The Creationist-Engineer Phenomenon

I recently found sociologist Steve Bruce's recent book God Is Dead: Secularization in the West.It has a lot of very interesting stuff in it, most of it off-topic for this forum. However, in his discussion of science and religion, SB makes some comments that are very relevant to the creationism question, and in particular, to the abundance of creationist engineers.He suggests that we go beyond specific doctrines and look for similarities in thought processes. And he finds that there are some similarities between the "hard" sciences and the more conservative and fundie sorts of religion. Those sects have their own brand of rigorous rationalism, however perverted it may seem to outsiders.This manifests itself in a taste for precision, especially numerical precision. Thus, predicting when the next eclipses will happen is much like predicting when Jesus Christ will make his Second Coming.Steve Bruce also distinguishes between "advanced science", which is exploratory, and "mundane science", which is mainly the application of established paradigms. And engineering is clearly "mundane science". The latter one is more like conservative/fundie religion than the former; the paradigms used may almost be called the sacred books of a field.Also, in engineering, it's not too difficult to tiptoe around doctrinally troublesome results of science.This happens not only in Xtianity; students from Islamic countries generally prefer to go into the "hard" sciences and engineering.And the medical profession may be interpreted as a branch of engineering; this may account for creationist doctors.

I have also noticed that many of the more interesting Creationists I have encountered over the years have been engineers.They have tended to be very intelligent and think they understand science because they apply it. They think that because math is absolute, nature must be also.

On the other hand, most pro-evolution non-biologists I know tend to be philosophers (except of the perennialist/typologist school), liberal theologians, and those with secular political agendas. Social scientists are either keen or appalled by evolution; and the pro-evolution ones tend to misunderstand evolution and believe in some kind of teleological evolution.Evolution's one bitter pill to swallow for non-biologists I think.