Some interesting new findings about religious faith in the science community, from a new study mentioned at Livescience.com:

Scientists are less religious than the general population, a new study shows, but the reason has little to do with their study of science or academic pressures.

The findings challenge notions that science is responsible for a lack of faith among researchers, indicating that household upbringing carries the biggest weight in determining religiousness.

"Our study data do not strongly support the idea that scientists simply drop their religious identities upon professional training, due to an inherent conflict between science and faith, or to institutional pressure to conform," said Elaine Howard Ecklund, a sociologist at the University at Buffalo and co-author of the study.

The last paragraph in particular caught my eye, as I've often heard it suggested in Christian circles that scientists in many fields face insitutional pressure to distance themselves from religious faith. Sounds like it might not be quite so simple.

Some of the study's other findings, mentioned at the end of the article: younger scientists are more likely to believe in God than older scientists; only 2% of scientists identify themselves as "evangelical" or "fundamentalist," and over half of the surveyed scientists professed no religious faith.