his teaching James is conscious of the pedagogical need to avoid attacking religious views, despite his desire to do so. How nonreligious scientists and members of the public live out and experience the association between science and nonreligion needs to be viewed as a spectrum, not just in the sense that there is a diversity of positions, attitudes, identities, and beliefs, but that these can wax and wane, depending on context.

Why nonreligious participants associate science and nonreligion

Why, then, do interviewees associate their nonreligion with a commitment to science? From their narratives, what factors can be discerned as contributing to their perception of a connection between science and nonreligion? Like Bradley and Davis above, many other nonreligious scientists and members of the public narrated their journeys toward interest in science, associating this journey with a questioning of religion. There is a sense in which becoming scientific goes hand in hand with becoming a nonreligious and critically thinking individual. An identification with science which excludes religious belief is formed and maintained across many different networks and social relations. Our interviewees discussed how processes of parenting in particular have influenced the formation of their nonreligious identity and how it relates to science.

Terrell is a scientist in Canada. He describes himself as agnostic with leanings to the atheist side. He divides his views into skeptic or agnostic when it comes to his scientific identity, because skepticism is demanded by it; and as atheist when it comes to his personal views. Terrell was raised Christian, and was an altar boy. He lost his faith during high school, and became what he describes as a ‘douchey atheist’ for a year or two. What initiated his crisis of faith was his thinking about Job and how God would ruin his life just for a bet.

Terrell’s family did not read the Bible literally. His father instilled in him that the Bible is history and inconsistent. At home, religion was more about being involved in a community than being right about creation, according to Terrell. Terrell remembers an occasion when he was young where he walked out of a church service during a sermon by a very conservative preacher who chided people as sinners who would go to hell. He and his parents are opposed to missionary work, based upon their knowledge of what it has done to indigenous communities. Terrell has friends who used to be very religious (including some coming from creationist families) but says that they too had crises of faith. He describes them as becoming ‘similar to the like worst discriminating atheists that I’ve ever met.’

Vinnie is a Canadian member of the public who was also raised in a Christian household. Yet, his parents were Evangelical Young Earth Creationists. Vinnie says that his parents were nevertheless still interested in science. Engaging with science led Vinnie to question his faith:

As a young adult, Vinnie (similarly to Terrell) reports that he was a strong atheist, but he says that discovering yoga and Buddhism ‘softened’ his atheism. For Vinnie, Buddhism is scientific:

Yet, Vinnie still refrains from discussing his Buddhist practice and quest for enlightenment with his atheist friends, because he has previously received negative reactions.

Haruka was raised by an atheist father and Catholic mother, both scientists, from Asia and Europe respectively. He is a research scientist in the UK now and identifies as an atheist. He and his sibling were raised Catholic in line with their mother’s wishes, with their dad not interfering. However, Haruka says his education contributed to his questioning religion. For Haruka, there was no single moment of rejecting religious teaching. Instead, he felt it to be an accumulation of knowledge and education, of growing and learning. His father subsequently joked that he had hoped that Haruka and his sibling would gradually reach an atheistic position. Haruka has struggled to understand how his mother continues to be a practicing Catholic and a scientist. He explains it for himself in terms of a strongly ingrained culture. He still struggles to accept the idea of a religious scientist in general:

Haruka also sees no need for religion in society any longer: ‘Society is kind of well established, we have moral values that we kind of separated from the religion. So, at this point, I think if religion, let’s say, just in England, would disappear, I couldn’t really see any major disaster happening, I think’.

Terrell, Vinnie, and Haruka’s stories about their moves toward their current positions on science and religion indicate the distinctiveness of individuals’ experiences and trajectories. For Terrell, his movement away from Christianity was very much from an ethical standpoint, whereas Vinnie and Haruka narrate a strong association between their nonreligion with their education. In all three cases, parents have played a strong role. Terrell thinks that the transition from a more ‘sciencey upbringing’ to being more religious is much rarer than the opposite (which he identifies his own journey as). Such a view is in keeping with emerging social scientific findings about the ‘stickiness of nonreligion’ (Strhan and Shillitoe, 2019; Woodhead, 2017).

Nonreligious scientists and members of the public associate their nonreligion with a commitment to science, because of a combination of their upbringing, education, values, and social relationships, and, also, because this is an available cultural frame. Epistemology, ethics, and experience all interact. Turning attention to narratives helps access the variety of ways that individuals relate to the social imaginary that to be modern is to be rational, scientific, and nonreligious, and the different modalities belief can take – including an evidentiary one.

Religious and nonreligious people in Britain and Canada alike are affected by the social imaginary that science and nonreligion naturally align, in distinct (and diverse and complex) ways. Science has cultural authority for all interviewees. Overall, interviewees consistently regarded science as not only a credible and reliable source of knowledge, but also of public benefit. Religion, by contrast, came in for more criticism, and its public benefit was questioned by numerous nonreligious respondents.

Maintaining a strict boundary from religion that blurs into antireligious sentiment is a historic part of scientific culture which has significance within and without the bounds of institutional science (Gieryn 1999). Beliefs about the nature and value of science can be used to construct and exclude the religious as a unitary outgroup. When talking about religion and science, nonreligious interviewees across the spectrum of nonreligious identities and degree of engagement with institutional science make negative generalizations about religion and draw connections between their nonreligious identity and its formation and their scientific identity and its formation. For some, a nonreligious position is more credible than a religious one, because it is constructed as an outcome of scientific thinking.

Group differences?

Whilst similarities and patterns in nonreligious scientists and members of the public in Canada and the UK’s narratives about science and religion have been identified, beyond individual differences were there also differences between groups and countries? Again, given the nature of the sample, generalizations cannot be made. For scientists, reflecting upon the nature of science and its relation to worldviews and society constitutes part of professional life. Therefore, a trend of discussing science and religion in more depth is perhaps discernible in their narratives. However, it is far more striking that nonreligious members of the public invoke a lot of the same themes: the importance of evidence and rationality (in contrast to religion); the social harm of religion, and the role of family and education in the development of scientific and nonreligious views. Science identification is value laden and potentially value driven. The social imaginary that to be modern is to be secular and scientific endures, both sides of the Atlantic.

As indicated in the introduction, Canada and the UK constitute two similar and yet distinct majority-Anglophone Western nation-states. Consequently, differences in national context could be expected. For example, survey data indicates that whilst it is very much a minority position in both countries, more people endorse creationist perspectives in Canada than the UK (Elsdon-Baker 2020). This trend is reflected in our interview data, with more nonreligious Canadians than Britons recounting some kind of direct engagement with creationism in their discussions of science and religion.

Britain, Canada, and the United States may all be viewed as part of the (majority) Anglophone West from which (as seen at the outset of this article) the cultural frame of the conflict thesis and consequent social imaginary associating science with nonreligion emerged (Taylor 2004). In the United States, nonreligious people often experience marginalization based upon their worldview, and are obliged to self-analyze and self-justify, given the Christonormativity persisting in wider society (Smith and Halligan 2021). In parts of British and Canadian society it is certainly not the norm to be nonreligious, and Christonormativity endures to an extent in both societies. Yet, in this UK and Canada-based data, nonreligious interviewees are comfortable discussing their criticisms of religion (Christianity specifically) and their own nonreligious views. They did not report facing prejudice against their nonreligious perspectives. In fact, in the UK nonreligion is the norm and religion can be a ‘toxic brand’ (Woodhead 2016: 258). British nonreligious member of the public Vickie comments: ‘White British people tend to distrust people that are very religious, whatever religion it is.’ National and local context to an extent shape engagement with the cultural frame of the conflict thesis, of which the association of science and nonreligion is part.

Opportunities for further research

Future research could investigate further how the social imaginary that science entails nonreligion travels across cultures and does or does not resonate in a given national context. Thomas (2017; 2018; 2020) has conducted ethnographic research with scientists at a research institute in India. Some of Thomas’ atheist scientist interviewees expressed the view that religion is incompatible with science. For example, one stated: ‘Believing without proof is what religion is all about. The God Hypothesis should be tested. The result will be negative… Belief, not based on evidence and proof, is not acceptable.’ (Thomas 2017: 6). Here aspects of belief, evidence, and values informing an association between nonreligion and science are also apparent. Yet, Thomas’ nonreligious scientist participants also discussed their comfort with ‘cultural’ expressions of Hinduism. Bullivant et al. (2019) find science to be a popular value for unbelievers in Brazil, China, Denmark, Japan, UK, and US. In an article using World Values Survey data to investigate religiosity and orientations toward science internationally, Chan (2018: 4) points to a ‘synergistic relationship between secularity and science’. This is because countries with larger numbers of religiously unaffiliated people tended to have more positive views about science. Chan (2018) calls for more research into the variety of such dynamics.

Ecklund and colleagues researched biologists’ and physicists’ attitudes in relation to science and religion in France, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States using a combination of interviews and surveys. Ecklund et al. (2019) find considerable contextual variation, linked to the size of the nonreligious population, the character of the scientific infrastructure, and state-religion relations in a given country. They write: ‘Scientists who are atheist or agnostic, do not identify with a religion, or do not identify as religious or spiritual are located primarily in Western countries: France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.’ (Ecklund et al. 2019: 205). They find this group the most likely to purvey scientism and regard science and religion as in conflict. Ecklund et al. (2019) conclude that the conflict narrative is a Western invention.

In a paper specifically about the British context from the project, Johnson et al. (2018) go into more depth about the impact of the public trend of New Atheism (Kettell 2013). Forty-eight interviewees in the UK referenced British celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins. Some nonreligious respondents were supportive of Dawkins’ antireligious stance, but most (both nonreligious and religious) were critical of his combative approach, as also emerges in our interview data. However, Dawkins was barely mentioned in other countries. This finding reinforces Thomas’ point that ‘One needs to see new age atheists like Dawkins in their [Western] contexts, rather than generalizing and expecting his views to be universalized. We need to seriously acknowledge this provinciality whilst studying science, belief and atheism.’ (Thomas 2018: 59). Is what we have found in our interview data exclusively a Western myth? Has it travelled? If so, how?

Race and ethnicity have not been the focus of this study. However, given that the nonreligious population tends to be mostly White in Western contexts and there is a history of racism within Western nonreligious movements (Alexander 2019), the intersection of science, nonreligion, race, and religion is worth additional investigation, further provincializing the study of science, belief, and atheism, as Thomas calls for.

This article is based upon interview data: day-to-day life was not directly observed. In line with emerging lived nonreligion approaches, a lived approach to science and nonreligion is an area to expand through in depth observation (Elsdon-Baker 2020). Also, the categories ‘science’, ‘religion’, and ‘nonreligion’ have been used broadly in the present article. Further work might explore more specific, contextualized understandings of science, religion, and nonreligion, and, perhaps, how to employ more precise terms.

Some nonreligious respondents articulated views on the cultural evolution and function of religion familiar from within the sociology of religion, from Frazer, Tylor, and Durkheim onward. The social scientific study of religion’s proximity to secularity and science can make it easy to take this alignment for granted, and not unpack the meaning and social significance of such statements. Can we as overwhelmingly secular social scientists ‘objectively’ analyze this relationship (Cannell 2010)? This is another, related, area for future examination.

It may well be important and necessary for religion to be kept separate from science, and to challenge aspects thereof. For example, when public health and safety are at risk, most pertinently, currently, inaccurate information and beliefs surrounding vaccinations and the pandemic (Bramadat et al. 2017; Perry et al. 2020). Scientists have expressed concern publicly about the dangers of relativizing science, not least in light of policies enacted by the Trump administration in the United States (Horgan 2020). Science and Technology Studies scholars can encounter resistance from natural scientists when highlighting how the cultural and social shape science (Sismondo 2020). When and how such boundaries ought to be drawn is beyond the scope of this study. Nonetheless, it seems worthwhile to highlight ways in which science holds strong social and cultural authority, and where there may be opportunity for further reflexivity.

The cultural elision between nonreligion and science supports a particular exclusionary account of modernity, the good, and otherness, which can be impatient and intolerant, as seen in some of the data presented here. More detailed attention to this relationship between secularity and science could aid the work of science communication practitioners, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science engages in.⁵ A relational science and nonreligion approach could also help orient more research toward the messy middle in societies (Smith and Holmwood 2013), alongside groups regarded as problematic minorities in relation to science and religion.