Why are most philosophers non-theists and most non-philosophers theists?

Question

According to PhilPapers Survey 2020, 66.95% of philosophers accept or lean towards atheism and 7.18% are agnostic or undecided, whereas only a 18.93% accepts or leans towards theism. In sharp contrast, according to this source, only 15.6% of the world population is not affiliated with any particular religion, meaning that the vast majority of the world population is theist or at least adheres to some non-naturalist / non-physicalist view of the world:

What is the explanation for this sharp contrast between philosophers and the general public?

Answer 1

One possible explanation could be that the "philosophy" category is too narrow. For those who consider a God or other religious view to be reasonable in this world, then the equivalent intellectual pursuit to philosophy is theology -- to understand how an integrated God/religion/world could work. But for those convinced that religion is not valid, the only avenue to explore ultimate questions is philosophy.

Combine the population of theologians with philosophers, and the ratio of atheists vs theists will be much lower for this combined collection of thinkers.

Answer 2

I think the most effective answers in this thread, and the ones that should be marked as correct, are the ones that are very neutral about the truthfulness of religions/theism or non-theism/atheism - that being said, I think there's space for more speculative and one-sided answers in this thread as well, which shouldn't be marked as true, but which could potentially be worth thinking about anyway.

I'm going to offer such a one-sided answer now, so fair warning: what you're about to read is not favorable to religion, and you might call it "biased" (whether that bias is unfair is going to be debatable).

Imagine a very thoughtful person, born into a Western country, to Christian parents, in a neighborhood where most of his peers and elders are Christian. This person will soon find himself accepting Christianity, but, if he's particularly thoughtful, when he's maybe a pre-teen, maybe a teen, it will occur to him: If Christianity is true, how did I get so lucky to be born to parents who happen to believe the right religion?

I look around the world, and I see - people in the Middle East are born to Muslim parents in a Muslim culture, and they grow up Muslim. People in India are born to Hindu parents in a Hindu culture, and they grow up Hindu. If Christianity is right, I am lucky and they are unlucky.

And I don't accept that. I don't accept that my salvation is just based on pure luck. I don't accept that their damnation is based on pure un-luck. So the question is, do I have any better reason for believing the religion my parents taught me, than those Muslims or Hindus have for believing the religion their parents taught them?

Some percent of these thoughtful people will go on to conclude that they ARE justified, that they DO have a better reason than luck to believe what their parents taught them, that they DO have a reason to think Christianity is correct and Islam or Hinduism are incorrect.

And some percent of these thoughtful people will not conclude that. They will follow their curiosity into investigating these questions, and conclude that the factual and evidential basis for Christianity is not significantly stronger than the basis for Islam or Hinduism. And some percent of these people will thus stop believing the religion their parents taught them.

If philosophers are supposed to be more thoughtful than the average of the general population - and I think they probably are - then it makes sense that some of those thoughtful people described above will become philosophers, and they'll do so more frequently than the people who aren't thoughtful, and who don't ask themselves those kinds of questions.

And once you leave the religion of your birth, the probability that you end up accepting no religion, and rejecting theism entirely, naturally shoots up drastically. Most people who conclude "there's no good reason to believe the religion I was born into" also end up concluding "there's no good reason to believe these other religions either", and that naturally leads to the question, "What reason do I have to believe in a god at all?"

That being said, I am NOT saying all religious people are not thoughtful, I'm instead just speculating about why thoughtful people tend to not be religious. You can of course be religious and thoughtful.

Answer 3

I was going to write about how the worldwide correlation between atheism and income would be a far more instructive metric to explain the incidence and beliefs of philosophers than aggregate religiosity. And it is. But, instead, I'll examine the PhilPaper Survey 2020's first sentence wherein it says it only surveyed English speakers. More than 3/4 of the world's native English speakers are from the United States and the UK. Comparing the statistics from a survey of English speakers (who are predominantly WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic)) to the statistics for the world at large is statistical malpractice.

Answer 4

This is partly a sociological question, and therefore an empirical question, however, this sort of question is very much an open question in philosophy that explores the relationship between Religion and Science (SEP). From the article:

The relationship between religion and science is the subject of continued debate in philosophy and theology. To what extent are religion and science compatible? Are religious beliefs sometimes conducive to science, or do they inevitably pose obstacles to scientific inquiry? The interdisciplinary field of “science and religion”, also called “theology and science”, aims to answer these and other questions. It studies historical and contemporary interactions between these fields, and provides philosophical analyses of how they interrelate.

Going back to Asia Minor before Socrates, the division between the physiki and theologi became evident. Since then, methodological naturalism has grown to be a very popular tool of dealing with the world so much in fact, that it has impacted religion over the centuries. Consider the growth of natural theology and how the Catholic church today is highly supportive of science. (The Pope is a chemist by training, in fact!) Today, at least for contemporary Western philosophers who are heavily materialist in their view (for instance the entire logical positivist movement were practicing scientists), the terms 'God' and 'soul' have no material basis and therefore tend to be treated in such communities as a historical topic. Add to that the movement to separate church and state in Western Europe, and the ample opportunity for believers to find theological communities which support their faith, and it seems quite natural for a divergence to occur.

Today, philosophers of science have a very large body of work that simply doesn't require metaphysical naturalism, but seems to encourage its adoption, alongside methodological naturalism. Men like Popper, Hempel, Feyerabend, Kuhn, Gross, van Fraassen and others, while they may disagree radically in their approach (it's systematic, it's anarchic, it's sociological, it's confirmatory, it's about falsification, it's rhetorical, etc.) all rely heavily on methodological naturalism. Such an approach requires peer review, physical measurements, integration into major theories (such as gravitation, atomic theory, and evolution), and operationalism. Such a consistent worldview, whatever its metaphysical merits, produces real-world results that are hard to ignore: the fusion bomb, the self-landing rocket, vaccines, supercomputers, heart transplants, etc.

Why? Perhaps because methodological naturalism strongly encourages a way of thinking about the world that encourages challenges to authority, denial of that which cannot be directly observed or measured, independence from political and religious authority, a strong tie to logic and mathematics, etc. And unlike religion which generally carries the imperative to believe in the God as the religion promotes he/she/it/them, scientific communities make no demands on your emotional, faith-driven, and personal beliefs that don't bear on theory. If you want to study quantum physics and be a Hindu, as long as Hinduism doesn't try to dictate how to run experiments or what the standard particle model is, more power to you.

This scientific-mindset which is now heavily part of philosophical discourse since the emergence of science from the natural philosophy of the Renaissance (SEP) means that the most brilliant philosophers tend to be highly versed in the philosophy of mathematics, logic, and science. And this may have a lot to do with the emergence and structure of the European university system which is a central thesis in The Rise of Early Modern Science (GB) by Toby Huff.

The business of exporting materialism, naturalism, and liberalism is now a global industry with contemporary universities being heavily influenced by the works of many great philosophers: Marx, the positivists and logical positivists, the Skeptics, the Classical Empiricists and Rationalists, and 20th century thinkers like Quine, Husserl, Russell, Sartre, Camus, Wittgenstein, critical theorists, and others. Too many to list, in fact. The result of these social forces is that modern universities turn out philosophers and scientists who embrace this materialism, naturalism, and liberalism in their thinking.

Lastly, it is rather evident that religions and theologians, with some notable exceptions in the world, have also become less violent and authoritarian which is a traditional mechanism to enforce belief in God and religious doctrine. The Catholic church no longer goes on Crusades or conducts Inquisitions. In line with Gould's thinking, mainstream religions and the secular societies that rely on universities have entered into a truce, much in line with Gould's notion of non-overlapping magisteria. There are cults and religious extremists in the world who use violence, but the vast number of the billions of humans who believe in God tend to eschew violence as a solution to conflict. As universities and education spreads (it was once the provenance of a small minority in society), materialism, naturalism, and liberalism also spread resulting in an increasingly pluralistic and multicultural society whose Internet undermines traditional religious techniques for enforcing belief in religious doctrine. In the Western world, a person often chooses a god or denomination, instead of vice versa.

Even in the US, which is atypically religious for a developed nation, the number of non-religious people almost doubled in less than 20 years according to Pew. And where are philosophers drawn from? The general population, of course. So, professional philosophers are on the average very well read and educated, and intelligent (as a major, they score at the top of the LSAT roughly neck to neck with mathematicians), and go through the university system and a programme of materialism, naturalism, and liberalism. They generally show an interest in mathematics, logic, and science. And they are inevitably exposed to a strong tradition of freethinkers, agnosticism, and atheism in a formal curriculum. Should it be so surprising, that they manifest doubts and disbelief about the supernatural and faith-driven belief? To resurrect the Laplacian apocrypha, God is simply a hypothesis that many professional philosophers find increasingly unnecessary.

Answer 5

Why are most philosophers non-theists and most non-philosophers theists?

Atheism has some extreme consequences depending on where you live.

Atheists and religious skeptics can be executed in at least thirteen nations: Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Libya, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_atheists#:~:text=Atheists%20and%20religious%20skeptics%20can,United%20Arab%20Emirates%20and%20Yemen.

There are punishments for atheistic beliefs in many countries that have a strong fundamental religious beliefs.

Philosophical studies thrive in a liberal, tolerant environment where atheism is discussed and debated in a safe environment. No death or imprisonment.

This leads to a skewed distribution when looking at an academic population compared with other populations.

Answer 6

Generally speaking, if there's a statistically significant difference in acceptance of a belief between two groups (i.e. one groups accepts a belief more often than the other), this suggests there may be some cognitive biases or discrepancy in knowledge associated with being in those groups.

For philosophers versus the general public, philosophers would be more familiar with various arguments for and against the existence of a god, and would have a better understanding of principles of logical reasoning and logical fallacies (some of which relate to cognitive biases, which means they're more likely to avoid those biases in their own thinking).

For someone who doesn't believe that God exists, this leads to a fairly intuitive conclusion: belief in God is irrational, and philosophers are more likely to identify the biases that would lead to accepting that irrational belief, and they have more knowledge, which means they're more likely to believe what's true (i.e. that God doesn't exist).

There are a number of possible biases that can apply (this obviously depends on what you believe, but most of these apply to prominent religious beliefs). Wanting to have explanations for things, rather than saying "I don't know". Fearing death. Wanting justice. Wanting a stronger grounding for morality. Not wanting there to be needless suffering. Wanting a protector. Wanting purpose and meaning in life. Fearing hell (an odd one - you may need to face your fear of hell to conclude that hell doesn't exist). A tendency to stick to our beliefs and wanting social acceptance (which can partially explain the continuation of a religion, but not its origin). Much more severe human-inflicted consequences for non-belief, up to and including death (not that applicable in the modern western world, although there are still places in the US where atheists don't want to come out as atheists for fear of their safety, if not "just" fear of losing their job, being ostracised by their community, losing their partner, or being kicked out of their house).

Philosophers may also know more about science, which I argue presents theological problems for prominent religious beliefs.

As another answer points out, philosophers may also be more likely to question whether God exists. I suppose this could be argued from either the atheist or theist perspective: A theist might say such people "lean on their own understanding", rather than trusting God. While an atheist would say we don't have good reason to believe that God exists, so those who question that would naturally be more likely to end up concluding that it's false (and our own understanding is all we've got, and telling people to not trust their own understanding is generally something cults do, to stop them from questioning the false things they've been told - I'm not saying religion is a cult, at least not generally, just that "don't trust your own understanding" is bad advice, Solomon*).

* Proverbs, which I quoted above, is traditionally ascribed to King Solomon. Addressing Solomon is intended to highlight the distinction between the human authors of the Bible and any deity that may or may not have inspired those words.

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Note that the issue at hand is not so much "most philosophers don't believe X and most non-philosophers believe X", but rather the issue is that more philosophers don't believe X. As in being a philosopher is correlated with not believing X. The same would apply if you have, for example, 80% of non-philosophers believing X, and 60% of philosophers not believing X. But obviously if you go from "most believe" to "most don't believe", that's a stronger effect.

I'll also point out that philosophy can get fairly subjective and speculative, and the concrete and reliable parts of philosophy has split off into science and maths. So, while any correlations between philosophers and certain beliefs may be worth investigating, I wouldn't put too much weight into the consensus of philosophers in itself.

Answer 7

I think some of it may have to do with the environment. If you're in an environment that is very controlled and comfortable, it's very easy to not realize how much you need just to survive because you already have it. If you're in a very chaotic environment where you're extremely dependent on things you can't rationally count on just to survive, you might start to think that miracles are real and are a product of the divine.

Someone who has much time available for study, like a noted philosopher, has at least some level stability in their environment. Particularly if they attended Ivy League schools.

Answer 8

Short answer: modern (last 3 to 5 centuries) philosophy is a theology substitute that rejects theology's basis of religious dogma, or put another way, theology is philosophy within the bounds of religious doctrine. Modern philosophy is typically heretical to strict religious people and theology is practically worthless to atheists.

Theology is ultimately rooted in divine revelations and is constrained by them, the (non-heretical) theologian uses logic and reason to answer questions much like the philosopher, but with a strict unchanging basis of scripture and tradition. The modern philosopher on the other hand is unbound, there's no point at which his conclusions could officially be deemed erroneous, while he may build from the work of other philosophers there's ultimately no limit to where his thinking might lead him.

To atheists (but also to the more "free-thinking" theists like many Protestants), modern philosophy represents liberation from oppressive, limiting and worthless religious thought, in a very literal way since philosophy is what drove all the profound changes that atheists cherish. To atheists, philosophy is what slew religious dogma and opened the door to more rational forms of thinking.

To theists with a strict adherence to unchanging religious dogma, modern philosophy is dangerously adrift, it represents heresy built on top of heresy, it's an unbounded and unchecked way of thinking that can lead to any possible conclusion, no matter how insane. Modern philosophers, by being unconstrained by anything unchanging, can use bad logic on top of bad logic and unsound premises to reach deeply heretical conclusions, and they lack a mechanism to realise their errors. Philosophers value their own sense of confusion as a virtue, which to a religious believer only shows how truly lost they are.

So philosophy is mainly for those who don't mind challenging strict religious thought, and it's mostly unpalatable to those who wish to adhere to it.

Answer 9

Derrida argues that Western philosophers attempt to hide the self-love that is taking place in our minds. Philosophers think they are finding the truth, the indubitable, the self-present, but really they are hiding the sin: the fact that we do what we hate. Philosophers have good reason for wanting to make it all seem clean, crisp and logical: two different layers, a phoneme and an idea. In fact there is only différance, sending our other self differed messages, which are sexual, homo-erotic, self-loving like the post cards in En Vois. The truth is a hidden masturbatory fantasy, and philosophy is one way of hiding it.

Answer 10

The fact that Islam or Christianity is a faith that can be learned through intuition already involves methods that do not require adherence to logical reasons. But for the philosophy of religion, of course, they need rationality.

If it is clear that a predominant proportion of the world's population is Theist, it is an issue that does not seem to have much to do with the fact that philosophers mostly choose atheism. Because if we interpret why philosophers are at odds with the sociopolitical situation of the world, it will be necessary to discuss why philosophers are generally atheists.

This shows that atheism is not generally accepted at the academic level, which leads to the question of why academic research is contrary to the idea of the dominant majority. Over time, science has become esoteric, and academic research, including among theistic non-believers, has made the academic competence of the mainstream public open to question.

This situation, which is a factor in the inability of societies to provide cultural competition in parallel, can be defined as an academic level where atheists, who play an effective role in mass management, generally create a dominance of faith over the Islamic and Christian masses, and there is a chain of information theft.

It's better than lying.