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Re:What professional philosophers believe – Survey results by purephase on Thursday May 02, 2013 @10:31AM (#5644665)
A lot to dive into there, but the God results immediately jump out at me.
Re:What professional philosophers believe – Survey results by jgesture on Thursday May 02, 2013 @10:37AM (#5644698)
People who tend to be interested in philosophy and are theists probably tend to go into religion rather than philosophy.
Re:What professional philosophers believe – Survey results by knowtheory on Thursday May 02, 2013 @10:43AM (#5644743)
That's one hypothesis. An alternative hypothesis would be to suggest that the more educated one becomes in philosophy the less that religion makes sense, and the clearer it becomes that there is no evidence for theism.

(Note, I'm not advocating for either of these hypotheses, but correlation is not causation.)

Re:What professional philosophers believe – Survey results by bradfordarner on Thursday May 02, 2013 @11:21AM (#5645074)
Your alternative proposition (hypothesis has a different meaning in philosophy than it does in the sciences) is rather confusing from a philosophical perspective. What is 'educated'? Education is a culturally relative idea that is very hard to closely define. Thus, for a religious person being 'educated' may mean something very different from a gypsy who grows up on the streets of Paris who is very 'educated' in the workings of life on the street. Does the 'educated' individual mean some one who can create amazing works of art? Or, does it indicate some one who has memorized and repeats certain culturally important texts and ideas?

There is certainly a cultural side to philosophy in Modern Western society that is largely anti-religious from the very beginning. I started out as your average fervent evangelical Christian, which I am no longer, but it was initially incredibly uncomfortable in a philosophy department to try to hold on to certain belief systems. However, it is not necessarily for the reasons that one would believe. It is a culturally phenomenon. In older generations, it was entirely unacceptable to be religious and be in philosophy. You were naturally routed towards theology by the university staff because the topics of conversation are entirely different; modern philosophy does not concern itself with the question of religion. Yet, the vast majority of older philosophy professors, when being honest, will acknowledge that despite their atheism there are still countless religious systems that have fascinating thinkers and concepts that are both rational and consistent.

It just so happens that in America, Christianity is the de facto symbol for religion and it is both irrational and inconsistent.

Re:What professional philosophers believe – Survey results by sramsay on Thursday May 02, 2013 @10:56AM (#5644845)
I seriously doubt that. Most "professional philosophers" these days are doing analytical philosophy, and it's been at least 500 years since a non-crazy person has been persuaded one way or the other about God by studying logic.

I suppose Georg Cantor might be an exception to this.

Re:What professional philosophers believe – Survey results by manicbovine on Thursday May 02, 2013 @12:54PM (#5645706)
Gödel had an unpublished ontological "proof" [1] that's fairly simple to understand. It hinges on two things: 1.) accepting a logical system in which possibly necessary truths are necessary; 2.) accepting his argument that it's possible for god to exist.

But I guess you said non-crazy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6dels_ontological_proof

Re:What professional philosophers believe – Survey results by Apocryphon on Thursday May 02, 2013 @03:36PM (#5646655)
How about Bayes's theorem for proving the existence of God? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Swinburne
Re:What professional philosophers believe – Survey results by purephase on Thursday May 02, 2013 @10:47AM (#5644784)
Not knowing which faculties at which institutions this derives from (although, one could probably assume that they're not Theist institutions) that is a plausible explanation.

However, if you change the Population selection to the "No Affiliation" option the numbers are still pretty skewed in the atheist direction.

Re:What professional philosophers believe – Survey results by saraid216 on Thursday May 02, 2013 @04:20PM (#5646957)
It's worth noting that philosophy's questions very often treat theistic worldviews with a significant amount of irreverence. A lot of these questions are relatively worthless when you can answer them with, "Whatever God decided on."
Re:What professional philosophers believe – Survey results by arethuza on Thursday May 02, 2013 @10:40AM (#5644724)
Especially those that answered "Other"...
Re:What professional philosophers believe – Survey results by purephase on Thursday May 02, 2013 @10:49AM (#5644792)
My guess is Wiccan. Philosophers love their witches [1].

[1] http://www.uwo.ca/philosophy/undergraduate/Courses/2000.html...

Re:What professional philosophers believe – Survey results by RivieraKid on Thursday May 02, 2013 @10:59AM (#5644870)
You expected more theists or atheists?
Re:What professional philosophers believe – Survey results by davidjohnstone on Thursday May 02, 2013 @11:15AM (#5645015)
Indeed, according to a 1998 survey of members of the National Academy of Sciences [1], the group of philosophers had about the same number of atheists, more theists and less agnostics.

1. http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html