Hey hey hey!! How much does religion affect MIT?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>For clarification, when I said MIT was disproportionately atheist/agnostic, I meant, well, disproportionately atheist/agnostic, not majority, as many have said. According to those undergrad surveys, MIT undergrad is somewhere 40-50% atheist agnostic, compared to 5%-15% with the American population. If you count the grad school, the number only gets bigger. You're not going to get ostracized or laughed at because you have religion here, but be prepared for general irreverence. </p>

<p>As far as affecting your admission goes, the #1 thing MIT looks for is the fit, and if you go around teaching people the earth is 6,000 years old and dinosaurs lived with people, etc., I can promise you that you don't fit with MIT. You may want to look at other schools such as Liberty University. Denying you admission based on your beliefs is wrong, but denying admission based on the fact that if bad science is so important to you, you'll be miserable here, or you'll make others miserable. </p>

<p>Again, all of this is conjecture, and I'm in no way representative of the admissions committee, but I would be very disappointed if the adcom admitted someone whose main interests included spreading knowledge of young earth creationism. I mean, if you believe that, I don't really care, but if you dedicated all your free time in high school to "teaching" children that stuff, I have a reasonable expectation that you will be unhappy here and will make others unhappy.</p>

<p>EDIT/ADDENDUM: And I should mention that having ANY religion at all is not a hindrance towards MIT admissions. Plenty of people in the scientific community are very religious. They just also accept science, which the OP seems to do quite well.</p>

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<p>^^"
Great info Olo! Thanks!
But do you know anyone who had written his religious activities as an EC? Or has he just mentioned it during their interview or something?</p>

<p>I thought there would be more impact when you mention it as an EC . . . Er, besides, just because you're hindu, doesn't mean you'll follow these religious activities. Just clarifying!</p>

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<p>No, I don't know anyone who wrote about religion. Like I said, a plurality of students identify as atheist or agnostic, and of those who don't, most aren't very religious or don't practice, etc. I'd venture that it's not because people who write about religion don't get in, but rather because most people here just don't dedicate themselves to religion enough to write an essay about it.</p>

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<p>I'm sure talking about religion is fine with the whole "values and morals" and "community" aspects. In my opinion, theres not a huge difference, probably none at all, between an atheist doing lots of community service and a religious person doing community service...or am I missing something?</p>

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<p>no difference apart from the whole "I believe in a deity, you don't" thing. I'm religious myself, but not at all a fundamentalist or the church-going type. I have friends who are atheist and friends who are Muslim. I agree with you in the sense that as long as you're a good person, your religion (or lack thereof) doesn't matter.</p>

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According to those undergrad surveys, MIT undergrad is somewhere 40-50% atheist agnostic, compared to 5%-15% with the American population.

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<p>I always wonder about that stat (5-15%). I didn't meet another atheist outside my immediate family until I was 11. I guess there are quite a lot of us in the closet.</p>

<p>I don't know anyone who wrote about religion (to my knowledge), but I do know people who had religious ECs. And there are plenty of religious clubs at MIT - Catholic, Baptist, general Christian, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, etc. I do know MIT people who are very serious about their religion, ranging from mainstream faiths like my devout Episcopal friends to somewhat less standard ones like my friend who's a very serious Celtic Reconstructionist (a Pagan denomination).</p>

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<p>I'm the atheist in a family composed of people in varying stages of nonpracticing belief and agnostics. Nothing to write about there, I guess.</p>

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<p>I know a significant number of atheist/agnostics (live in MA - very liberal). I guess it really depends on where you live.</p>

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<p>
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I know a significant number of atheist/agnostics (live in MA - very liberal). I guess it really depends on where you live.

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<p>I grew up in Georgia and Kentucky. "I heard that I was going to Hell half a dozen times before breakfast every day! And I had to walk 20 miles to school uphill in the snow both ways, or would have if it actually snowed more than once a year in the South!" :D Not really, but I did get bullied, and told that I was going to Hell, an awful lot.</p>

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<p>WOW seriously. Here, people at my school are very neutral to religion, or even slightly anti-religion. To repeat with more emphasis, I guess it REALLLLY REALLY depends on where you live. I know only one person who would ever bully someone for being agnostic/atheist, and.. well... she's from Virginia, heh. Most people would be more likely to tease somebody for being very into religion... though really, most people just wouldn't care.</p>

<p>Then again, my 9th grade biology teacher didn't believe in evolution - fun story: "So, these people who believe in the "primordial soup" idea think that lightning just hit some basin of chemicals, and it made life. Now, have you ever SEEN lightning hit something? Do you know what happens? Usually, there is fire." Somebody in my class: "But how could there have been fire if there wasn't oxygen in the atmosphere?" Bio teacher: "... I never thought of that, good point." At least he was a nice man, heh. My tenth grade chemistry teacher didn't believe in evolution either.... actually, I'd be interested to know, for people who come from very religious areas, do the schools teach evolution?</p>

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<p>I can answer that- I'm an agnostic, borderline atheist, and I've gone to Catholic schools for 13 years.</p>

<p>Teachers at our school are actually required to present intelligent design and emphasize that evolution is just a theory- however, the teachers I had (one of which I think is a closet atheist and the other is a Calvinist, and both are high on my favorite person list) both were very tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing and went on to make it very clear that it was possible to combine the two if you so desired and that evolution is about as close as you can get to being a law without being so.</p>

<p>In that respect, I've been really lucky.</p>

<p>However, being an atheist in a Catholic school sucks. I'm required to take religion class, and my entire class gets daily amusement out of my berating of the incredibly stupid teacher I have this semester. It's great, because she doesn't even know what to say to my questions/arguments to her points, and all my essay answers are so sarcastic (but still "right") that I basically make the class my personal joke. </p>

<p>My parents are exceptionally concerned for my soul, though- I have to go to Sunday mass with my family still. I didn't go at all while I was away this summer (OK, I went once, but it was really just to make my mom happy), and when I got back, I just stopped receiving communion. Big mistake. I'm essentially forced to do so now, as I think my parents are embarrassed by the fact that their only daughter can be seen my everyone they know skipping communion every week. I mean, it's not so bad for me- it just tastes like an ice cream cone- but they're essentially forcing me to be incredibly disrespectful of their own beliefs.</p>

<p>This was kind of a long answer, but I hope that sheds a bit of light on what it's like to be anti-religious in a religious community. For reference, the city I live in is heavily Dutch Christian. Look up the Christian Reformed Church- I live down the street from their headquarters.</p>

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<p>
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My tenth grade chemistry teacher didn't believe in evolution either.... actually, I'd be interested to know, for people who come from very religious areas, do the schools teach evolution?

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<p>My high school did. Which is kind of funny, because my bio teacher (one of the best teachers I had) was a creationist. His attitude was "I do not believe this, because it contradicts my religious faith, but it is the current science, whereas my religion is not science. You are going to learn the current science in this class." I never figured out how he dealt with the cognitive dissonance that must have been going on, but he was a fine teacher in spite of it.</p>

<p>I don't remember it ever coming up in elementary and middle school classes. Neither did creationism/ID. The issue came up in schools and districts near mine, but I got lucky.</p>

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For people who come from very religious areas, do the schools teach evolution?

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My school did, for about a day. Maybe half a day. I got my entire education in evolutionary biology by haunting the popular science section of the library.</p>

<p>Like Jessie, I don't recall meeting any atheists in my hometown. One of my boyfriends was agnostic, which I found utterly shocking. (And then I came to MIT and deconverted myself... but I'm not too noisy about that around my hometown.)</p>

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<p>Mollie, you have 44 threads and 4444 posts. Very nice. Just in case you didn't notice.</p>

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<p>I spent 10-11 years in Texas. Met maybe three other atheists my entire stay there.</p>

<p>Then I came here, and, holy crap.</p>

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<p>Evo...What ultion? Nah...my school avoid the topic completely...Though my AP Bio class dances around the subject frequently. I learned about evolution from internet forums....and books.</p>

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<p>Alright, I've been reading and following this discussion for awhile, and I just gotta give my two cents at this point.</p>

<p>First, I'm concerned about the origin of this thread. Religion, if you really believe in it, should be a part of who you are as a person. Not just another factor for admission to XYZ college. If it's who you are or what you do for EC, then sure, write about it. If you're more concerned what ANY college thinks about your religion than you are of being true to yourself and, therefore, true to the beliefs you hold, something just isn't right.</p>

<p>I would also hope that MIT, being a school of engineers (and creativity is a part of design and engineering), would be open-minded enough to not discriminate and make broad generalizations.</p>

<p>And finally, as for evolution, I would hope that any school worth its beans taught multiple theories, just like my very religious Bio teacher taught intelligent design as a theory, and evolution as a theory, and creationism as a theory, etc. presenting all cases fairly and accurately. The only reason I know she's religious is because I asked her after class which theory she subscribed to, and she said both intelligent design AND evolution and explained that it was her religious beliefs guiding that.</p>

<p>MIT is a place full of smart people. jessiehl makes a point about there being a large variety of religious clubs. Smart people don't make sweeping assumptions and discriminations and generalizations; in fact, everything I've seen from the MIT Admissions people shows that they really try to be quite fair.</p>

<p>And with that, I respectfully duck out of this thread.</p>

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<p>MIT does not teach intelligent design nor creationism, because as nice as it sounds to "teach the controversy", evolution is not in any great danger of being overturned. More to the point, intelligent design and creationism are not science, and their adherents have propaganda machines rather than research programs. </p>

<p>Creationism and intelligent design are religious beliefs, not scientific theories, and as such, it is not legal to teach them in science class in public schools in many parts of the country.</p>

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<p>
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And finally, as for evolution, I would hope that any school worth its beans taught multiple theories, just like my very religious Bio teacher taught intelligent design as a theory, and evolution as a theory, and creationism as a theory, etc. presenting all cases fairly and accurately.

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<p>I think you are conflating the scientific and colloquial meanings of "theory". Evolution is a scientific theory, like quantum, general relativity, or universal gravitation. To use Wikipedia's definition, which is more eloquent than I would be likely to come up with on my own, a scientific theory is a "testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation." ID/creationism are about faith. That's their <em>point</em>. They are conjectures (theories in the colloquial sense) that you believe in or don't.</p>

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<p>We have this urge to go along with what's "fair," and I know personally (<-- lived in Texas) that that's the argument thrown out. It's only fair to teach both sides, it's only fair to present everything, etc. etc.</p>

<p>But really, every other thing taught in a high school or undergraduate classroom had to fight its way through decades of peer review. I strongly doubt undergrads in 1910 were learning quantum physics or one of its several alternatives. The scientific community is like a great chain, with everyone tugging in his own direction. Thus, the chain moves slowly, but with wisdom. </p>

<p>Intelligent design wants to skip out of this whole process. What's so fair about giving it a free trip through the scientific community? When every other thing we learn needs to go through that process, what's so fair and evenhanded about letting intelligent design cut to the front of the line?</p>

<p>Honestly, if ID had merit, within decades, it will appear in standard curriculum and academic circles simply because that's the nature of the academic and scientific process. This whole means of attempting to put it there artificially sort of belies the unscientific nature of the entire thing. </p>

<p>In truth, I really hate the old ID controversy. For centuries, people have argued about whether or not it was possible to infer the existence of god from perceived design in the universe. This was one of the most popular forms of teleological arguments for the existence of god. Philosophers quickly realized exactly how horrid an argument it was, and it was kind of buried as a footnote in history.</p>

<p>Then along comes intelligent design, and because it parades as science, it seems new and fresh, despite the fact that there existed thousands of works on the subject before you or I or Behe had ever been born. And now it's going to have to go through that struggle again.</p>

<p>The existence or nonexistence of god has remained one of philosophy's most pressing questions, and it should stay within a philosophy class. There's nothing scientific about it.</p>