Science & Religion Today

We've Moved!

2009-07-20T09:01:00.007-04:00

We've got a new Web address: scienceandreligiontoday.com

Bring Betty Broadband!

2009-07-17T12:10:00.011-04:00

That's the name of a new campaign launched by an interfaith coalition of religious groups that wants to bring high-speed Internet access to poor and rural communities that still don't have it. They see broadband communication as a "fundamental right," and they're now collecting signatures for a letter that will go to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.
The main message:

For too long, the process of reaching out and educating traditionally disenfranchised communities has been left to volunteer efforts and the philanthropic community alone. Increasing access doesn't just assist the people who are helped, we all benefit. Just as the value of a telephone increases when we can reach more people by using it, the value of the Internet for all of us increases when we are all connected. ...
As members of a wide range of faith communities in this country, we are prepared to do our part to help our friends and neighbors to get online and to get broadband access. We hope the federal government will also step up to the plate.

Field Notes

2009-07-17T07:41:00.011-04:00

Why We No Longer Need Religion
Daniel Dennett: I am confident that those who believe in belief are wrong. That is, we no more need to preserve the myth of God in order to preserve a just and stable society than we needed to cling to the Gold Standard to keep our currency sound. It was a useful crutch, but we've outgrown it. (guardian.co.uk)

God of the Philosophers
H.E. Baber: Claims about the existence and nature of God are, rather, controversial to philosophers, including Christian philosophers. That is to say, we recognize them as propositions about which reasonable, informed people may disagree. (guardian.co.uk)

Will Aliens Look Like Humans?
Is there reason to think that actual aliens, from a star system a thousand light-years away, would be similar in appearance to the evolved apes that we now call Homo sapiens? Some scientists, such as Cambridge University paleontologist Simon Conway Morris, think there is. After all, there's a phenomenon in nature known as convergent evolution. It's the tendency of evolutionary processes to find similar solutions to any given environmental challenge. (Seth Shostak, Space.com)

What Does it Take to Sustain a Happy and Successful Relationship or Marriage?”
Gwyneth Paltrow: A long-term relationship between two people is an ever evolving organism. Some stay the course, some fall, all stumble. Here I’ve asked a few very wise women, most of whom are in varying forms of longtime partnerships, for their insights. (GOOP)

Q&A
Eugenie Scott
“‘If man evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?’... That’s probably the second most common question I get on talk radio.” Watch your language! It's a common message from Eugenie Scott, a physical anthropologist and director of the National Center for Science Education. (Susan Milius, Science News)

Denis Alexander Says S&R Are "First Cousins"

2009-07-16T11:36:00.006-04:00

"If the Darwin Festival told us anything about science and religion, it was the same old message underlined once again: that science and religion are first cousins that occasionally squabble, but far more as friends than as foes," Denis Alexander, director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, writes in a piece on the festival in today's Telegraph.

Opinions on Francis Collins Nomination

2009-07-16T09:37:00.017-04:00

It's been a week since President Obama announced his intent to nominate Dr. Francis Collins as head of the National Institutes of Health. In that time, there's been lots of reaction to the pick.

Steven Waldman, co-founder and editor in chief of Beliefnet, thinks the nomination is a "culture war statement":

To me, Mr. Collins is not just a scientific leader, he's a Christian role model. He shows that being a believer doesn't mean checking your brain at the church door, that people of faith have just as much intellectual heft as seculars and, most important, how faith and science can happily co-exist.

Michael Gerson, a former speech writer for George W. Bush, also likes the choice of Collins, a theistic scientist who favors evolution (and embryonic stem cell research) and sees "modern science and Christianity are not competing answers to the same question; they are ways of thinking about two very different sets of questions, both of which should be taken seriously." According to Gerson:

Collins' appointment says something good about the maturity of modern evangelicalism, which is starting to abandon some of its least productive debates with modernity. Criticisms of evolution, rooted in 19th-century controversies, have done little more than set up religious young people for entirely unnecessary crises of faith as they encounter scientific knowledge. In the running conflict of modern biology and evangelicalism, Collins is a peacemaker.

Everyone seems to agree he'd make a good administrator (Collins led the public effort to sequence the human genome "ahead of schedule and under budget.") Yet there are those who have misgivings about the pick—not as a result of Collins' scientific qualifications per se or his personal religious beliefs but because of his very public faith commitments. As cognitive scientist Steven Pinker explains:

It’s not that I think that there should be a religious litmus test for public science administrators, or that being a devout Christian is a disqualification. But in Collins’s case, it is not a matter of private belief, but public advocacy. The director of NIH is not just a bureaucrat who tends the money pipeline between the treasury and molecular biologists (which is how many scientists see the position). He or she is also a public face of science, someone who commands one of the major bully pulpits for science in the country. The director testifies before Congress, sets priorities, selects speakers and panelists, and is in many regards a symbol for biomedical research in the U.S. and the world. In that regard, many of Collins’s advocacy statements are deeply disturbing.

Others, however, see a more positive spin on Collins' public defense of religion and discussion of faith. Chris Wilson of Slate suggests:

If Collins' faith mollifies even a few political conservatives who would otherwise continue to waste time and money fighting research efforts that violate their specific religious tenets, then the benefits of his faith should outweigh whatever qualms scientists might have.

Field Notes

2009-07-16T08:10:00.006-04:00

Dispatch From the Sonia Sotomayor Hearings
Richard Just: We've heard a lot of debate about whether constitutional law can possibly survive close contact with the concept of empathy. But after spending the afternoon at the Sotomayor hearings, listening to senators left and right prattle about empathy and its relationship to justice, I have another question: Can the concept of empathy survive close contact with constitutional law? I ask because empathy has become the watchword of these hearings—and in the process it is getting battered, vilified, and badly distorted. (NPR)

What Questions Can Science Answer?
We can more or less agree on what “science” means, and still disagree on what questions it has the power to answer. So that’s an issue worth examining more carefully: what does science actually have the power to do? (Sean Carroll, Cosmic Variance, Discover)

Bishop Calls for Removal of Holy Water to Prevent Spread of Swine Flu
Holy water can pass on more than just a priest’s blessing—it can also transmit the swine flu virus, a British bishop says. That’s because churchgoers dip their fingers into one container of liquid, then touch their nose or eyes, thereby giving the virus a free ticket into their body. For this reason, the bishop is urging priests in Essex, UK, to remove holy water from their churches to prevent cases of the flu. (Allison Bond, Discoblog, Discover)

People More Likely to Return a Lost Wallet if There's a Baby Photo Inside
According to Richard Wiseman, a psychologist, the result reflects a compassionate instinct towards vulnerable infants that people have evolved to ensure the survival of future generations. “The baby kicked off a caring feeling in people, which is not surprising from an evolutionary perspective,” he said. Scientists argue that it would be difficult to genetically code for feeling empathy exclusively towards your own child and much easier to code for feeling empathy towards all children. (Hannah Devlin, The Times)

"Brüno" Banned in Ukraine
When Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan hit cinema screens in 2006, few were surprised that the real-world home of Borat, the idiot-innocent Kazak main character, decided to ban the film as a matter of pride. But now censors in Ukraine are giving his latest film, Brüno, the same no-show treatment, claiming morality—not hurt feelings—as the reason. (James Marson, TIME)

Can an iPhone App Make You Happier?

2009-07-15T13:34:00.007-04:00

Check out Live Happy, a positive psychology iPhone application developed by Signal Patterns Labs (the same company that developed the Gratitude Stream iPhone app). The application is based on the research of Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside, and the author of The How of Happiness. Grab the free version of the app or the paid version, which allows you to send Lyubomirsky questions.
Live Happy prompts users to perform activities (right on the iPhone) that research has shown help to boost happiness. These include things like taking a photo (to savor a moment), texting a thank-you message to a friend, or performing a random act of kindness.
Could these kinds of one-offs actually make people happier? "As a whole," says Lyubomirsky, "performing these activities adds up to a new mindset and a more positive way of engaging and viewing one's daily life."

New Chair for Texas Board of Education

2009-07-15T12:44:00.019-04:00

Governor Rick Perry has chosen another creationist, Republican Gail Lowe, to chair the State Board of Education. (Perry had first reappointed current chair Don McLeroy, a well-known young earth creationist, but the state Senate voted him out.) Lowe will serve as chairman until February 2011, just after the Texas Legislature reconvenes.
As with McLeroy, many are concerned about Lowe's divisiveness and her past attempts to undermine the treatment of evolution in the state's science standards. She repeatedly voted for changes to the curriculum that would water down evolution instruction, including having kids discuss the "strengths and weaknesses" of the theory. (Keep in mind that evolution is not a point of controversy or debate in the scientific community.)
As Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, notes:

It's disappointing that instead of choosing a mainstream conservative who could heal the divisions on the board, the governor once again appointed someone who repeatedly has put political agenda ahead of the education of Texas schoolchildren. Ms. Lowe has marched in lockstop with a faction of board members who believe that their personal beliefs are more imporatant than the experience and expertise of teachers and academics who have dedicated their careers to educating our children and helping them succeed. We can only hope that she will rise above her history on the board and as chair keep fellow members from continuing to hold the education of our children hostage to divisive "culture war" battles.

—Heather Wax

Darwin Biopic Will Open Toronto Film Festival

2009-07-15T10:58:00.012-04:00

Creation, the Charles Darwin biopic starring Paul Bettany, will open the 34th annual Toronto International Film Festival on September 10. (Jennifer Connelly, Bettany's real-life wife, plays his on-screen wife Emma). The movie, directed by Jon Amiel, is based on the book Annie's Box by Randal Keynes, Darwin's great-great grandson.
As TIFF CEO and director Piers Handling explained the decision:

The tension between faith and reason is prominent in contemporary culture and this intimate look at Darwin puts a human face on a man whose theory remains controversial to this day. We are pleased to open the festival with such an impassioned look at Charles Darwin, especially on the year marking the 200th anniversary of his birth.

But the choice has caused controversy—interestingly, not as a result of the subject matter, but because the film doesn't have a Canadian connection. "We have traditionally opened with a Canadian film, but this year we chose to go a different route," TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey said at a press conference yesterday. "We fell in love with this movie and this is the one, we felt, really sets the tone for the kinds of conversations we hope will happen around the films at the festival." —Heather Wax

Field Notes

2009-07-15T07:21:00.005-04:00

Vatican Newspaper Gives New Harry Potter Film a Positive Review
The review said the new film "reaches the right balance," thanks to a "a clear line of demarcation between those who work for good and those who carry out evil." The L'Osservatore Romano called it "the best film of the series" even though the books lacked what it called "a reference to the transcendent." (Philip Pullella and Robin Pomeroy, Reuters)

Why Scientists Who Blast Religious Believers Should Stop (and Work With Them Instead)
The stunning irony in the longstanding tension between science and religion in America is that many scientists who merely claim to be defending rationality from religious fundamentalism may actually be turning Americans off to science, doing more harm to their cause than good. (Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, Newsweek)

Study Finds Couples That Live Together Before Marriage Are More Likely to Get Divorced
It's not because you start to get on one another's nerves. Rather, the researchers figure the shared abode could lead to marriage for all the wrong reasons. "We think that some couples who move in together without a clear commitment to marriage may wind up sliding into marriage partly because they are already cohabiting," said lead researcher Galena Rhoades of the University of Denver. (Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience)

Lawsuit to Block Engraving "In God We Trust" and Pledge of Allegiance at Capitol Visitor Center
The lawsuit says both the motto and the words "under God" in the pledge were adopted during the Cold War as anti-communism measures. Engraving them at the entrance to the U.S. Capitol would discriminate against those who do not practice religion and unfairly promote a Judeo-Christian perspective, it says. (Ryan Foley, Associated Press)

Right-to-Die Debate Heats Up in Britain
The death of a leading British conductor and his wife at a Swiss suicide clinic has raised fears that couples will be encouraged to die together even when one of them is not terminally ill. Sir Edward Downes travelled to the Dignitas clinic with his wife Joan, 74, last week, after she was told that she had terminal cancer. They were accompanied by their son and daughter, Caractacus and Boudicca. Sir Edward, 85, was frail but not dying. (David Brown and Helen Nugent, The Times)

John Polkinghorne Says S&R Are "Cousins"

2009-07-14T16:14:00.009-04:00

"People sometimes say that science is about facts and religion is simply about opinion, but that's to make a double mistake actually," the Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, a physicist, theologian, and Anglican priest, recently told ABC Radio National in Australia. "There are no interesting scientific facts that are not already interpreted facts, and to interpret what's being measured, you have to use theoretical opinions. So there's a very subtle exchange between theory and experiment in science, which means its conclusions are never absolutely certain but well-justified. Similarly, religion isn't just a question of shutting your eyes, gritting your teeth, and believing impossible things on some unquestionable authority. It's also concerned with the search for truth through motivated belief, but it's a different level and kind of truth, and so it's motivations are a different kind of motivation. But I think, under the skin, science and religion are cousins in the search for truth."

On the Shelf

2009-07-14T11:06:00.006-04:00

Unscientific America, the new book from science writer Chris Mooney and marine biologist Sheril Kirshenbaum (which in part deals with the gap between science and the public in the religious arena), has hit bookshelves. You've seen the early reviews. You've heard the authors and PZ Myers are going at it. Perhaps you've seen Mooney and science writer Carl Zimmer discuss the the book on Bloggingheads.tv. Now, judge for yourself.

Field Notes

2009-07-14T07:44:00.011-04:00

Confusing Belief and Reason Has Led to "Bad Science and Inept Religion"
Karen Armstrong: The extraordinary and eccentric emphasis on "belief" in Christianity today is an accident of history that has distorted our understanding of religious truth. We call religious people "believers," as though acceptance of a set of doctrines was their principal activity, and before undertaking the religious life many feel obliged to satisfy themselves about the metaphysical claims of the church, which cannot be proven rationally since they lie beyond the reach of empirical sense data. (guardian.co.uk)

Why We Should Divorce Morality From Religion
Jeff Schweitzer: What we now call morality is really a suite of behaviors favored by natural selection in an animal weak alone but strong in numbers. We need to re-discover and appeal to this inner good derived from our biology and evolutionary history rather than to the myth of an invisible man in the sky with magical powers as a sound basis for our moral guidance. (The Huffington Post)

Another (But Pretty Much the Same) Culture Battle Heats Up in Texas
The fight over school curriculum in Texas, recently focused on biology, has entered a new arena, with a brewing debate over how much faith belongs in American history classrooms. The Texas Board of Education, which recently approved new science standards that made room for creationist critiques of evolution, is revising the state's social studies curriculum. In early recommendations from outside experts appointed by the board, a divide has opened over how central religious theology should be to the teaching of history. (Stephanie Simon, The Wall Street Journal)

Paying Attention to the Pope's "Charity in Truth"
Daniel Indiviglio: Although I am not crazy about some of the assertions made in this document, by-in-large, I think it's pretty good. It really urges individuals and businesses to think more deeply about how the decisions they make affect the world. The Church would like them to think about more than just themselves and more than just the short term. (The Atlantic)

BOOKS
The Age of Wonder
William Herschel, the German-born, star-gazing musician who effectively doubled the size of the solar system with a single discovery in 1781, was not regarded as a scientist. That word had not been coined during most of the era that will now be known, thanks to Richard Holmes’s amazingly ambitious, buoyant new fusion of history, art, science, philosophy and biography, as “The Age of Wonder.” And Mr. Holmes’s excitement at fusing long-familiar events and personages into something startlingly new is not unlike the exuberance of the age that animates his groundbreaking book. (Janet Maslin, The New York Times)

Theologian & Author Robert Short Dies

2009-07-13T11:44:00.005-04:00

Robert Short, the Presbyterian minister and theologian who is said to have initiated the study of religion through popular culture (with his 1965 best-selling book The Gospel According to Peanuts), died on July 6 in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was 76.

Another Dispatch From the Darwin Festival

2009-07-13T11:10:00.003-04:00

Richard Dawkins has posted the follow-up to Daniel Dennett's first report from the Darwin Festival, in which he heavily criticizes a session on evolution and theology. (Philip Clayton, Wentzel van Huyssteen, and John Brooke have since responded.) In the second installment, Dennett shares his impressions of another session he attended, this one on the evolution of religion.
Here's what Dennett wrote:

The second Templeton-sponsored session (at the Cambridge Darwin Festival) was more presentable. On the evolution of religion, it featured clear, fact-filled presentations by Pascal Boyer and Harvey Whitehouse, a typical David Sloan Wilson advertisement for his multi-level selection approach, and an even more typical meandering and personal harangue from Michael Ruse. The session was chaired, urbanely and without any contentful intervention, by Fraser Watt, our evolutionary christologist. (I wonder: should “christology” be capitalized? Ian McEwan asked me if there was, perhaps, a field of X-ray christology. I’ve been having fun fantasizing about how that might revolutionize science and open up a path for the Crick and Watson of theology!)
I learned something at the session. Boyer presented a persuasive case that the “packaging” of the stew of separable and largely independent items as “religion” is itself ideology generated by the institutions, a sort of advertising that has the effect of turning religions into “brands” in competition. Whitehouse gave a fascinating short account of the Kivung cargo cult in a remote part of Papua New Guinea that he studied as an anthropologist, living with them for several years. A problem: the Kivung cult has the curious belief that their gods (departed ancestors) will return, transformed into white men, and bearing high technology and plenty for all. This does present a challenge for a lone white anthropologist coming to live with them for awhile, camera gear in hand, and wishing to be as unobtrusive as possible. Wilson offered very interesting data from a new study by his group on a large cohort of American teenagers, half Pentecostals and half Episcopalians (in other words, maximally conservative and maximally liberal), finding that on many different scales of self-assessment, these young people are so different that they would look to a biologist like “different species.” Ruse declared that while he is an atheist, he wishes that those wanting to explain religion wouldn’t start with the assumption that religious beliefs are false. He doesn’t seem to appreciate the role of the null hypothesis or the presumption of innocence in trials. We also learned tidbits about his life and his preference—as an atheist—for the Calvinist God.”

John Brooke Responds to Daniel Dennett

2009-07-13T10:17:00.009-04:00

Last week, we posted (via Jerry Coyne) Daniel Dennett's report on a session about evolution and religion at the Darwin Festival at Cambridge University. (Dennett thought the session was "wonderfully awful.") Philip Clayton and Wentzel van Huyssteen, who participated in the session, then responded.
Now, John Brooke, a historian of science at the University of Oxford, has weighed in. Here's what he had to say:

Having had the privilege of speaking alongside Dan Dennett in one of the plenary sessions at the Cambridge Darwin Festival, it may be helpful if I comment on his negative reaction to the theology focus session at which Wentzel van Huyssteen was one of the speakers. It is clear that Dennett shares the view of Richard Dawkins and others that theology has nothing whatsoever to contribute to serious intellectual discourse. He prefaced his remarks at the theology session by saying that he had attended it because he and Richard are often accused of not taking theology seriously enough and he was willing to listen. Two issues appeared to confirm his antipathetic predisposition: the apparent bending of theology to scientific results coupled with an inability of theology to give anything back; and, secondly, the references to a kenotic understanding of God's relationship to the world, the word "kenotic" apparently being new to him. He evidently latched onto it as a symbol of theology's suicide—an emptying of meaning.
I had the opportunity to press him a little on what, if anything, he believed theology could or should contribute to the discussion of science and its cultural implications. He appeared to agree with me that one could not reasonably expect a contribution that would be constitutive of the cognitive content of science. (I should add that as a historian I am well aware that such a constitutive role was played by theology in the past and I made that point in the discussion associated with the plenary session. A striking example would be the contribution of a radical Unitarian theology in the shape of Joseph Priestley to the very foundations of neuroscience as a discipline).
From what Dan said to me informally, I inferred that if theology was to command his respect it would have to be able to offer a clarification of terms used in serious philosophical discourse. This was of course the response of a philosopher! He did not give an example because our conversation was interrupted by the need to address our audience. But it has occurred to me that in a week when the word "creationism" was frequently used as a term of abuse, theology does have a responsibility to distinguish clearly between the many different meanings of "creation." Minimally there must be the distinction between creation understood as a series of separate acts in the independent production of distinct species (the view that Darwin so ably and, in my view, so persuasively contested) and creation in the more profound sense of the dependence of all that is (including evolutionary processes) on a transcendent power. There would, of course, be much more to be said, in the light of existentialist theologies in which creation means the creation of an authentic attitude in the believer toward a world described by science. But this is not the place to elaborate on the multiple meanings of the term.

Field Notes

2009-07-13T07:57:00.007-04:00

Pride Can Pay Off
New research suggests that pride, as long as it stems from a real success and doesn’t slide into know-it-all obnoxiousness or narcissism, not only pushes us to keep trying hard but actually makes others like us more. (Siri Carpenter, Scientific American Mind)

New Study Shows Swearing May Alleviate Pain
Timothy Jay, a psychologist at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, says the study gets past the question of whether swearing should be frowned upon in polite society and instead addresses a scientific question. “When you try to describe swearing in moral terms—is it good or bad—it keeps you from getting at the deeper evolutionary links,” he says. “Where did this come from? Why do we do it?” (Laura Sanders, Science News)

Investigating Mysteries and "Miracles" in the Realm of Medicine
Over the last several decades, there has been a paradoxical confluence of two phenomena: at the same time that medical science has become increasingly adept at explaining how the human body heals, the Roman Catholic Church is in need of—and finding—an increasing number of inexplicable healings. The result is an unusual process, in which the Vatican has had to develop a medical expertise to help separate remarkable but understandable recoveries from those healings for which medicine has no explanation. (Michael Paulson, The Boston Globe)

The Story Behind "charity: water"
Five years ago, Scott Harrison was a nightclub promoter in Manhattan who spent his nights surrounded by friends in a blur of alcohol, cocaine and marijuana. He lived in a luxurious apartment and drove a BMW—but then on a vacation in South America he underwent a spiritual crisis. “I realized I was the most selfish, sycophantic and miserable human being,” he recalled. “I was the worst person I knew.” (Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times)

TELEVISION
Revelation
Showtime is developing Revelation, a religion-themed drama from David Janollari and Dirty Sexy Money creator Craig Wright. Hourlong project revolves around an unconventional minister who moves to a Texas church with his two teens after his wife suddenly dies. Wright was once a minister himself and plans to rely on his base of knowledge to tackle issues of religion, faith, and spirituality. (Michael Schneider, Variety)

PZ Myers' Idea for Improving Science's Fate

2009-07-10T13:16:00.008-04:00

This is lovely:

"Our next generation of great science communicators should be flesh-and-blood people with personalities, every one different and every one with different priorities, all singing out enthusiastically for everything from astronomy to zoology, and they should sometimes be angry and sometimes sorrowful and sometimes deliriously excited. They shouldn't hesitate to say what they think, even if it might make Joe the Plumber surly," PZ Myers writes on Pharyngula. "If you want to improve American science and the perception of science by the public, teach science first and foremost, because what you'll find is that your discipline is then populated with people who are there because they love the ideas. And, by the way, let them know every step of the way that science is also a performing art, and that they have an obligation as a public intellectual to take their hard-earned learning and share it with the world."

Another Response to Daniel Dennett

2009-07-10T11:26:00.013-04:00

Wentzel van Huyssteen, a professor of theology and science at Princeton Theological Seminary, has also read Daniel Dennett's report from the evolution and religion session at the Darwin Festival (in which van Huyssteen took part) and has sent us what he describes as a "brief, gut-level response." (Philip Clayton responded too.)
Here's what van Huyssteen writes:

Too bad that Dan Dennett felt compelled to give such an impossibly one-sided response to what was really said on our session on Monday afternoon. The session was all about showing that there is a vast amount of serious Christians/theologians out there who do not succumb to right-wing biblical fundamentalism or its polar opposite, scientism, but are really working hard to find constructive ways to engage not only with science, but quite specifically also with the thought of Charles Darwin. I do not want to speak for my colleagues, but the four papers in our session tried to show, each in their own way, that there are different ways to do that. I think paleoanthropologists and archaeologists with whom I have worked over the years would be surprised at Dennett's over-reaction against my attempt at interdisciplinary theology. After all, Darwin's theory of natural selection in itself does not compel a choice for a position of faith or for atheism—that to me looks like a profoundly personal choice. And Michael Ruse was right all along: Darwinians can be Christians! What divides Christian Darwinians and atheist Darwinians is not Mr. Darwin, but deep philosophical presuppositions and differences. ...
The ensuing relationship between science and theology is admittedly a-symmetrical: there are big differences between the explanatory/interpretative methods of science and the more philosophically non-empirical explanations/interpretations in philosophical theology. What this means for the interaction between science and theology is that theology should boldly let scientific facts inform its theories and perspectives (and I have tried in my paper to show that paleoanthropological/archaeological data should radically transform the way theological anthropology is done). Theology's contribution to science, however, can never just be a list of new facts for science to consider: On the contrary, theology should identify an overlapping problem with science (in my own case: what does it mean to be human?) and bring to this conversation dimensions of "humanness" like, for instance, vulnerability, moral ambivalence, suffering, the search for meaning, symbolic behavior, forgiveness, etc., which is often beyond the reach of a strictly empirical science and for which the theologian should be able to provide a holistic paradigm of meaning. Of course, for someone uninterested in religious/spiritual meaning this may not make sense!

Philip Clayton Responds to Daniel Dennett

2009-07-10T11:20:00.005-04:00

As we told you yesterday, philosopher Daniel Dennett attended a session on evolution and religion at the big Darwin Festival at Cambridge University and had some things to say about it. Now, philosopher and theologian Philip Clayton, who presented a paper at that session, has posted a response.
Here's what Clayton writes:

A few days ago I presented a paper during the Darwin Festival at the University of Cambridge. Although the session was entitled “Theology in Darwinian Context,” the paper was actually a plea for an open and inquiring form of philosophical discourse—for using the best of human reason to address the big questions of the Western philosophical tradition. The paper gave examples of seven major philosophical questions raised by contemporary biology, arguing not for dogmatic answers to them but for the importance of the debate itself. At the end I gave an example of a form of Christian theology that could be a part of such a debate as well.
Toward the end of the session I had a chance to engage Daniel Dennett in a public debate about my paper. Instead of haranguing him from the podium about his dismissive one-liner just before break, I presented brief arguments and gave him the opportunity to respond each time, so that we could hold a fair, two-sided discussion before the audience. ...
For my part, I can only express my amazement that Dan chose not to mention any of the philosophical questions, nor the call to dialogue itself, but only to answer with a series of dismissive comments and rhetorical moves. Not only does he decline the invitation to reasonable debate; he fails even to mention it. In fact, isn’t his choice of rhetoric instead of argument an instance of exactly what he is accusing theologians of doing?
I can only express my deep disappointment at a philosopher who has so lost interest in philosophical debate. I remember the pride in our discipline that I felt as an undergraduate philosophy major. We were willing to take the best of human reason into absolutely any area, and while many would be unwilling to follow “the force of the better argument”—or even to defend their views at all—at least philosophers would never shy away from the task. I remember looking up to famous philosophers, including the young Daniel Dennett, as ideas worthy of emulation.
To find someone who bears the proud name of a philosopher ignoring the content of a paper he’s just heard, and then choosing to blog about it with rhetoric and misrepresentation instead of summary and criticism, is a far cry from those ideals. Indeed, is it not ironic that it would be the theologian who summarizes philosophical questions, gives arguments, and makes the call to dialogue, and the philosopher who declines the invitation with insults and dismissive rhetoric?

Field Notes

2009-07-10T11:00:00.007-04:00

Pew Report Shows Many Americans Still Don't Know There's Scientific Consensus on Evolution
Asked which comes closer to their view, "Humans and other living things have evolved over time" or "Humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time," 97 percent of scientists responding chose the former option, as opposed to only 2 percent choosing the latter option; 61 percent of the public responding chose the former option, as opposed to 31 percent choosing the latter option.
Those who chose the former option were also asked whether they preferred "Humans and other living things have evolved due to natural processes such as natural selection" or "A supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today." Among scientists, 87 percent preferred the former option and 8 percent preferred the latter option; among the public, 32 percent preferred the former option and 22 percent preferred the latter option. Members of the public were also asked whether scientists generally agree that humans evolved over time; 60 percent said yes, 28 percent said no. "Views on evolution vary substantially within the general public," the report observed, "particularly by religion and attendance at religious services." (National Center for Science Education)
•TEXT: "Public Praises Science, Scientists Fault Public, Media (Pew Research Center)

Hey, Governor Perry, Choose Wisely for Chair of Texas State Board of Education
With a protracted fight over evolution and the science curriculum barely behind it, the State Board of Education looks poised for yet another tug-of-war that uses the Texas public schools as a stage for battles between competing views of the world. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

Oklahoma Representative Sally Kern Heckled as She Launches Proclamation of Morality
A state lawmaker who made national headlines by claiming homosexuality is a greater threat to the United States than terrorism was heckled by protesters as she launched a campaign for a morality proclamation that opponents said promotes an atmosphere of hate. Rep. Sally Kern said the U.S. is drifting from traditional Christian values as she sought signatures for her petition at a state Capitol rally attended by about 250 people including ministers and their followers, four other state lawmakers, and protesters who shouted "shame on you" and "hypocrite." (Associated Press)

Revisiting Sigmund Freud's Views on Religion
Freud is despised among rationalists and self-consciously scientific people today. I was reminded of this when one of the speakers at the big Darwin Festival in Cambridge quoted Richard Dawkins as looking forward to the time when Freud was "utterly discredited" intellectually. I have a lot of sympathy for this desire myself. But if Freud was wrong about everything else, why assume he was right about religion? (Andrew Brown's Blog, guardian.co.uk)

What Will Happen to BioLogos?

2009-07-09T15:51:00.006-04:00

If confirmed as director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins will have to step down as president of The BioLogos Foundation—which he just launched in April. The foundation was started as a way for him to address the country's culture war between science and faith. (Collins most famously wrote about the relationship between science and religion in his 2006 book The Language of God.)
According to a statement from BioLogos, the foundation will continue, and Collins' duties will be taken over by physicist Karl Giberson, currently executive vice president (and editor-at-large of this site), and biologist Darrel Falk, the current executive director. —Heather Wax

Early Reviews of "Unscientific America"

2009-07-09T12:59:00.015-04:00

Unscientific America, the new book from writer Chris Mooney and marine biologist Sheril Kirshenbaum (who blog together at Discover magazine's The Intersection) doesn't officially come out until July 13, but some people have already got the book and reviews are starting to come out.
Here's the buzz.

As part of his review, Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles has a quick summary:

Unscientific America is divided into three main parts, as is traditional for this sort of book. The first section summarizes the historical context, presenting a short history of the rise and fall of the American science establishment. The second section breaks down the main sources of the current problems facing science-- disconnects between the "culture" of science and four other "cultures" in American society: "political culture, media culture, entertainment culture, and religious culture." The final part lays out some suggestions for how to move forward in a productive way.

Seed magazine lists the book as one to "read now," saying:

Science journalist Chris Mooney joins Sheril Kirshenbaum in explaining the disconnect between scientists and the public. This time the onus is on not just on obfuscating and interfering conservatives, but largely on scientists themselves. By talking down to the misinformed—and outright insulting the religious—scientists, they argue, do more harm than good in their quest to enshrine reason in American politics and culture. While the authors’ call for more friendly and magnanimous champions of science is far from a radical conclusion, it duly highlights the Sagan-and Gould-shaped holes we have in our current scientific discourse.

Michael Mann of RealClimate gives the book a very positive review:

What I found most refreshing about the book is that it not only isolates the history behind, and source of, the problem in question—the pervasiveness and dangerousness of scientific illiteracy in modern society–but it offers viable solutions. This book is a must read for anybody who cares about science, and the growing disconnect between the scientific and popular cultures (the problem of the so-called “Two Cultures” first discussed by C.P. Snow).

And James Hrynyshyn of The Island of Doubt also likes it, but has some complaints:

Chris and Sheril point too many fingers for my taste. Religion and the media are obvious and richly deserving targets. But Richard Dawkins and his fellow New Atheists are singled out more than once, for failing to understand that if you want to change minds and win friends, you can't be rude to your audience. True, but I've long believed that there's a place for pointed barbs, especially if those barbs are as well crafted as they are in Dawkins' prose.

PZ Myers of Pharyngula (and the "new atheists") has done his own review and doesn't love the book (in which there are "personal attacks on me and on Pharyngula, atheists in general, and anyone who fails to offer religion its proper modicum of respect," he says):

The book entirely neglects the anti-scientific forces. Our salvation apparently lies entirely in the hands of scientists who quietly promote the positive values of the scientific outlook, while turning their eyes away from deep-rooted values and institutions that directly threaten science. To challenge those would be to offend people! And if we offend anyone, we lose! It's an exceptionally defeatist attitude in which they plainly recognize a serious problem in American society — it's the premise of the whole book! — but at the same time, demands that we avoid addressing the structural roots of those problems. ...
The bottom line is that Mooney and Kirshenbaum's book recites the obvious at us, that there is a fundamental disconnect between science and the popular imagination in our country, but offers no new solutions, and in fact would like to narrow our options to a blithe and accommodating compromise of science with rampant ignorance. Their own bigotry blinds them to a range of approaches offered by the "New Atheists"…a group that is not so closed to the wide range of necessarily differing tactics that such a deep problem requires as Mooney and Kirshenbaum are. It's not a badly written book, but it's something worse: it's utterly useless.

•TWITTER BUZZ: @DiscoverMag As you might expect, @PZMyers didn't like @UnscientAmerica, which calls him out. Now, the comment fight: http://bit.ly/y8Gga
•TWITTER BUZZ: jrminkel @UnscientAmerica you are never going to win your accommodationism argument against @jerrycoyne

Dispatch From the Darwin Festival

2009-07-09T12:18:00.006-04:00

Jerry Coyne has posted philosopher Daniel Dennett's report on a session about evolution and religion from the Darwin Festival currently taking place at Cambridge University.
Here's what Dennett wrote:

I am attending and participating in the big Cambridge University Darwin Week bash, and I noticed that one of the two concurrent sessions the first day was on evolution and theology, and was ‘supported by the Templeton Foundation’ (though the list of Festival Donors and Sponsors does not include any mention of Templeton). I dragged myself away from a promising session on speciation, and attended. Good thing I did. It was wonderfully awful. We heard about the Big Questions, a phrase used often, and it was opined that the new atheists naively endorse the proposition that “There are no meaningful questions that science cannot answer.” Richard Dawkins’ wonderful sentence about how nasty the God of the Old Testament is was read with relish by Philip Clayton, Professor at Claremont School of Theology in California, and the point apparently was to illustrate just how philistine these atheists were—though I noticed that he didn’t say he disagreed with Richard’s evaluation of Yahweh. We were left to surmise, I guess, that it was tacky of Richard to draw attention to these embarrassing blemishes in an otherwise august tradition worthy of tremendous respect. The larger point was the complaint that the atheists have a “dismissive attitude toward the Big Questions” and Dawkins, in particular, didn’t consult theologians. (H. Allen Orr, they were singing your song.) Clayton astonished me by listing God’s attributes: according to his handsomely naturalistic theology, God is not omnipotent, not even supernatural, and . . . . in short Clayton is an atheist who won’t admit it. Read the rest of the report.

Field Notes

2009-07-09T07:43:00.011-04:00

Praise—and Some Concern—Over Nomination of Francis Collins to Lead Health Agency
There are two basic objections to Dr. Collins. The first is his very public embrace of religion. He wrote a book called The Language of God, and he has given many talks and interviews in which he described his conversion to Christianity as a 27-year-old medical student. Religion and genetic research have long had a fraught relationship, and some in the field complain about what they see as Dr. Collins’s evangelism. The other objection stems from his leadership of the Human Genome Project, which is part of the N.I.H. Although Dr. Collins was widely praised in 2003 when the effort succeeded, the hopes that this discovery would yield an array of promising medical interventions have greatly dimmed, discouraging many. (Gardiner Harris, The New York Times)
•TWITTER BUZZ: @jdudley I think that Obama's choice of Francis Collins to head the NIH is extremely pragmatic. Well done Prez.
•TWITTER BUZZ: @gingerpin AAAS CEO on Francis Collins, NIH director: "I like it." Collins has "tremendous skill" in communicating science. http://tinyurl.com/la4u9n RW
•TWITTER BUZZ: @geneticalliance commends the nomination of Dr. Francis Collins as New NIH Director http://bit.ly/wf1dK
•TWITTER BUZZ: @pzmyers Collins to head NIH: Oh, great. He's been appointed by Obama. He'll do a fine job…he's a competent adm.. http://tinyurl.com/nyfb96

Sperm-Like Cells Created Using Embryonic Stem Cells
Roger Highfield: Although this sounds like scientists "playing god", there are solid reasons to create artificial gametes – the technical term used by researchers to describe eggs and sperm. The feat will help us understand how the real things are made, shedding light on the causes of infertility. In turn, that could help doctors understand why chemotherapy can make men sterile. In the longer term, these advances raise hopes that there is another way for sterile men and women to have biological children. (Telegraph)

Appeals Court Says Pharmacies Have to Stock and Dispense Plan B Pill
Pharmacists are obliged to dispense the Plan B pill, even if they are personally opposed to the "morning after" contraceptive on religious grounds, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. (Carol Williams, Los Angeles Times)

Convent Sisters Approach Death With Dignity and Discernment
The Sisters of St. Joseph, a congregation in this Rochester suburb, animate many factors that studies say contribute to successful aging and a gentle death—none of which require this special setting. These include a large social network, intellectual stimulation, continued engagement in life and spiritual beliefs, as well as health care guided by the less-is-more principles of palliative and hospice care—trends that are moving from the fringes to the mainstream. (Jane Gross, The New York Times)

A Christian Argument for Assisted Dying
John Cartwright: There is no justification for a claim that Christianity must oppose the assisted death of a person who has made their own decision to die, provided that such a person can convince others that their desire to die is fully considered. I will make this argument given two conditions: first that the person is capable of making an educated decision, and second that their end-of-life experience includes full access to both pastoral and medical care. (guardian.co.uk)

Why Are G-8 Leaders So Behind in Meeting Humanitarian Aid Pledges?
A few countries, including Canada and the United States, will meet the aid targets for 2010 that they set in 2005. But France is falling short, and Italy—the host of the G-8 summit this year—is disastrously far behind. In a thoughtful book published this year, The Life You Can Save, Professor Peter Singer of Princeton University explores why we’re so willing to try to assist a stranger before us, while so unwilling to donate to try to save strangers from malaria half a world. (Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times)

Spencer School Board in Iowa Proposes New Religious Policy
The proposal, if adopted, will have schools offer elective classes that permit arguments against evolution and discussions on the Bible in history and literature. School officials say they want to set clear rules for religious expression. (Associated Press)

It's Official: Nomination for Francis Collins

2009-07-08T15:49:00.016-04:00

President Obama has announced his intent to nominate Dr. Francis Collins to lead the National Institutes of Health.
In Obama's words:

The National Institutes of Health stands as a model when it comes to science and research. My administration is committed to promoting scientific integrity and pioneering scientific research and I am confident that Dr. Francis Collins will lead the NIH to achieve these goals. Dr. Collins is one of the top scientists in the world, and his groundbreaking work has changed the very ways we consider our health and examine disease. I look forward to working with him in the months and years ahead.

Breaking News: Nomination for Francis Collins

2009-07-08T15:07:00.008-04:00

We've just heard that President Obama is about to announce Dr. Francis Collins as his pick to lead the National Institutes of Health. As we told you back in May, Collins was the leading candidate and screening was said to be in the final stages.
Now, according to the Associated Press:

An administration official says Collins, arguably the nation's most influential geneticist, is the president's soon-to-be-announced pick. The official spoke on condition of anonymity pending the formal announcement. The folksy Collins helped lead the breakthrough unraveling of the human genetic code, famously calling it "the book of human life."

Collins—a familiar name to regular readers of this blog—is the former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and most recently the founder of The BioLogos Foundation, which he launched in April to address the country's culture war between science and faith.
Stay tuned for the official announcement.

Field Notes

2009-07-08T08:31:00.005-04:00

Why Twitter Should Be Considered for the Nobel Peace Prize
Mark Pfeifle: I first mentioned this idea while being interviewed on a cable news program. Many scoffed. That's understandable. But think about what Twitter has accomplished: It has empowered people to attempt to resolve a domestic showdown with international implications—and has enabled the world to stand with them. It laid the foundation to pressure the world to denounce oppression in Iran. (The Christian Science Monitor)
TWITTER BUZZ: @pfeifle Facebook pg to build mo for Twitter to get Nobel Peace Prize-join: http://tinyurl.com/kkym6s

“Possibilians" Unite
When neuroscientist and author David Eagleman described himself as a “Possibilian” during a National Public Radio interview earlier this year, he said he thought he was the only one. But now, fans of his new book Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives are flocking to his so-called movement, forming online communities that forge a new middle ground between belief and unbelief. (Nicole Neroulias, Religion News Service)

Does Science Lead to Atheism?
Matt Young: I studied this question a few years ago, when John Lynch and I prepared an article for the New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. One of the conclusions we drew was that biologists, anthropologists, and psychologists were more likely to disbelieve in God than physical scientists and engineers. That conclusion has recently been called into question, and I will discuss the new data. (Panda's Thumb)

BOOKS
God Is
God Is, published in May, is a nondenominational picture book that explores the spiritual aspect of everyday things and which Australian children's author Mark Macleod says is aimed at everybody from school-aged children through to grown-ups. "God is in the light of the moon and the stars that chart a shining course above the dark that never seems to end," reads one page, which, like the rest of the book, is illustrated by artist Kirrily Schell. (Miral Fahmy, Reuters)

Oldest Known Bible Posted Online

2009-07-07T17:04:00.022-04:00

The surviving pages of what’s believed to be the world’s oldest Bible have been published on the Web. And it's online for free.
Codex Sinaiticus, written in Greek by hand on parchment leaves, dates back to the middle of the fourth century. Pieces of the manuscript were found more than 150 years ago in a monastery on Mount Sinai, and have since been kept in Egypt, as well as at institutions in Britain, Russia, and Germany, where scholars worked to restore them.
Now, thanks to the British Library, the pages have been brought back together online (with translations in modern Greek and English) for all to see. There is a complete copy of the New Testament, a good portion of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha, and early versions of other texts not found in the Bible today. The first half of the Old Testament—from Genesis to 1 Chronicles—was part of the original manuscript, experts say, but most of it is now missing and assumed to be lost for good. —Heather Wax

Field Notes

2009-07-07T07:47:00.014-04:00

New Rules—and New Era—for Federally Funded Embryonic Stem Cell Research
This morning marks a rebirth of a U.S. stem cell research program, now that government-funded researchers can take advantage of many of the 700 stem cell lines that exist around the world. On Monday, following President Barack Obama's election promise, the National Institutes of Health issued the final rules on government-funded research on embryonic stem cells, loosening Bush-era restrictions that limited them to just 21 lines already in existence on August 2001. (Brendan Borrell, 60-Second Science Blog, Scientific American)

Obama Receives Daily Prayer Via BlackBerry
Obama told reporters from religious news organizations that White House faith director Joshua DuBois sends him a morning devotional every day to his e-mail device. He says it's a "wonderful practice" that started during the campaign. (Associated Press)

Pope Releases Encyclical on Markets and Morality
Pope Benedict XVI today called for reforming the United Nations and establishing a "true world political authority" with "real teeth" to manage the global economy with God-centered ethics. In his third encyclical, a major teaching, released as the G-8 summit begins in Italy, the pope says such an authority is urgently needed to end the current worldwide financial crisis. It should "revive" damaged economies, reach toward "disarmament, food security and peace," protect the environment and "regulate migration." (Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA Today)
• TEXT: Introduction and Conclusion of "Charity in Truth"

Why Biologists Are So Certain About Evolution (Hint: the Mistakes!)
A large chunk of this post comes from Kenneth Miller, a biology professor at Brown University who has been at the forefront of the evolution wars, explaining why biologists are convinced of evolution. He gave this talk at the North American Paleontological Convention in Cincinnati last month, and I think it’s worth reading his words unfiltered, in context. (Kenneth Chang, TierneyLab Blog, The New York Times)

Mourning Michael Jackson
For decades, psychologists have been studying the one-way relationships we create with celebrities. Some researchers say such connections are merely a fact of life in a media-saturated age. Others suggest that celebrating dead celebrities offers a way to come to terms with our own mortality—and reach for a kind of immortality as well. (Alan Boyle, Cosmic Log, MSNBC)

"Percontations" on Bloggingheads.tv

2009-07-06T13:01:00.003-04:00

Check out the most recent installment of "Percontations," a weekly video exchange on life's "big questions" that airs on Bloggingheads.tv. This week, some sparks fly between philosopher Robert Wright (author of the new book The Evolution of God) and science writer John Horgan as they talk about purpose, progress, and whether the idea of "moral truth" does more harm than good. It's an extremely entertaining conversation.

Surprise! Caregiving Benefits Caregiver

2009-07-06T09:56:00.009-04:00

FROM RABBI RICHARD ADDRESS, DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF JEWISH FAMILY CONCERNS AT THE UNION FOR REFORM JUDAISM: It is hard to go a day without reading of some new study that looks at longevity. It is equally as hard to watch TV or surf the Web without finding some new “miracle” supplement or cream that guarantees longer life. We are so afraid of aging that we will voluntarily inject poison into our heads to see if we can fight off what is inevitable. Oh well!
We get a more promising view in a recent MSNBC article. The article reports on a new study out of the University of Michigan that may give comfort and relief to millions. Social psychologist Stephanie Brown studied spousal caregiving among elderly couples over a seven-year period and found some surprising results. According to Brown, caring for someone who is ill or elderly may actually be beneficial to the caregiver.
As the article notes:

Brown and her colleagues found that if you accounted for the negative impact of stressing over a loved one’s illness, that caregiving actually led to longer life. During the course of the study, people who spent at least 14 hours a week caring for a sick spouse were almost 30 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who spent no time helping, according to the research recently published in Psychological Science.

The article also highlights similar findings from a study in the journal Stroke:

A full 90 percent of those interviewed reported that their caregiving enabled them to appreciate life more. Many also reported that it helped them develop a more positive attitude toward life.

But why?
Well, it seems that the act of caring for a loved one activates the release of higher levels of a hormone called oxytocin. This hormone has long been linked with reduced stress levels and our desire to connect with others.
While there is NO secret to living longer, there seems to be certain paths that can enhance our lives and provide a sense of meaning and purpose—and, in that sense, lengthen our days. It is the old cliche that our parents spoke about: We need a reason to get up in the morning. Without that reason, we wither and die.

Field Notes

2009-07-06T07:47:00.011-04:00

Faith Leaders Consider Pros and Cons of Social Networking Sites
Religious groups from Episcopalians to Orthodox Jews have signed up for Twitter, Facebook, and other social media networks with the same gusto that celebrities and politicians have, and for some of the same reasons—to gain a global platform and to appeal to young people. Still, many clerics admit to an uneasiness about the merger of worship and electronic chatter. (Paul Vitello, The New York Times)

Are Ethical Decisions Intuitive?
Although it's widely believed that ethics engage reason, free from passion, a forthcoming study in the journal Administrative Science Quarterly finds gut instincts are more principled than logical thinking. Whether weighing a charitable gift or selling a car, it seems people who trust their feelings are prone to donate more and cheat others less. (Misty Harris, Canwest News Service)

People With Low Self-Esteem Feel Worse After Repeating Positive Affirmations
So-called self-help books may only help the people who need them least, such as those with high self-esteem, and can be destructive for those who really need help, according to a new study by Canadian experts published in Psychological Science. (Tiffany Crawford, Canwest News Service)

Dispatch From the First World Congress on Positive Psychology
We offer a few snapshots from talks presented at the congress, featuring positive psychologists quantifying some of the most personal aspects of the human experience—things such as passion, love, and our perception of time. (Karen Knee, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Remembering John Calvin
After 500 years, John Calvin is still not an easy man to understand. Calvin is often imagined, if he is imagined at all, as the implacable snoop who enforced a prudish morality on the citizens of Geneva, a steely spinner of harsh theological doctrines about a depraved humanity and a fierce God predestining people to heaven or hell. (Peter Steinfels, The New York Times)

BOOKS
The Case for God
Simon Blackburn: Karen Armstrong takes the reader through a history of religious practice in many different cultures, arguing that in the good old days and purest forms they all come to much the same thing. They use devices of ritual, mystery, drama, dance, and meditation in order to enable us better to cope with the vale of tears in which we find ourselves. Religion is therefore properly a matter of a practice, and may be compared with art or music. (The Guardian)

Will Robots Alter What Being Human Means?

2009-07-03T13:14:00.019-04:00

"When you study robotics, it forces you to rethink, in a very quantitative way, the attributes we hold close and consider unique in our definition of what it means to be human," Hod Lipson, director of Cornell University's Computational Synthesis Laboratory and a leader in bio-inspired robotics, tells Forbes.
"For example, what is creativity? If machines can create new things and ideas that infringe on patents, which humans have traditionally defined as being creative, what does that mean about creativity? When we have computers that can generate experiments and ask questions, what does that mean about curiosity? Traditionally, we use terms like creativity and self-reflection in a very loose way to cloak something we don't understand very well, but when you actually work with robots trying to emulate these very characteristics, it forces you to think about them in a very precise and quantitative way. Ultimately, I think it leads to deeper questions and better understanding of these concepts."

Darwin's Kid Drew on First "Origin of Species"

2009-07-03T10:32:00.023-04:00

Check out this drawing, on the back of a page from the original manuscript of Darwin's On the Origin of Species. The sheet will go on public display Monday as part of "A Voyage Round the World," a new exhibit at Cambridge University Library that will explore Darwin's experiences on the Beagle. (The library is reported to have another 23 sheets from the manuscript, and it's believed there are about 10 more out there.)
But there seems to be a bit of confusion over who drew the picture and whether the drawing, which library staff is said to be calling the "Battle of Vegetables," has been on display before. According to the Telegraph:

It is not known which of Darwin's 10 children drew the picture but it is thought the child would have been between eight and 10 years old.

And:

A spokesman at Cambridge University said it was believed that this is the very first time the drawing had been put on display to the public.

But in an American Scientist article from 2006, Robert Dorit, a biologist at Smith College, describes seeing the same drawing at the American Museum of Natural History's Darwin exhibit curated by Niles Eldredge. He also includes an image (weirdly, with permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library) and notes:

Contrary to the stereotype of the dispassionate scientist, however, Darwin was a man to whom family and friends mattered profoundly, and many poignant objects in the exhibition remind us of his humanity. On the back of a rare manuscript page of the Origin, we find a drawing, "The Battle of the Fruit and Vegetable Soldiers," by Darwin's young son Francis.

(Discover, too, had a review of the exhibit with an image of the drawing, courtesy of Denis Finnin/AMNH and pictured here.)

In any case, it's remarkable to think we might not have the manuscript pages today had Darwin not given them to his kids to draw on and then kept their artwork, as the library's John Wells tells the Telegraph:

There are just thirty or so of these original sheets in existence and the vast majority have a child's drawing on the back. It's quite amazing to think these priceless historical exhibits have only survived because of a child's drawings on the back. It demonstrates the importance of his family and brings it home that he surrounded himself with family, and friends, as he worked.

—Heather Wax

Field Notes

2009-07-03T09:10:00.007-04:00

Vatican Official Says Catholic Church Can Learn From Science—and History With Galileo
At a news conference presenting a new volume of documents on the Galileo case, Monsignor Sergio Pagano, head of the Vatican's secret archives, said today's Church and Vatican officials can learn from past mistakes and shed their diffidence toward science. "Can this teach us something today? I certainly think so," he said, in a rare display of self-criticism for the Vatican. "We should be careful, when we read the Sacred Scriptures and have to deal with scientific questions, to not make the same mistake now that was made then," he said. (Philip Pullella, Reuters)

Potential For Life on Mars
The findings of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, announced throughout the mission, are now detailed in a set of four papers in Friday's issue of the journal Science. They are the first to describe the northernmost reaches of the Red Planet and shed light on the history of water on Mars, as well as the planet's potential habitability. (Andrea Thompson, Space.com)

Has God Been Exiled From Judaism?
Rabbi Yaakov Menken: I think all three of these factors—a reluctance to highlight divisions, ambiguity about religion, and a reluctance of the educated class to express religious feelings—combine to explain why Jews outside the Orthodox community are apt to avoid mention of G-d, His Word, and our religion. (In Good Faith, The Baltimore Sun)

TELEVISION
Faiths Compete to Convert Atheists on Turkish TV Show
Penitents Compete will bring together an Islamic imam, a Jewish rabbi, a Buddhist monk, and a Greek Orthodox priest seeking to convert the atheists. The prize for any converted contestants is an expenses-paid pilgrimage to a holy site of their chosen faith. But the producers say the show will also help contestants "find serenity" and raise awareness of the faiths. (BBC News)

BOOKS
The Tangled Bank
Carl Zimmer: My publisher has been sending out copies of The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution to some leading biologists for possible endorsements when it comes out in October. Here’s what we’re hearing back so far. (The Loom, Discover)

Opinions on Evolution From Around the World

2009-07-02T11:00:00.011-04:00

Earlier this week, the British Council released the results of its international survey on people's attitudes toward evolution. (With help from a market research company, the organization talked with more than 10,000 people in 10 countries).
Here's what they found (click on images for larger view):

But there are some problems with the polling, as PZ Myers points out: According to the survey, people in the United States have the highest levels of awareness and understanding of evolution (84 percent), but, he says, "this survey did not measure actual competence." As Myers notes, "more than half disbelieve evolution, but more than 80 percent think they're knowledgeable about it. There's a problem."
Want to voice your opinion? Take part in the online survey. —Heather Wax

Field Notes

2009-07-02T07:33:00.008-04:00

Science & Religion on the Big Screen
Even if you haven't been paying very close attention lately, the chances are that you could not help but notice the increasing degree to which the relationship between religion and science is being featured in recent popular films. At its best—so the story goes—religion gets in the way of scientific discovery, innovation, and human progress. At its worst, religious belief may ultimately lead to the cataclysmic and violent destruction of all life on planet earth. (Joshua Moritz, Theology and Science)

YouTube No Longer Blocked at Brigham Young University
BYU's Honor Code requires students and faculty to avoid Internet content that is not "virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy," material that certainly can be found on YouTube. Yet the site is increasingly a vehicle for quality cultural, religious, scholarly and political material. (Brian Maffly and Donald Meyers, The Salt Lake Tribune)

Why We React to Dangers Deemed Immoral—and Ignore Other Threats
Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert for snakes and enemies with clubs, but we aren’t well prepared to respond to dangers that require forethought. (Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times)

Comic-Book Creator Writes Letter Explaining Islamic Superheroes to his Sons
Dr. Naif al Mutawa: At the age of 32, I uncapped my pen to create a concept that could be popular in the East and the West. I would go back to the very sources from which others took violent and hateful messages and offer messages of tolerance and peace in their place. I would give my heroes a Trojan horse in the form of THE 99. Islam was my Helen. I wanted her back. THE 99 references the 99 attributes of Allah—generosity, mercy, wisdom and dozens of others not used to describe Islam in the media when you were growing up. But if I am successful, by the time you read this, you will not believe that such an era could have ever existed. (BBC News)

POLLS
How Do You Treat People of Other Faiths?
Recent polling by Gallup tried to determine the amount of what they call “interfaith cohesion” around the world, by asking respondents how they treat and are treated by members of other faiths—whether they would object to someone from a different faith moving next door, for example. Respondents were then classiﬁed as either “isolated,” “tolerant,” or “integrated.” Among countries in western Europe and North America, only the United States had more respondents who rated as “integrated” (and fewer who rated as “isolated”) than Canada. (Michael Petrou, Maclean's)

When Do We Consider Other Points of View?

2009-07-01T15:16:00.031-04:00

A team of researchers has a new paper that looks at how we choose information about an issue when several options are available. The researchers studied the results from 91 past studies (like this one) and found that when we're presented with alternatives, we're two times more likely to select information that supports our pre-existing point of view than information that challenges it.
They also found that people are more resistant to new points of view when it comes to issues that are associated with political, religious, or ethical values. In these cases, "about 70 percent of the time you will choose information that corresponds with your views, versus about 60 percent of the time if the issues are not related to values," says University of Illinois psychologist Dolores Albarracín, who worked on the study.
"For the most part," she adds, "it seems that people tend to stay with their own beliefs and attitudes because changing those might prevent them from living the lives they're living. But it's good news that one out of three times, or close to that, they are willing to seek out the other side."
It comes as little surprise that we tend to seek out opposing viewpoints when it helps us reach a goal or we have to defend our opinions in public. On the other hand, we're less likely to entertain opposing views when we're unsure of our own beliefs than when we're very confident, since choosing information that supports our view helps us validate our opinion and maintain a stable view of the world.
According to the researchers, we appear to be guided by two different motivations—a desire to feel validated and a desire to know the truth—both of which are important. As they explain in their paper:

It seems likely that these often antagonistic tendencies may compensate for the potential dangers of seeking only self-validating or accurate information. Whereas defense motivation facilitates psychological stability and personal validation, accuracy motivation promotes accurate perceptions of reality. Given current evidence, however, it appears that tendencies toward congeniality prevail.

—Heather Wax

Darwin's Work Tops Bible on Best-Book List

2009-07-01T14:20:00.018-04:00

Darwin's On the Origin of Species comes in at 27 on Newsweek's meta-list of "The Top 100 Books of All Time." The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, is ranked 41.
Also of note: John Milton's Paradise Lost (47) and William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience (89).

Field Notes

2009-07-01T07:29:00.020-04:00

Tibetan Monks and Nuns Study Western Science
Initial resistance from some senior monks and fears of diluting traditional studies in monasteries have gradually eased. Now the Dalai Lama hopes that, with help from Emory University and other programs, science will become part of a new curriculum, with science textbooks in Tibetan and specialist translators, leading to a generation of monastic leaders that are scientifically literate. (Amy Yee, The New York Times)

Why Teach Science to Monks—or Learn Tibetan Buddhism?
Arri Eisen: If you’re like many of my administrators and colleagues, you might be asking, “What?! Beyond the coolness factor, what in the world is the point of teaching science to a bunch of monks halfway around the world?” Can you say ‘globalization,’ ‘religion,’ ‘science and technology’? (Religion Dispatches)

Meditation Improves Self-Image of Those Who Suffer From Anxiety
In a study headed by psychology researcher Philippe Goldin, participants with social anxiety disorder underwent mindfulness-based stress reduction—a form of meditation that helped them direct their attention to the sensations of simple things like breathing, lying down, or just walking around. After the two-month meditation training, participants were less anxious and thought of themselves more positively. (Casey Lindberg, Stanford Report)

Discussing Science & Religion at the Archbishop of Canterbury's Home
What happens when there is an attempt at a very different kind of conversation which is not around the extremes of belief and nonbelief but largely amongst thoughtful believers, many of whom might be scientists? That was the proposition behind Lambeth Palace's gathering of scientists, philosophers, and theologians yesterday morning. (Madeleine Bunting, guardian.co.uk)

BOOKS
Caveman Logic
A professor at the University of Guelph, Hank Davis has spent the past 20 years paying attention to the use of such seemingly benign phrases: "It was a sign," "Thank God," and even "Good luck." To him, such phrases reflect a "caveman logic" that helped our ancestors survive the Pleistocene Age, but which is keeping our species from realizing its true potential. While we are well past the primitive age, he argues, we still happily shroud ourselves in superstition, magic, and blind faith rather than burn the extra mental calories it takes to think critically and reach rational conclusions. (Mary Vallis, National Post)

Fear of Dying v. Affordable Health Care?

2009-06-30T11:59:00.027-04:00

"It’s a shocking outrage in our country. It’s a moral outrage that we have almost 50 million people without coverage, without access to a doctor, and we have even hundreds of thousands more that can’t even use the coverage that they have. That’s wrong. We have to change it," Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the Catholic social justice lobby NETWORK, tells anchor Bob Abernethy in a recent episode of Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. NETWORK is part of an interfaith coalition of religious organizations calling for health care reform.
"There’s a lot of evidence that the fear of dying keeps us holding on to life in such ways that extraordinary means get used on a regular basis, and that makes it really challenging for limiting costs. There are other places where cost savings can be obtained, too, but that’s a big one," she says.
"Culturally as a nation," she adds, "we do not see death as integrated with living. We see it as something that’s to be feared. We’re getting better at it, but—with the hospice programs and other programs—but we as a culture need to accept dying is part of living, and it’s integrated. It’s one piece."

Field Notes

2009-06-30T08:34:00.011-04:00

Archaeologists Uncover Oldest Known Image of Saint Paul
The fresco, which dates back to the 4th Century A.D., was discovered during restoration work at the Catacomb of Saint Thekla but was kept secret for ten days. During that time experts carefully removed centuries of grime from the fresco with a laser, before the news was officially announced through the Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. (Nick Pisa, Telegraph)

All We Know Is That the Bones Are Old Enough
For a faith that's seen too many relics turn out to be fake, scientific proof that bones found at the Vatican date from the first century is being treated as victory. "This seems to confirm the unanimous and uncontested tradition that they are the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul," Pope Benedict XVI declared Sunday. He may be convinced, but that's not proof they are the remains of St. Paul, experts warn. (Stuart Laidlaw, Toronto Star)

Faith-Healing Cases Challenge Courts
Legal and religious scholars say it's becoming more difficult for courts to decide when to honor the religious beliefs of parents and when to order conventional medical treatment for extremely sick children. (Rose French, Associated Press)

Can Art Help People Heal?
Can the power of the arts to soothe, transform and inspire be enlisted to treat—and perhaps even prevent—heart disease? These are the questions driving a fledgling organization called the Foundation for Art & Healing. With the help of an eclectic group of researchers, artists, and health-care providers, the Brookline, Massachusetts, foundation is mapping out a research agenda intended to determine whether artistic expression could be a valid clinical intervention—along with exercise, healthy diets and medicines—for reducing the burden of cardiovascular disease. (Ron Winslow, The Wall Street Journal)

Teens Who Believe They'll Die Before 35 Are More Likely to Take Risks
What's recently been discovered, and is intriguing for teens and the people who love them, is that there seems to be a connection between having a fatalistic take on life and behaving in ways that actually make it more likely that you will die—or at least be sick and miserable—instead of blossoming into a healthy young adult. (Nancy Shute, On Parenting, U.S. News & World Report)

Religion & America's Growing Generation Gap

2009-06-29T12:10:00.032-04:00

Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey on aging in America and found some interesting results. Perhaps the most remarkable finding is that 79 percent of people believe there is "a major difference in the point of view of younger people and older people today"—a number that is even higher than it was in 1969, when 74 percent of people felt the same way. In 1979, 60 percent of people perceived this kind of difference.
The most common explanation for today's generation gap? Nearly half of those surveyed (47 percent) pointed to something having to do with values and morality. Much fewer mentioned things like political views, experience and wisdom, or the use of technology. (Click on image for larger view.)

A particularly wide generation gap has developed in terms of religiosity, as younger adults have grown more likely to have no religious affiliation. Today, 25 percent of those under 30 describe themselves as atheist, agnostic, or nonreligious, while only 7 percent of those 65 and older describe themselves the same way. The survey also found that religion plays a significantly larger role in the lives of older adults, with those 65 and older more likely to pray, attend religious services, and believe in God than those under 65.

Older adults are also more likely than younger adults to say their religion has grown more important to them over the course of their lives, especially when they're dealing with a serious illness or often feel sad or depressed.

And according to the survey, adults 65 and older who attend religious services or do other activities at a place of worship have stronger social networks than those who don't, which means they're more likely to have people to turn to for companionship and support. Active churchgoers are also more likely to help other older adults in need.

—Heather Wax

Field Notes

2009-06-29T07:30:00.007-04:00

Pope Will Release Statement on Markets and Morality Just Before G8 Summit
Pope Benedict XVI signed the document today but the text, which focuses on globalization, poverty, and the financial crisis and is one of the most important to come out of the Holy See in the past decade, will be published 48 hours before the meeting of world leaders at L'Aquila in Italy—a week-long delay. Caritas in veritate, Love or charity in truth, will outline the ethical values that the faithful must "tirelessly defend" to ensure "true freedom and solidarity," the pope said recently. (Richard Owen and Ruth Gledhill, Times Online)

Richard Dawkins Funds Atheist Summer Camp for Kids
Camp-goers will be given lessons in rational skepticism, as well as sessions in moral philosophy and evolutionary biology. There will be more familiar camp activities such as trekking, tug-of-war, canoeing and swimming but children will also be taught to disprove phenomena such as crop circles and telepathy. (Ben Leach, Telegraph)

The Science and Spirit of Alfred Russel Wallace
In the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, a growing number of academics and amateur historians are rediscovering Wallace. Their efforts are raising debate over exactly what Wallace contributed to the theory of evolution, and what role, if any, the spiritual world plays in certain aspects of natural selection. (Michael Casey, Associated Press)

VIDEO
The Baloney Detection Kit
With a sea of information coming at us from all directions, how do we sift out the misinformation and bogus claims, and get to the truth? Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine lays out a "Baloney Detection Kit," 10 questions we should ask when encountering a claim. (RDF TV)

Mind Reading
Neuroscience has learned so much about how we think and the brain activity linked to certain thoughts that it is now possible—on a very basic scale—to read a person's mind. (Lesley Stahl, 60 Minutes)

Do We Have a Moral Set Point?

2009-06-26T11:44:00.019-04:00

A few years ago, psychologist Nancy Etcoff wrote a piece for Science & Spirit magazine in which she explained that "while feelings of happiness change from day to day, depending on the circumstances, people seem to have a stable midpoint to these variations, a general level of happiness to which they return after momentary irritation or elation fades. Scientists call this the 'hedonic set point' or happiness thermostat."
So I was interested to read about a recent study from a group of researchers at Northwestern University who suggest we have a set point for morality as well. They ran a bunch of experiments to see how our sense of moral self-worth affects our behavior.
According to the scientists, people who behave immorally in one aspect of their lives tend to "cleanse" themselves by performing good deeds in other areas. But their model goes further, as a write-up of the research reports:

Other studies have shown the moral-cleansing effect, but this new Northwestern model shows that the cleansing also has to do with restoring an ideal level of moral self-worth. In other words, when people operate above or below a certain level of moral self-worth, they instinctively push back in the opposite direction to reach an internally regulated set point of goodness.

If they're right, the opposite of the cleansing effect would also hold true: Performing a series of good deeds would raise our moral self-worth, thus leading us to do some not-so-good stuff to balance things out. That's just what psychology graduate student Sonya Sachdeva, who worked on the study, suggests. "Imagine a line on a plane," she says. "The only way you can come back down is either by refraining from good social behavior or by actively engaging in immoral behavior." —Heather Wax

Field Notes

2009-06-26T08:05:00.033-04:00

New York to Pay Women Who Give Their Eggs for Stem Cell Research
Proponents say compensating women for their eggs is necessary for research, and point out that women who give their eggs for fertility purposes are already paid. Others worry that the practice will commodify the human body and lead to the exploitation of women in financial need. (Libby Nelson, The New York Times)

More Pushback on Evolutionary Psychology
David Brooks: The allure of evolutionary psychology is that it organizes all behavior into one eternal theory, impervious to the serendipity of time and place. But there’s no escaping context. That’s worth remembering next time somebody tells you we are hardwired to do this or that. (The New York Times)

Hunting for Genes Associated With Happiness
Prof. Yoram Barak of Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine is engaged in the "attempt to find the happiness gene, the genetic component of happiness," which may be 50 percent responsible for an optimistic outlook. (National Science Foundation, U.S. News & World Report)
•TWITTER BUZZ: @toddkashdan where to begin on the silliness of scientists trying to find a #happiness gene (single genes don't cut it)

Delegitimized Prayer Studies Tell Us Something About Scientists Who Conducted Them
Wendy Cadge: These studies may be seen as cultural artifacts illustrating how researchers’ understandings of prayer were influenced by their contexts. From single Protestant-based prayers in the 1960s, to some more recent attempts to combine Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and other prayers, researchers’ approaches to prayer reflect changing American religious demographics, evolving ideas about the relationship between religion and medical science, and the development of the clinical trial as a central biomedical research tool in this period. (Religion Dispatches)

The Atheism of Science
Lawrence Krauss: J.B.S. Haldane, an evolutionary biologist and a founder of population genetics, understood that science is by necessity an atheistic discipline. As Haldane so aptly described it, one cannot proceed with the process of scientific discovery if one assumes a "god, angel, or devil" will interfere with one's experiments. God is, of necessity, irrelevant in science. (The Wall Street Journal)

Empathy for Patients Takes Toll on Nurses

2009-06-25T13:23:00.012-04:00

According to Jenny Watts, a positive psychologist at the University of Leicester, "nurses who identify with the patient and experience empathy appear to be most vulnerable to distress," developing symptoms like flashbacks, sleeping problems, and emotional detachment.
Of particular note: Watts found that nurses who cared for patients with age-related illnesses, such as dementia, "have shown anxiety and depression following patient deterioration and death." As baby boomers age and the number of older patients grows, she says, it will be important to take steps to ensure that nurses' morale, compassion, and quality of care remain high. —Heather Wax

Can This Program Foster Productive Dialogue?

2009-06-25T11:39:00.020-04:00

Princeton Theology Seminary is launching a Science for Ministry Institute. The program is based on a "partner model" that pairs "scientifically curious" ministry leaders with "theologically sensitive" scientists. Together, each pair goes through a series of courses that address topics and issues related to human origins and human nature.
Here's how J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, co-director of the institute and a professor of theology and science at the seminary, explains the goal:

This program is intended to address a common experience of ministers and scientists of faith who struggle to develop a constructive dialogue around issues of theology and science in their ministry contexts. We are seeking to equip leaders in ministry with the knowledge and tools to confidently respond to these fundamental challenges, and to do so in ways that encourage a transformational impact on their church communities.

The first course will run from November 2 through 6.

Field Notes

2009-06-25T08:47:00.015-04:00

Positive Psychology Package
Positive psychology explores the factors that make life worth living, such as happiness, through the study of positive emotions, positive character strengths, and positive institutions. (Lindsay Lyon, U.S. News & World Report)

•"Daily Diet" of Positive Emotions
•Increasing Your Happiness
•Using Positive Psychology in Your Relationships
•Teaching Resilience With Positive Education

Negative Power of Positive Thinking?
Despite what all those self-help books say, repeating positive statements apparently does not help people with low self-esteem feel better about themselves. In fact, it tends to make them feel worse, according to new research. (Rob Stein, The Washington Post)

Happily Ever After
Happiness does not consist in whatever you might be feeling—after death, of course, you might not be feeling much at all—but in what others feel about you. It consists more precisely in the stories that can be told about you after your death. This is what the Greeks called “glory,” and it expresses a very different understanding of immortality than is common amongst us. (Simon Critchley, Happy Days Blog, The New York Times)

New In Vitro Fertilization Program for Orthodox Jews
An unusual collaboration between religion and science is making it possible for Orthodox Jews to undergo infertility treatment in Montreal. (Janice Arnold, The Canadian Jewish News)

Paleontologists Visit the Creation Museum
In one of the largest gatherings of critics since the northern Kentucky museum opened two years ago, the scientists in the area for a conference took a field trip to get a glimpse of the marketing tactics used by the other side of the evolution debate. (Jeffrey McMurray, Associated Press)

Breaking Down Evolutionary Psychology
David Sloan Wilson: Evolutionary psychology, once the darling of the public media, has been dumped in a recent Newsweek article by journalist Sharon Begley. Return accusations are beginning to fly from evolutionary psychologists, who accuse Begley of willful distortions and scientific incompetence (e.g., 1, 2). As usual for romantic quarrels, there are legitimate grievances on both sides that get lost in a hail of recriminations. (The Huffington Post)

DEBATES
What Should Science Do?
Sam Harris and Philip Ball discuss the conflict between religion and science. They do not agree. (The Reason Project)

EXHIBIT
Universal Code
Where do we human beings fit in this big picture? Is there a pattern to creation that the human imagination can glimpse? And is it through science, religion, or art that we can best seek the answers? This summer's exhibition at the Power Plant in Toronto, titled "Universal Code: Art and Cosmology in the Information Age," brings together artists who engage in this kind of philosophical grappling. (Sarah Milroy, The Globe and Mail)

Robot Shows Emotion

2009-06-24T09:44:00.042-04:00

Meet Kobian, a walking robot that uses its face and body to imitate the way humans express a range of different emotions. The "humanoid," as it's being called, was unveiled yesterday by researchers at Waseda University in Japan.
To display these moods, motors move Kobian's lips, eyelids, eyebrows, arms, legs, and double-jointed neck. Check out some of the emotions (pictured top, left to right: sadness and delight; bottom, left to right: surprise and disgust):

Keep in mind, however: Though Kobian can express feelings, the robot can't yet interact with people emotionally or intuitively. But it is a step in that direction. Robots that can show emotion, the developers believe, will be able to communicate more naturally with people. —Heather Wax

Field Notes

2009-06-24T07:43:00.009-04:00

Debunking Darwin Myths
Two-hundred years after he was born, and 150 years after he published On the Origin of Species, it’s time to check the facts, as “most of what most people think they know about him is not true,” according to Darwin scholar John van Wyhe, a historian of science at the University of Cambridge. (Gillian Murdoch, Reuters Blogs)

The Fall of Evo Psych
In some environments it might indeed be adaptive for women to seek sugar daddies. In some, it might be adaptive for stepfathers to kill their stepchildren. In some, it might be adaptive for men to be promiscuous. But not in all. And if that's the case, then there is no universal human nature as evo psych defines it. That is what a new wave of studies has been discovering, slaying assertions about universals right and left. (Sharon Begley, Newsweek)

The Rise of "New Atheism"
Konstantin Petrenko: The tendency in the media has been either to hail this phenomenon as the latest cultural fad or to dismiss it as a secular equivalent of religious fundamentalism. In reality, it is neither of these. The New Atheism is a complex movement that has the potential both to inspire positive change and, sometimes, to promote intolerance. (Religion Dispatches)

Living Kidney Donations to Strangers Increasing in the United Kingdom
"The donors I have come across are genuinely altruistic, they decide that, on balance, donating is unlikely to do them any harm but will transform someone else's life," said consultant nephrologist Peter Rowe. (BBC News)

TELEVISION
The Music Instinct: Science and Song
Bobby McFerrin, the singing-conducting "Don't Worry, Be Happy" man, co-hosts with neuroscientist Daniel Levitin (This Is Your Brain on Music), who also knows his way around a musical instrument or two. (Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times)

Tweeting the World's Religions

2009-06-23T09:52:00.010-04:00

Stephen Prothero (@sprothero on Twitter), a Boston University religion professor, has summarized eight major world religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, and Yoruba—as well as atheism, in 140 characters or less.

Field Notes

2009-06-23T07:39:00.011-04:00

Galaxy Gazing at the Vatican's Observatory
The idea is not to watch for omens or angels but to do workmanlike astronomy that fights the perception that science and Catholicism necessarily conflict. (George Johnson, The New York Times)

Support Group for "Recovering Religionists"
The idea for the group came from Darrel Ray, an organizational psychologist and author of The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture. He was raised in a fundamentalist Christian church and attended seminary. But by the time he graduated, he had abandoned the notion of becoming a minister. (Helen T. Gray, McClatchy Newspapers)

Happiness Researchers Unite!
About 1,500 people who make their living thinking about what makes us happier and more emotionally successful have converged on Philadelphia for the First World Congress on Positive Psychology. (Stacey Burling, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Is Free Will Real?
A psychologist, neuroscientist, and philosopher got together to debate the meaning of free will. They walked onto the auditorium stage, sat down before an eager audience, and all crossed their left legs over their right. The psychologist pointed out the similarity and asked if crossing their legs like so was a consequence of free will or a predetermined action. ( Sarah Arnquist, TierneyLab Blog, The New York Times)

Faith Leaders in United Kingdom Appeal for Organ Donors
The Church of England says organ donation is a Christian duty. The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales—the Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols—described it as a true act of generosity. The head of the UK Hindu Council, Anil Bhanot, said it was natural for Hindus to donate body parts, as well as goods, at the end of their lives. (BBC News)

Science Cartoon Contest Winner Announced

2009-06-22T09:56:00.001-04:00

Congratulations to Richard Korzekwa of Los Alamos, New Mexico, who won the Florida Citizens for Science's "Stick Science Contest" with the comic strip above. (Click on image for larger view.)

Exposed Ancient Quarry—Now With Pics!

2009-06-22T09:35:00.038-04:00

Check out these pictures from the 2,000-year-old quarry found in the Jordan valley near Jericho (courtesy of the University of Haifa). The artificial underground cave was uncovered by a team from the university headed by biblical archaeologist Adam Zertal (who previously led the excavation of foot-shaped structures in the valley). A number of engravings were found in the cave, including Byzantine cross markings (pictured left), Zodiac symbols (pictured right) and Roman letters, and Zertal says it's possible the cavern was an early monastery. —Heather Wax

Field Notes

2009-06-22T07:39:00.019-04:00

First Image—of Whirlpool Galaxy— From the Herschel Telescope
The observatory's quest is to study how stars and galaxies form, and how they evolve through cosmic time. (Jonathan Amos, BBC News)

Restart of Large Hadron Collider Pushed Back a Few Weeks
The world's largest atom smasher will likely be fired up again in October after scientists have carried out tests and put in place further safety measures to prevent a repeat of the faults that sidelined the $10 billion machine shortly after startup last year, the operator said Saturday. (Associated Press)

Ancient Quarry Found in West Bank
Israeli archaeologists said on Sunday they had discovered the largest underground quarry in the Holy Land, dating back to the time of Jesus and containing Christian symbols etched into the walls. (Ari Rabinovitch and Michael Roddy, Reuters)

British Scientists Say Religious Slaughter Techniques Are Cruel
The Farm Animal Welfare Council says that slitting the throats of the animals most commonly used for meat, chickens, without stunning, results in "significant pain and distress." The committee, which includes scientific, agricultural and veterinary experts, is calling for the Government to launch a debate with Muslim and Jewish communities to end the practice. (Martin Hickman, The Independent)

Theocracies Are Doomed by Modernity But Religion Is No Less Important
Jon Meacham: There is a deep irony at work here. Theocracies usually mandate the teaching of religion, but the teaching of religion—the spread of texts and commentaries, the opening of theological debates among the people as well as the clerics—can lead not to uniform public belief but to a questioning of orthodoxy. Which is always a favorite activity of a new generation. (Newsweek)

Congratulations, Peter and Barbara Grant

2009-06-19T08:09:00.016-04:00

Husband-and-wife team Peter Raymond Grant and Barbara Rosemary Grant have won the 2009 Kyoto Prize in basic sciences.
The Grants, both emeritus professors in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University, are known for their work studying the population of birds known as "Darwin's finches" on the Galapagos island of Daphne Major and for showing evolution in action—how beak size and shape evolve through natural selection in changing environmental conditions. Beak size is important, they showed, because if the weather changed and suddenly only large, hard seeds were available, for example, finches with bigger, stronger beaks would be more likely to survive and, over generations, would become more common in the population.
"The Grants' empirical research has made the most important contribution since Darwin toward making evolutionary biology a science in which proof is possible," according to a news release from Japan's Inamori Foundation, which sponsors the award. The prize honors "those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural, and spiritual betterment of mankind."
The Grants will receive the award, valued at about 500,000 dollars, in November. —Heather Wax

Field Notes

2009-06-19T06:25:00.008-04:00

"Unambiguous Evidence" of Shoreline on Mars
The first-ever shoreline discovered on Mars would be a prime place to try and dig up proof of past microbial life on the red planet, researchers have announced. (Anne Minard, National Geographic)

Bush's Council on Bioethics Will Be Replaced
President Obama will appoint a new bioethics commission, one with a new mandate and that “offers practical policy options,” Reid Cherlin, a White House press officer, said. (Nicholas Wade, The New York Times)

What Drives Deception?
Intentional deceit is not restricted to humans, say Federica Amici and colleagues of Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. Some monkeys use simple forms of deceit, and the ability depends not on how closely related they are to humans, but on their social structure. (Catherine Brahic, New Scientist)

Welsh Psychologist Devises Formula for Happiness
His complicated mathematic formula is: O + (N x S) + Cpm/T + He. Put simply, he gave values to each symbol and added being outdoors (O) to nature (N) multiplied by social interaction (S), added memories of childhood summers (Cpm) divided by the temperature (T), and added excitement about holidays (He). (Telegraph)

MOVIES
Year One
Set in what looks like a succession of B-movie studio sets, the film brings to mind a Hope and Crosby road movie, though only if Bob and Bing, after studying the Bible as children and reading Nietzsche as adults, were grappling with issues of faith. (Manohla Dargis, The New York Times)

Some Video Games Make Kids Kinder to Others

2009-06-18T09:21:00.014-04:00

Another study, this time from an international team of researchers, has found a strong link between playing violent video games and hurting others. But they also found something else: a strong correlation between playing video games that encourage positive social interactions and helping others outside of the game.
In one experiment, the researchers asked American college students to play a neutral video game, a violent game, or a game in which the characters help and support each other in nonviolent ways. Then the students had to assign puzzles to random partners, who would win money if they could solve them all.
Those who played the prosocial game were significantly more helpful than those who played the other games, assigning easier puzzles to their partners, while students who played the violent game were much more likely to assign the hardest puzzles. The researchers also found a link between playing prosocial video games and helpful behavior among kids in Singapore and Japan.
"Taken together, these findings make it clear that playing video games is not in itself good or bad for children," reports University of Michigan social psychologist Brad Bushman, who worked on the study. "The type of content in the game has a bigger impact than the overall amount of time spent playing." —Heather Wax

Field Notes

2009-06-18T07:11:00.008-04:00

Darwin Was an Abolitionist
It seems that the secular humanist crowd also has an old and some would say noble tradition of anti-slavery agitation which it can draw on—and it was an issue that united it with evangelicals. (Ed Stoddard, Reuters Blogs)

Same-Sex Behavior in the Animal Kingdom
Male-male and female-female interactions have been “extensively documented in non-human animals”, write University of California, Riverside researchers Nathan Bailey and Marlene Zuk. However they want to see scientists looking more towards the evolutionary consequences of same-sex behavior, not just on why it occurs. (Daniel Cressey, Nature)

Honey, Are You Happy for Me?
A lukewarm or deflating reaction to a partner's positive news tells more about the health of the relationship, and is even more predictive of its breakup, than whether a partner is supportive after bad news, says Shelly Gable, a psychologist at the University of California-Santa Barbara. (Marilyn Elias, USA Today)

Scientists Smack Down Study That Says Orangutan Is Our Closest Relative
The idea flies in the face of mainstream scientific opinion, not least a wealth of DNA evidence pointing to our close relationship to chimps. Jeffrey Schwartz and John Grehan do not deny the similarity between human and chimp genomes, but argue that the DNA evidence is problematic and that traditional taxonomy unequivocally tells us that our closest living relatives are orangutans. Human evolution and phylogenomics researchers have so far given the paper a rough reception. (Graham Lawton, New Scientist)

THEATER
Freud's Last Session
Mark St. Germain has constructed an entire one-act play out of one simple “what if’’: What if Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis had met? (Louise Kennedy, The Boston Globe)

What You Can Tell About a Face in 0.1 Seconds

2009-06-17T11:06:00.018-04:00

A team of Spanish and Brazilian researchers has looked at how well—and how quickly—we can recognize the facial expressions of others. Correctly recognizing the emotions behind these expressions is important because they act as signals, and we make judgments and deductions about other people based on what we see. "These inferences can strongly influence election results or the sentences given in trials, and have been studied before in fields such as criminology and the pseudoscience of physiognomy, " explains University of Barcelona psychologist Jose Antonio Aznar Casanova, who worked on the study.
When the researchers gave a group of psychology students 0.1 seconds to look at a face, they found that they could detect happiness better and faster than sadness. "Positive expressions, or expressions of approach, are perceived more quickly and more precisely than negative, or withdrawal, ones," Aznar Casanova says. "So happiness and surprise are processed faster than sadness and fear."

Field Notes

2009-06-17T07:25:00.007-04:00

Why the Discovery Institute's John West Is Wrong and Misleading
Peter Hess: West's views are a skewed Cliff Notes version of the serious academic work surrounding faith and evolution—mostly wrong, mostly missing the important points, a repackaging of old ideas and a parroting of discredited arguments. I have taught graduate classes in theology, and if a student turned in something like West's essay on the issue of faith and evolution, it would merit him a D-. ("On Faith," Newsweek/The Washington Post)

Can Faith and Science Both Bring Majesty to the World?
Keir Martin: For those debating the role of faith in public life, this sense that life is either more or less enchanted or wonderful with or without religion becomes something of a political resource to be fought over and used as a weapon against one's opponents. And this sense of enchantment feeds into wider claims about the ways in which it is possible to find meaning or value in worlds that often look devoid of any moral compass. (guardian.co.uk)

Reconstructing the First Forms of Life
In the last few years, four surprising advances have renewed confidence that a terrestrial explanation for life’s origins will eventually emerge. (Nicholas Wade, The New York Times)

Vatican Could Become First Carbon-Neutral Sovereignty
Mark Hopkins, director of the United Nations Foundation's energy policy program, said that prior to his June 12 visit to Vatican City he had no idea the tiny city-state was involved in so many "significant projects" aimed at reducing its own carbon footprint. (Carol Giatz, Catholics News Service)

New Report Finds "No Evidence" of Gene for Depression
Why do some people sail happily through life whereas others are brought low by its slings and arrows? A 2003 study offered an answer: a gene variant that made some people more susceptible to depression. The work was hailed as a prime example of how someone's life experiences could activate their genes. But a new analysis of the 2003 study and many that came after it calls the link into question. (Constance Holden, ScienceNOW Daily News)

How Ingrained Are Our Bias and Prejudice Toward Other Groups?
Would a threat like the one depicted in a typical sci-fi Armageddon picture really bring people together, or would tribes and nations keep at each other's throats even in the presence of a common enemy? (JamilZaki, The Huffington Post)

PBS Votes to Ban New Religious Shows
The Public Broadcasting Service agreed yesterday to ban its member stations from airing new religious TV programs, but permitted the handful of stations that already carry "sectarian" shows to continue doing so. (Paul Farhi, The Washington Post)

If You Had Billions, Who Would You Save?

2009-06-16T10:59:00.008-04:00

A week from tomorrow, NBC will premiere a new show called The Philanthropist. The eight-part drama centers around "vigilante philanthropist" Teddy Rist and was filmed in places like South Africa, Mozambique, and Prague.
Here's how the network describes it:

Teddy Rist loves women, money and power. After the tragic death of his only child, Teddy has an awakening and becomes the world's first vigilante philanthropist—a renegade billionaire who uses his wealth and connections to help people in need. Instead of spending $25,000 a plate at a fundraiser, he's dodging bullets in third world countries to hand deliver vaccines. It's an inspiring global adventure that will take you to the ends of the earth.
Rist's actions are not just about helping others—he is purging his soul to help exorcise the inner demons that have been festering ever since his young son died and he lost everything he truly loved. The danger and risk to his life is the only way he can feel genuinely alive and he'll do anything in order to achieve his goals.

The Philanthropist will air Wednesdays at 10 p.m.

Field Notes

2009-06-16T09:01:00.004-04:00

Iran Becoming a Leader in Stem Cell Science
In 2002, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei created a "stem cell fatwa" declaring experimentation with human embryonic stem cells consistent with Shiite Islam and encouraging scientists to advance the technology to save lives. (Neil Katz and Jonathan Schienberg, FRONTLINE/World)

New Search Engine for Hebrew-Speaking Orthodox Jews
Yossi Altman said Koogle, a play on the names of a Jewish noodle pudding and the ubiquitous Google, appears to meet the standards of Orthodox rabbis, who restrict use of the Web to ensure followers avoid viewing sexually explicit material. (Allyn Fisher-Ilan and Jon Boyle, Reuters)

The "War" Between Science and Religion
James Hannam: A strange thing about the conflict myth is that much of the evidence for it is bogus. Not only are most people ignorant of the real history, but what they think they know about it is actually untrue. (guardian.co.uk)

AUDIO SLIDESHOW
Darwin's Endless Forms at the Fitzwilliam Museum
Take a guided tour with the curators Diana Donald and Jane Munro (BBC News)

TELEVISION
Good and Evil in HBO's "True Blood"
The drama series repeatedly toys with notions of so-called civilized society, forcing us to question what makes a person (or vampire) morally upright or fundamentally depraved. (Heather Havrilesky, Salon)

Older People With a Purpose Live Longer

2009-06-15T13:44:00.014-04:00

A greater purpose in life is linked to longer life for the elderly, according to a new study by neuropsychologist Patricia Boyle and her colleagues at Rush University Medical Center. They studied more than 1,200 older adults at two separate times five years apart. During the period in between, 151 participants died, but the researchers found that a senior with a high purpose in life was about half as likely to die than was a senior with a low purpose. (Boyle defines purpose as the tendency to find meaning in life’s experiences and to be focused and intentional).
“The finding that purpose in life is related to longevity in older persons suggests that aspects of human flourishing—particularly the tendency to derive meaning from life’s experiences and possess a sense of intentionality and goal-directedness—contribute to successful aging,” says Boyle.
“Although we think that having a sense of purpose in life is important across the lifespan," she adds, "measurement of purpose in life in older persons in particular may reveal an enduring sense of meaningfulness and intentionality in life that somehow provides a buffer against negative health outcomes."

Darwin Wrestles With Religion in New Movie

2009-06-15T10:44:00.016-04:00

Take a sneak peak at the trailer for Creation, the Charlies Darwin biopic starring Paul Bettany and based on the book Annie's Box by Randal Keynes (Darwin's great-great grandson). The visuals are lovely.
The film doesn't have a U.S. distributor yet, but will hit theaters in the United Kingdom in September.

Field Notes

2009-06-15T08:06:00.016-04:00

Who Goes to a Creation Museum—and Why?
Britain has its own creationist museum, in Portsmouth, Hampshire. But its size and popularity is dwarfed by that of its Kentucky counterpart. (Peter Jackson, BBC News)

Religion's Influence Depends on How We See God
Andrew Newberg: There seems to be little question that when people view God as loving, forgiving, compassionate and supportive, this more likely results in a very positive view of themselves, and of the world around them. But when God is viewed as dispassionate, vengeful and unforgiving, this can have deleterious effects on one's physical and mental health. (USA Today)

Science Teacher Who Kept Bible on his Desk Sues School District
An Ohio school teacher fired over accusations that he preached Christianity in class says in a $1 million lawsuit that his free speech and civil rights were violated. John Freshwater, an eighth-grade teacher in Mount Vernon, northeast of Columbus, also says he was harassed because of his religion, was defamed and suffered a hostile work environment. (Andrew Welsh-Huggins, Associated Press)

Fighting Radicalism and Terrorism With Religious Discourse and Education
As Yemen attempts to handle the crisis of the moment, the country looks to its religious dialogue efforts as a possible counter-balance to the religious extremism that fuels kidnapping and Al Qaeda. Human rights activists caution that the programs, however, don't always translate into practical transformation. (Laura Kasinof, Christian Science Monitor)

Jehovah's Witnesses Face Serious Risk During Childbirth
Pregnant women who are Jehovah's Witnesses are six times more likely to die during childbirth and three times more likely to have serious complications than the general population, according to a new study by Dutch researchers. (Daniel Burke, Religion News Service)

What Motivates Us To Act Charitably?

2009-06-12T18:10:00.020-04:00

Trying to answer that question, Tel Aviv University economics professor Anat Bracha and her colleagues invited people to bike for 10 minutes in the gym at MIT. One group biked in public—in the gym's main room—while another group biked in a private room on the third floor. All the bikers earned money for a charitable cause based on the effort they exerted, but the researchers found that "giving was affected by how visible the participation was," says Bracha. "The more public, the greater the image boost, and the greater the contribution." In other words, the recognition we get from others is part of what motivates us to give.
Would things change, the researchers wondered, if they started paying the bikers for their participation? Turns out things did change—but only on the private third floor.
It seems the public bikers worried that the "image boost" they got from exerting themselves would be undermined if observers knew they were gaining personally from trying so hard, and the level of their effort was the same whether they received money or not. "Money and image motivations clashed," says Bracha. Those biking in private, on the other hand, didn't have the same conflict: Without any social judgment to deal with, they biked more miles on average when they were getting paid.
In this economy, Bracha argues, charitable organizations could benefit from really boosting the image of its donors—publicizing their names or recognizing them in some other way. "Charitable giving is a much greater sacrifice now than it was at this time last year," she says. "Budgets are tighter for everyone, so giving is likely to have greater image value."

What's J. Craig Venter's "Religious Belief"?

2009-06-12T09:47:00.015-04:00

"I think from my experience in war and life and science, it all has made me believe that we have one life on this planet," genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter, who was drafted into the Vietnam War, tells the San Francisco Chronicle. "We have one chance to live it and to contribute to the future of society and the future of life. The only 'afterlife' is what other people remember of you."

Field Notes

2009-06-12T07:17:00.014-04:00

Donations to Religious Charities Are Up
Religious organizations reported a 5.5-percent increase in donations last year, a marked contrast from the nationwide 2-percent decline in charitable giving, according to a study by Giving USA Foundation. (Lindsay Perna, Religion News Service)

New Texas Science Standards Pose Challenge For Textbook Authors
In March, the Texas school board approved new science standards that omit the requirement to teach students the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolutionary theory. But many scientists view the new version as more insidious than the previous one. (Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, Science)

Questions and Controversy Surround Obama's Pick to Run Faith-Based Programs at the Department of Health and Human Services
Alexia Kelley, co-founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, and considered by some to be a "dissident Catholic," is President Obama's pick to head the "faith office" at HHS, which raises the question—why do we need a "faith office" at HHS in the first place? (Jayne Lyn Stahl, The Huffington Post)

Laughter Clubs Help Some Cope and Heal
But none of the people are laughing at anything that’s particularly funny. And that’s the point. Psychologist Lynn Caesar says our bodies release a wash of beneficial chemicals when we laugh, the harder the better. She says it reduces stress, boosts our immune systems, and mellows us out—even when we fake it. (Andrea Shea, WBUR)

ON THE SHELF
Science: A Four Thousand Year History
Patricia Fara argues, persuasively, that science is rarely an esoteric effort to attain pure knowledge, as envisaged by Bacon. Rather it stems from attempts to gain power through activities such as politics, magic, religion, trade, and war. The Babylonian astronomers were seeking political advantage. The main motive of many Islamic scholars and, indeed, Newton himself, was the better understanding of God. (The Economist)

Guppies Show Evolution Can Be Relatively Fast

2009-06-11T17:01:00.025-04:00

Here's a cool study that shows evolution in action: A team of researchers including Swanne Gordon, a biology grad student at the University of California, Riverside, took guppies from the Yarra River in Trinidad and put them into a section of the nearby Damier River that is above a waterfall. Because of the barrier, this section of the river doesn't have any predators. The guppies then also colonized the part of the river below the waterfall, where they coexist with predatory fish.
How did the guppies adapt to their new environment? Rather well. After eight years and less than 30 guppy generations, the researchers discovered that the guppies above the waterfall had produced fewer and larger offspring with each reproductive cycle.
As Gordon explains:

High-predation females invest more resources into current reproduction because a high rate of mortality, driven by predators, means these females may not get another chance to reproduce. Low-predation females, on the other hand, produce larger embryos because the larger babies are more competitive in the resource-limited environments typical of low-predation sites. Moreover, low-predation females produce fewer embryos not only because they have larger embryos but also because they invest fewer resources in current reproduction.

There's also a second part to the experiment. The team took a group of guppies from part of the Yarra River that has predators and a group from a tributary that has no predators and put them in both sections of the Damier River. After four weeks, they checked back and found that the resident guppies from the first experiment—those that had already adapted to the local environment—were more likely to have survived than the newly transplanted guppies. In other words, the first set of guppies had developed a new, advantageous trait in a relatively short period of time. (Keep in mind that generations go much faster for guppies, which have a short lifespan, than for longer-lived species.)

Baboons Live Longer If Their Moms Are Social

2009-06-11T13:36:00.026-04:00

Six days a week for 17 years, primatologists observed more than 65 female baboons in the Moremi Game Reserve, a national park in Botswana. They tracked things like the baboons' social interactions, their ranking within the group, and the survival rates of their offspring. Now, a team of researchers has looked at the data and found that the best way to predict whether a baboon would live to adulthood is to look at the strength of its mother's relationship with other females.
The offspring of females who formed strong social bonds with other females–especially their mothers and adult daughters—lived significantly longer than the offspring of mothers who formed weaker bonds with these relatives. (The strongest social bonds were shown to be between mothers and adult daughters, then sisters.)
Dorothy Cheney, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania who worked on the study, explains why surviving into adulthood (about age 5 for baboons) is so important:

Females who raise offspring to a reproductive age are more likely see their genes pass along, so these findings demonstrate an evolutionary advantage to strong relationships with other females. In evolutionary terms, social moms are the fittest moms—at least when it comes to baboons.

These findings, the authors write, "parallel those from human studies, which show that greater social integration is generally associated with reduced mortality and better physical and mental health, particularly for women."

Much More Work to Do in Year of Darwin

2009-06-11T11:50:00.007-04:00

The Creation Museum in Kentucky has drawn 720,000 visitors in its two years of existence and brought in 7 million dollars in receipts, according to the Courier-Journal. Organizers also say students make up about 20 to 30 percent of the museum's attendance, and they plan to increase the reach next year by sending representatives to meet with teachers at religious schools.

Field Notes

2009-06-11T08:57:00.018-04:00

Obama Invokes Religion More Overtly Than Bush
As president, Barack Obama has mentioned Jesus Christ in a number of high-profile public speeches—something his predecessor George W. Bush rarely did in such settings, even though Bush’s Christian faith was at the core of his political identity. (Eamon Javers, Politico)

Atheists Still Have Faith in Obama
While atheist advocates railed against Bush, they seem willing to give Obama a pass on his God talk—at least for now. (Daniel Libit, Politico)

Exhibit Celebrates Leonardo da Vinci as Man of Science
Four centuries before Darwin, Leonardo's detailed studies of fossils helped him to foresee the theories of evolution and plate tectonics, and to reject a literal interpretation of the Biblical flood. Almost half a millennium before man landed on the moon, his lunar studies convinced him that the moon shone with reflected light, instead of a light of its own, as the Bible maintained. (Paula Simons, Edmonton Journal)

Medieval Church Didn't Forbid Human Dissection
Leonardo dissected an aged patient whom he had befriended at the hospital of Santa Maria Nova, Florence. As an artist he had no standing to request a corpse for medical research, but he did not get into trouble. (Christopher Howse, Telegraph)

Seeking Forgiveness?
You might be surprised to learn just how effective a simple apology can be. In fact, a recent series of studies showed that, to a large extent, it doesn’t even matter if the apology is patently insincere—at least for the target of the original wrongdoing. (Jesse Bering, Scientific American Mind)

The Importance of Caring About Science
Though Brian Greene is best known for string theory and Alan Alda for comic acting, they’ve also dedicated themselves to popularizing science among the public. For Greene, scientific literacy is a basic part of modern democracy. For Alda, the restless and self-questioning scientific mode of thought is a virtue. (Brandon Keim, Wired Science)

Gene Predicts Gang Membership & Weapon Use

2009-06-10T10:25:00.009-04:00

Biosocial criminologist Kevin Beaver and his colleagues at Florida State University have a new paper that looks at the link between genetics and violence. According to their study, boys who have a particular variation of the gene Monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) are more likely to join gangs, behave violently, and use weapons. (While previous studies have linked this variant to violent behavior, this is the first to show it can predict gang membership.) The findings do not apply to girls who have the same variation of the gene, however.
Beaver explains why:

What's interesting about the MAOA gene is its location on the X-chromosome. As a result, males, who have one X-chromosome and one Y-chromosome, possess only one copy of this gene, while females, who have two X-chromosomes, carry two. Thus, if a male has an allele (variant) for the MAOA gene that is linked to violence, there isn't another copy to counteract it. Females, in contrast, have two copies, so even if they have one risk allele, they have another that could compensate for it. That's why most MAOA research has focused on males, and probably why the MAOA effect has, for the most part, only been detected in males.

The MAOA gene affects the levels of neurotransmitters like dopamine (often called the brain's "feel-good" chemical) and serotonin (linked to mood and emotional control), and researchers say the variant of the gene that predicts violence is hereditary.

Congratulations, Robert Pennock

2009-06-10T07:30:00.005-04:00

Robert Pennock, a professor of history and philosophy of science at Michigan State University, has won the American Institute for Biological Science’s Outstanding Service Award. Pennock, author of Tower of Babel and Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics, was recognized for his work supporting evolution education and his testimony at the 2005 Dover trial, among other efforts.

Why Friendship Is Like Alliance Politics

2009-06-09T10:05:00.026-04:00

If you've ever watched the TV show Survivor, you've no doubt noticed how crucial alliances are and how they constantly change and shift as players jockey for position and try to keep themselves from getting voted out of the game. Part of the reason an alliance of more than two people is so hard to keep together is that there's always a hierarchy of allegiance; loyalty, support, and protection do not apply equally among all. This is usually the argument one alliance uses to lure over a player from the bottom of another, bigger alliance: Being fourth from the top in our alliance, they say, is better than being fifth from the top in theirs. It's an argument that works with varying success.
So I was interested to read about a new theory called the "Alliance Hypothesis for Human Friendship," based on a study by Peter DeScioli and Robert Kurzban, psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania. The psychologists say that how you rank your best friends is closely related to how you think these friends rank you.
As Kurzban notes:

Friendships are about alliances. We live in a world where conflict can arise and allies must be in position beforehand. This new hypothesis takes into account how we value those alliances. In a way, one of the main predictors of friendship is the value of the alliance. The value of an ally, or friend, drops with every additional alliance they must make, so the best alliance is one in which your ally ranks you above everyone else as well.

Traditionally, friends have been thought of as "exchange partners" based on the "theory of reciprocal altruism." But research has shown that we don't regularly keep track of the benefits we give and receive in our close friendships, and we help close friends even when the likelihood of them repaying us is slim. The "alliance" theory of friendship is more optimistic since “it’s not what you can do for me, it’s how much you like me," says Kurzban. "In this manner even the weakest nations, for example, or the least popular kid at the party with nary an alliance in the room is set up to be paired with someone looking for a friend.”
Assuming he's right, can we use this to our advantage? Yup, the psychologists say, by 1) ranking our friends, 2) ranking them according to our position in their rankings (preferring friends who rank us higher—our more reliable allies), and 3) hiding our friend-ranking. —Heather Wax

Vatican Governor Visits Particle Accelerator

2009-06-08T15:27:00.014-04:00

"The Church never fears the truth of science, because we are convinced that all truth comes from God," Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, governor of Vatican City, said last week in Geneva, where he visited CERN and the Large Hadron Collider (which broke down just after it was first fired up in September and is expected to restart this fall). "Science will help our faith to purify itself. And faith at the same time will be able to broaden the horizons of man, who cannot just enclose himself in the horizons of science."

We See More When We're in a Good Mood

2009-06-08T11:53:00.023-04:00

Our mood really changes the way we see the world, according to a new study from a team at the University of Toronto. "Good and bad moods literally change the way our visual cortex operates," explains Adam Anderson, a psychologist who worked on the research. When we're in a good mood, "our visual cortex takes in more information," he says, "while negative moods result in tunnel vision."
The researchers showed volunteers a composite image (pictured here) that had a face in the center and a house in the background, and they focused the volunteers' attention on the face by asking them to identify the gender. Participants who were primed to be in a bad mood did fine on that task, but didn't process the surrounding image of the house. Those who were in a good mood took in more information and processed more of the picture—both the face and the background.
As Taylor Schmitz, a U of T graduate students and the study's lead author, notes:

Good moods enhance the literal size of the window through which we see the world. The upside of this is that we can see things from a more global, or integrative perspective. The downside is that this can lead to distraction on critical tasks that require narrow focus, such as operating dangerous machinery or airport screening of passenger baggage. Bad moods, on the other hand, may keep us more narrowly focused, preventing us from integrating information outside of our direct attentional focus.

The study appears in The Journal of Neuroscience. —Heather Wax

Do Baby Apes Giggle Like Human Infants Do?

2009-06-08T09:09:00.028-04:00

Apparently so, according to a new study that analyzed the "tickle-induced vocalizations" of human infants and young apes.
According to the researchers, infant and juvenile orangutans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and bonobos "laugh" when they're tickled, even though it sounds acoustically different from human laughter. (We do laugh most like chimps and bonobos, however, which are genetically closest to us). The study shows "the evolutionary continuity of a human emotional expression," says Marina Davila Ross, a psychologist at the University of Portsmouth who worked on the research.
"The results suggest that the evolutionary origins of human laughter can be traced back at least 10 to 16 million years to the last common ancestor of humans and modern great apes," the researchers write in the journal Current Biology.
There is "clear evidence of a common evolutionary origin for tickling-induced laughter in humans and tickling-induced vocalizations in great apes," they report. "At a minimum, one can conclude that it is appropriate to consider 'laughter' to be a cross-species phenomenon." —Heather Wax

"Percontations" on Bloggingheads.tv

2009-06-08T07:13:00.000-04:00

Check out the most recent installment of "Percontations," a weekly video exchange on life's "big questions" that airs on Bloggingheads.tv. This week, Karl Giberson and philosopher Robert Wright (whose new book The Evolution of God comes out today) engage in an interesting conversation about ways of reconciling evolution and Christianity, how God might interact with the world, and what accounts for and explains our intuitive sense that there is right and wrong (moral good and bad).

Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

2009-06-05T09:51:00.052-04:00

FROM ROBERT LAWRENCE KUHN, HOST AND CREATOR OF CLOSER TO TRUTH: When I was 12, the summer between seventh and eighth grades, a sudden realization struck such fright that I strove desperately to blot it out.

Why not Nothing? What if everything had forever been Nothing? Not just emptiness. Not just blankness. But not even the existence of emptiness. Not even the meaning of blankness. And no forever.

Lump together everything that exists and might exist—physical, mental, platonic, spiritual, God. Everything. Call it all “Something.” Why is there “Something” rather than “Nothing”? Why does anything at all exist?
I now attack the question directly—finally in my life—by speaking with some really smart people, primarily philosophers (also one physicist) who have thought long and hard about this seemingly impossible question.
I begin with one of my favorite philosophers, John Leslie, who has been much consumed with Nothing and ultimate explanations. I ask him whether my question is a legitimate one.
“It's legitimate,” Leslie responds, “because it can have answers. Even if one thinks the answer is ‘there just happens to be something,’ that's an answer.”
Is it the most fundamental of all questions?
“One could argue that all one’s views about the nature of the universe will in the end depend on whether the universe, which one believes exists, could have a reason behind its existence,” Leslie says. “I myself don't like the theory that the universe just happens to exist and just happens to have the characteristics which it does.“
At the end of all our strivings, after we have a final theory or a series of final theories, and/or multiple universes with perhaps different final theories in each, will we not still have remaining this ultimate question, Why is there Something rather than Nothing?
“I think that's right,” Leslie says. “I don't think it would be possible to say, for example, that because quantum physics tells us that it's likely that a blank would at some point fluctuate into a real world that that's our final answer. Because the question would then be, 'Why does this kind of quantum physics apply to reality?'"
I try to progress by trying to discern the nature of Nothing. Nothing seems “simpler” than Something, I proffer, in that Something has extra stuff to be explained, whereas Nothing does not?
Leslie agrees, but amplifies. “Even in a blank, there would be all sorts of facts. Try to imagine out of existence all actual things. Is that Nothing? In a sense, yes. But that overlooks the fact that there's an infinite richness of truths about possibilities which is bound to exist even though no actual things exist.”
So it's impossible to have purely Nothing, Leslie says. “Because one always has possibilities. One always has facts about relationships with possibilities. And one also has the fact that certain possibilities are good and other possibilities are bad. These are facts from which one can never escape—even if there were no actualities, no real possibility of any actualities ever occurring, there would still be no contradiction in the assertion that they may possibly or potentially occur. Their occurring would not be like the occurrence of, say, a ‘married bachelor.’”
For a philosopher to assert that anything is “impossible” is an assertion of significance, and Leslie says that it is impossible for there to be a Nothing without possibilities. “One can even go further and say that the condition of Nothing would have to be infinitely rich,” Leslie adds. “There's an infinite number of possibilities and an infinite number of facts about them [which cohabit Nothing]. And those possibilities and the facts about them will be there even if there were no actual things forever and ever.”
To Peter van Inwagen, a philosopher at the University of Notre Dame, Nothing is important. “What would count as an answer to the Nothing question?” he asks. “We cannot describe a way that nonexistent things interact with each other to produce existent things—the nonexistent is never going to produce the existent. This question cannot be like questions about why are there living things, answered by the ways that nonliving things may have interacted to produce living things. Explaining why we have Something would have to have a wholly different kind of answer, if it had an answer at all.”
Inwagen argues that “one sort of answer would be that it was impossible for there to be Nothing, that ‘there being Nothing’ is actually an impossible state of affairs. And that of course would explain why there was Something rather than Nothing, since the impossible cannot occur. There have been two attempts at this in the history of philosophy. One is subsumed under the name ‘ontological argument” [a greatest possible Being must exist] and the other under the name ‘cosmological argument’ [everything that exists must have a reason or an explanation for its existence; whatever begins to exist must have a cause]. But I myself don’t find either of them convincing.”
Another way of answering the question of why there is Something rather than Nothing, Inwagen suggests, would be to show that “it’s vastly improbable for there to be Nothing.” Here’s his argument: “Think of all the possible ways that the world might be, down to every detail. [There are infinitely many such possible ways.] All these ways seem to be equally probable—[which means that] the probability of any one of these infinite possibilities actually occurring seems to be zero, and yet one of them happened.
“Now, there’s only one way for there to be Nothing, right?” Inwagen continues. “There are no variants in Nothing; there being Nothing at all is a single state of affairs. And it’s a total state of affairs; that is, it settles everything—every possible proposition has its truth value settled, true or false, usually false, by there being Nothing. So if Nothing is one way for reality to be, and if the total number of ways for reality to be are infinite, and if all such infinite ways are equally probable so that the probability of any one of them is [essentially] zero, then the probability of ‘there being Nothing’ is also [essentially] zero.”
Inwagen argues that because there are an infinite number of potential worlds, each specific world would have a zero probability of existing, and because Nothing is only one of these potential worlds—there can be only one kind of Nothing—the probably of Nothing existing is zero. A clever argument. But doesn’t it assume that the prior probability of Nothing is precisely the same as that of every one of the infinite number of possible ways the world might have been? Inwagen’s argument turns on the assumption that a “Nothing Total World” is equally probable to every kind of an infinite number of “Something Total Worlds.”
But, to me, Nothing seems different. Nothing seems simpler in that all the other kinds of worlds would require Something more, with additional explanations required for whatever constitutes those Somethings.
Some people would answer the question glibly and say “God”—there is Something because God created it.
“Either God is a necessary being or he’s not a necessary being,” Inwagen responds. “If God is a necessary being then there isn’t any possibility of there being Nothing.” (This, in essence, is the ontological argument, which almost every philosopher rejects as deficient and spurious, though determining precisely why has proved to be maddening.)
“If God is a contingent being,” Inwagen continues, “then we still have the question of, ‘Why is there Something rather than Nothing’ because one of the possible ways for there to be is that there is Nothing, not even God. The doctrine of divine creation would then be, well, if God exists and if anything else exists, that anything else must be because God created it. This may explain why there’s a physical world, but not why is there Something rather than Nothing.”
At the end of all disputations, Inwagen himself says, “I know what I think is the right answer: I think God exists and that God is a necessary being, and therefore it’s not possible for there to be Nothing.”
As for God being the answer, I put the question to University of Oxford atheistic philosopher Bede Rundle, whose book Why There is Something Rather than Nothing rejects the God hypothesis.
“The question is fascinating in that it seems impossible at first blush to give any sort of answer at all,” Rundle says. “It’s had a longish history, starting with [Gottfried] Leibniz; many philosophers have tried their hand at giving an answer. St. Thomas Aquinas worked out his answer: There is God and God has to exist—God exists necessarily.
“Now what I’m interested in,” Rundle continues, “is whether or not that makes sense and can be substantiated." He believes that those who “in effect think that ‘there being Nothing’ is not a genuine alternative because there has to be Something because there has to be God” are on the right track—except for the God part. “I’m trying to agree with the general petition that there has to be Something or other,” Rundle explains, “but the theistic solution seems to me to have its difficulties.
“Well, what are other conditions in which you can speak of Something as beginning to exist?” Rundle asks. “Isn’t it that there has to be a time when it [the Something] doesn’t exist followed by a time when it does exist? But if you don’t have anything at all, then you don’t have ‘enough time’; so it doesn’t make sense to think of a state of affairs of Nothing being followed by a state of affairs of Something.”
Rundle concludes that, “Perhaps we just have to confront it [the fact of Something] as brute fact—that there is Something. One can’t get beyond that, there’s no explaining it, and that’s that.”
To me, to accept “brute fact” as the final explanation of Everything—All-There-Is—is maximally unsatisfying (which doesn’t make brute fact wrong, of course). Is this just a defect of human cognition? Certainly evolution would have no reason to select for capacity to understand this question.
Rundle answers me thus: “If it’s a conceptual truth that there is Something, and if there has to be Something, then that’s an end to your agonizing, surely. And if you could refute all the arguments that say, ‘We can make sense of the state of affairs which is Nothing at all,’ then there is no alternative. … There’s no such thing [or possibility] as there being Nothing.”
So Rundle believes that there must be Something or other. There cannot be Nothing: Nothing is an impossible state of affairs.
Is this progress? Or word games? I can’t decide.
“Nothing” still haunts me.
“God” would close off debate. What are alternatives?
Quentin Smith, an atheistic philosopher who is fixated on the riddle of existence, has his answer.
“The first thing is to recognize that when people have tried to answer this question,” Smith says, “they have defined Nothing as this very thin sort of Something, like empty space, quantum vacuum, the null set, a point, and the like—but few have really talked about Nothing.” A better way to define a real Nothing, he says, “is ’Not Something,’ so the question becomes, ‘Why is it the case that it is false that there is not Something?’”
There is an answer to this, Smith continues, “but it's rather trite and trivial, whereas we've associated this question as having some great, grand, magnificent metaphysical answer—but the answer is just logically trivial and then really quite uninteresting.
“The answer would be this,” Smith explains. “Right now, Something is the state of affairs. The universe is Something. So why does this Something exist? Well, it was caused to exist by the previous state of the universe, which is also Something, and that previous state was also caused by a state previous to that, which again is also Something [and the infinite regress, the endless series of causes backward, can continue without end]. … And so the reason why there is Something is that each Something that exists has been caused by a prior Something, and if you ask why there is Something at all, I say that I just confine myself to one example, this state of the universe.”
After he first realized this, it took him a while to recover from the disappointment, Smith says with some regret: “I thought to myself, ‘I spent all my life wondering why there is Something rather than Nothing … and this is the answer?’”
Smith concludes that to call existence a “brute fact” is a more logically complete explanation than either theism or any other theory because there are no questions left unanswered in the “brute fact” explanation.
So he contends that while “No Thing existing” might have been the case, “Some Thing existing” is the case. And the reason is trivial: Each and every thing was caused by a prior thing.
That can’t be the answer ... but might it?
I still want to scream, “Why Not Nothing?”
Every time I return to it, the question drives me crazy.
To conclude, I consider God. And then no God. In each case, I address the question, “Why Not Nothing?” In each case, I ask one of the world’s most profound thinkers.
I put the question to Richard Swinburne, one of the foremost Christian philosophers, thus: “I am astonished that there is Something, anything at all. Nothing would seem to have been the most likely, perhaps most logical, state of affairs.”
“I share that intuition,” Swinburne begins. “It is extremely puzzling.”
Swinburne’s approach is to first discern the essence of “explanation.”
“All explanation,” he says, “consists in trying to find something simple and ultimate on which everything else depends. And I think that by rational inference what we can get to that’s simple and ultimate is God. But it’s not logically necessary that there should be a God. The supposition ‘there is no God’ contains no contradiction.”
I ask the traditional skeptical follow-up question, “So why is there a God?” Swinburne is clear. “There is no explanation of why there is a God. And it would be theologically problematic if there were [such an explanation of any kind]. If one were to say, well, as a matter of fact, it is logically necessary that there is a God, [that would be a theological problem] because that would mean that the existence of God depended on some principle of logic which was somehow superior to God.
“If God is defined as ‘explaining everything else,’” Swinburne continues, “then God wouldn’t be God if there were an explanation of his existence. God to be God is ‘the ultimate truth.’ That’s just how it is. We can’t go further than that.”
To Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate in physics, the question, “Why is there Something rather than Nothing” is “just the kind of question that we will be stuck with when we have a final theory [of physics]. … We will be left facing the irreducible mystery because whatever our theory is, no matter how mathematically consistent and logically consistent the theory is, there will always be the alternative that, well, perhaps there could have been nothing at all.”
In modern physics, Weinberg explains, “the idea of empty space without anything at all, without fields, is inconsistent with the principles of quantum mechanics—[because] the [Heisenberg] uncertainty principle doesn’t allow a condition of empty space where fields are zero and unchanging.”
But why, then, do we have quantum mechanics in the first place, with its fields and probabilities and ways of making things happen? “Exactly!” Weinberg says. “[Quantum mechanics] doesn’t answer the question, ‘Why do we live in a world governed by these laws?’… And we will never have an answer to that.”
“Does that bother you?” I ask.
“Yes,” Weinberg says wistfully. “I would like to have an answer to everything, but I’ve gotten used to the fact that I won’t.”
Here's how I see it: The primary questions people pose—Why the universe? Does God exist?—are important, sure, but they are not bedrock fundamental. “Why anything at all?” is the ultimate question.
I’ve come to only two kinds of answers.
The first is that there is no answer. Existence is a brute fact without explanation. Something or Other has to exist. I don’t like this, but I must accept that it may be so.
The second is that at the primordial beginning—whatever that may mean—Something was self-existing. The essence of this Something was its existence, such that nonexistence to it would be as inherently impossible as physical immortality to us is factually impossible.
Candidates for essential self-existence? These include:

• matter-energy and space-time.
• natural laws of physics or higher-order laws that generate quantum mechanics and perhaps multiple universes.
• forms of consciousness, cosmic or otherwise.
• a creator God or an ultimate cause beyond the physical.
• some overarching principle or value, like Plato’s “the good,” which somehow has causative powers.

There are no doubt other candidates. And the argument that our human brains/minds are incapable of answering this question, or even properly addressing it, cannot be refuted.
Why is there Something rather than Nothing?
If you don’t get dizzy, you really don’t get it.
Nothing is … closer to truth.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn speaks with John Leslie, Peter van Inwagen, Bede Rundle, Quentin Smith, Richard Swinburne, and Steven Weinberg in "Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?" the 39th—and final—episode in the Closer to Truth: Cosmos, Consciousness, God TV series (directed by Peter Getzels). The series airs on PBS World (often Thursdays, twice) and many other PBS and noncommercial stations. Three new series of Closer To Truth: Cosmos, Consciousness, God —13 episodes each, 39 all together—will begin around January 2010.

Music Machine Tries to Show Some Creativity

2009-06-04T12:47:00.015-04:00

A group of researchers from the University of Granada have used artificial technology to develop a software program that tries to imitate human creativity. The Intelligent Multiagent Music System, shortened to Inmamusys, composes original music on its own, which could be a better alternative to the repetitive canned music that now gets played in public places like hospitals, the researcher say. The details are complicated, but the idea behind Inmamusys, they say, was to create a system that automatically creates music that has "the correct degree of emotiveness (in order to manage the environment created) and originality (guaranteeing that the tunes composed are not repeated, and are original and endless)."
Creating music "is usually something done by human beings, although they do not understand how they do it," says Miguel Molina-Solana, a member of the research team. "In reality, there are numerous processes involved in the creation of music and, unfortunately, we still do not understand many of them. Others are so complex that we cannot analyze them, despite the enormous power of current computing tools. ... One of the most difficult facets of all to reproduce is creativity." —Heather Wax

Michael Reiss Sets the Record Straight

2009-06-04T09:57:00.030-04:00

Michael Reiss has given his first interview since he was forced to resign as director of education of the United Kingdom's Royal Society back in September. The reason he was ousted? In a speech he made to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Reiss reportedly said that "creationism is best seen by science teachers not as a misconception but as a worldview," so students must be allowed to discuss it in class. Though creationism is "a nonscientific way of seeing the world," he had realized that "simply banging on about evolution and natural selection didn't lead some pupils to change their minds at all. There is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts—hardly a revolutionary idea in science teaching—and doing one's best to have a genuine discussion." The comments led to an uproar and, according to an official statement, Reiss and the Royal Society agreed they he should step down immediately to prevent further "damage to the society's reputation."
Today, Reiss, an evolutionary biologist, ordained Church of England minister, and professor of science education at the University of London’s Institute of Education, stands by his comments. He says he had thought long and hard about the issue of dealing with creationism in science class—and "had taken a considerable amount of care to make sure I didn’t put my foot in it"—but given the chance to clarify his views, here's what he says:

My interest has always been what to do if a pupil brings up creationism as a reason for not accepting evolution or the cosmological account of the origins of the Universe. If a science teacher doesn’t want to discuss it, they shouldn’t have to, and that’s fine. But supposing a teacher does feel comfortable allowing other children to discuss it. Providing it’s a scientific discussion, about evidence, then I think its a great opportunity to get pupils to understand how scientific knowledge builds up. Too many 14 and 15-year-olds find school science uninteresting. So if anyone asks a genuine question, we should use that question as a vehicle for teaching good science.
In the same way that PE teachers spend time thinking about how to deal with children who are too embarrassed to do sports, or who think they can’t catch, or can’t swim, biology educators have to deal with pupils whose beliefs contradict the scientific viewpoint. That’s what teaching is all about. Anyone can teach the one child in 20 who loves science—the real challenge is to help the other pupils to understand it and perhaps come to love it.

Reiss is what you might call a theistic evolutionist: He separates himself from those who interpret Genesis literally—"good religion," he says, doesn't make scientific claims—yet he sees evolution as "God’s work" and science as the "outworking of God’s activity." And he fully believes it's possible to hold both a scientific and religious worldview at the same time.
As he tells The Times:

Our physiological perception of a sunset, using rods and cones, doesn’t take away from the beauty of a sunset. You can have beauty and science, in the same way you can have religion and science, or moral philosophy and science. There’s no clash between them, in my view. ...

But nor do I think I see sunsets any more beautifully than [Nobel Prize-winning chemist] Harry Kroto does, just because I have religious faith. One might see things differently, but religious belief doesn’t make you a morally better person, a nicer person, a wiser person or anything like that.

Reiss will appear tonight at The Times Cheltenham Science Festival, where he'll participate in a discussion about "faith in evolution." —Heather Wax

Hormone Linked to Bonding & Altruism

2009-06-04T07:49:00.011-04:00

Here's an interesting connection between our biology and behavior: Apparently our willingness to risk our life for another person depends on the level of the hormone progesterone in our saliva.
A team of researchers, led by Stephanie Brown and Barbara Fredrickson, have a new paper reporting on the link between progesterone and certain behaviors, like bonding and altruism. Previous research has shown that higher levels of progesterone increase our desire to bond with other people. But according to the new research, it appears there's a feedback loop: Emotionally bonding with others increases our levels of progesterone.
The increased level of this hormone, the researchers say, improves our well-being, reduces our stress and anxiety, and makes us more likely to help other people (even at a cost to ourselves).
As a write-up of the study reports:

According to Brown, the findings are consistent with a new evolutionary theory of altruism which argues that the hormonal basis of social bonds enables people to suppress self-interest when necessary in order to promote the well-being of another person, as when taking care of children or helping ailing family members or friends.

—Heather Wax

New Embryo Bank Would Solve Moral Dilemma

2009-06-03T13:00:00.011-04:00

With approximately half a million embryos left over from in vitro fertilization now frozen and stored in fertility clinics, the question of what to do with them has become a big issue. Most of them will be discarded, donated for scientific research, or given to other couples. (For patients who can't conceive using their own eggs, using pre-existing embryos is more cost-effective than an egg donor, researchers say.)
For some couples, however, none of those three options feel right—yet they can't afford the hundreds of dollars a year its costs to store the embryos—so they're left with a moral dilemma.
Jeanne Loring, director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute in California, thinks she has the answer. She wants to create an embryo bank that would take responsibility for these embryos. And perhaps religious groups that feel strongly about what happens to extra embryos can help cover the costs, she says. These groups, she tells the Religion News Service, "are against using embryos for research but ... they are not offering another solution." —Heather Wax

Debunking 25 Science & Religion Myths

2009-06-03T11:45:00.007-04:00

What do you really know about Galileo's incarceration? Or Einstein's belief in a personal God? And is what you know correct? In a new book of essays, a group of scholars hope to "dispense with the hoary myths that have masqueraded too long as historical truths"—and reframe the science and religion relationship in the process.
Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion includes essays by atheists, agnostics, and Christians, and is edited by Ron Numbers, an historian of science and medicine at the University of Wisconsin.

What You Don't Know You're Good At

2009-06-02T14:41:00.014-04:00

Check out Realise2, a new online test from the Centre of Applied Positive Psychology that identifies your strengths (what you love to do), your learned behaviors (what you do well), and your weaknesses (what you're bad at).
It turns out most of us don't know what our personal strengths are. We're not particularly good at recognizing what we're good at. The cool thing about Realise2 is that it highlights not only your "realized" strengths—the things you'd probably say you do well—but also your "unrealized" strengths, the ones you're not yet marshaling to their full potential. "For those people interested in self-growth, it is interesting to look at the unrealized strengths category ... those that are energizing, but which you use far too seldom." says Robert Biswas-Diener, a positive psychologist and CAPP's program director.
By contrast, "learned behaviors" are skills we're good at, but don't enjoy. We have to watch out for these, the researchers say, because people will often ask us to use these good skills, which drains us over time. Learning how to moderate these behaviors will keep us from burning out, they say, and lead to a happier, more fulfilling life.
Realise2 is a sophisticated test, with 180 questions, so it takes a while to get through, but the payoff is an in-depth feedback report and program that helps you chart personal growth and manage your weaknesses. It costs about 25 dollars to take, but a portion of the fee goes to The Strengths Project, CAPP's positive psychology charitable mission in Kolkata, India. —Heather Wax

Germans Tweet the Bible

2009-06-02T07:28:00.008-04:00

A group of German Protestants have summarized the entire Bible on Twitter. Theologians divided up the text into 3,906 sections and more than 3,000 people turned the verses into tweets (mini blogs of no more than 140 characters). All of the tweets were the posted in order on a Web site and will be published as a book for the Frankfurt book fair in October.
As Melanie Huber, manager of initiative's Web site, explains:

We want with this action to encourage a debate about the Bible and to simultaneously show the modern possibilities that exist to receive and make known the word of God.

Rhetoric vs. Science

2009-06-01T13:51:00.010-04:00

FROM KARL GIBERSON: I have been perusing the new anti-evolutionary Web site from the Discovery Institute, Faith+Evolution. This new site appears to be a frontal assault on the new BioLogos Web site, launched a few weeks ago by Dr. Francis Collins and the BioLogos team, of which I am a member.
The Faith+Evolution site, like most of the products from the Discovery Institute is slick, well-resourced, rhetorically clever, profoundly misleading, and almost completely devoid of any real science.
Take the opening video, with vignettes from Michael Behe, Paul Nelson, Jonathan Wells, and others. The carefully crafted impression that viewers get from the video is that these scholars represent a viable scientific position that is both held by a meaningful group of scientists—what they optimistically refer to as a “growing minority”—and will be explicated on the site, if viewers choose to dig deeper. But this is completely false, and these confident spokesmen know it. Here is how they know it.
A group of scientists committed to a common idea—a “research program,” as it is often called—generally have similar ideas about the broad outlines of that program. At BioLogos, for example, we all believe that the universe began with a big bang, the Earth is billions of years old, and that all life on the planet is related through common ancestry. In sharing these commitments, we are similar to just about every science department across the country. This shared agreement makes it possible to work together, publish in similar journals, and understand each other’s work. Of course, there is great diversity at the level of detail, which is why scientific progress is so dynamic.
The scholars on the Faith+Evolution site have no such shared agreement. Paul Nelson is a young earth creationist who believes that everything appeared suddenly on the earth 10,000 years ago. Michael Behe believes that the earth is billions of years old and that all life is related via common ancestry, which Nelson rejects. And Jonathan Wells accepts neither the young earth of Nelson or the common ancestry of Behe. All they agree on is that evolution is wrong. They have no shared basis on which to conduct joint research.
If you compare the presentations on the two Web sites, you will notice something very interesting. At BioLogos, we present solid evidence in favor of evolution. (We believe that God is the creator and that evolution is the name of the creative process.) We do not simply offer anti-design arguments and assume that we win by default. At Faith+Evolution, they produce no evidence for their position, nor do they even describe the “design model” they supposedly all embrace; all they present are arguments against evolution, with the supposed inference that “design” wins if evolution is defeated. In the final analysis, the site is little more than a exercise in rhetoric—how can we frame what looks like a compelling argument for a position that we can’t even articulate to ourselves.

The "Social" Science of Aging

2009-06-01T10:42:00.016-04:00

FROM RABBI RICHARD ADDRESS, UNION FOR REFORM JUDAISM: What allows people to live longer? What are the ”key” components of healthy aging? These are the big questions at the center of the longevity revolution.
Recently, The New York Times carried an interesting piece on the members of California's Laguna Woods Village retirement community who meet daily to play bridge. The mental acuity needed for the game and the social support associated with the activity keep showing up as major elements in healthy aging. Scientists are studying the residents as part of The 90+ Study, which looks at health and brain power in the elderly, and they argue that social connections may help delay the onset of dementia.
Dr. Claudia Kawas, a neurologist at the University of California, Irvine, notes:

There is quite a bit of evidence now suggesting that the more people you have contact with, in your own home or outside, the better you do. Interacting with people regularly, even strangers, uses easily as much brain power as doing puzzles, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is what it’s all about.

There have been longer, longitudinal studies that validate the Laguna Woods data. For more than four decades, Dr. George Vaillant has been the caring keeper of The Study of Adult Development. Started in 1937 as a study of male Harvard University sophomores, the study has tracked the lives of these men and attempted to discover some of the secrets involved in living a long and healthy life. Vaillant recorded much of the results in his book Aging Well and the details of his work are discussed in June's Atlantic Monthly. Like the Laguna Woods study, his research also highlights the importance of social connections. According to the article, Vaillant has found a number of factors that predict healthy aging, including a stable marriage, not smoking or abusing alcohol, regular exercise, and education, yet he once wrote that, “It is social aptitude not intellectual brilliance or parental social class that leads to successful aging." And in a 2008 newsletter to the subjects of his study, he said the research has taught him, "That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”
It's lovely: The science of aging begins and ends with the relationships we create with other people. These relationships build a strong social support, which goes a long way toward maintaining physical and psychological health and a positive outlook, regardless of the number of years we have lived.

Americans Don't Like to Challenge Their Views

2009-06-01T02:01:00.001-04:00

People with stronger party affiliation and conservative political views are more likely to read media messages that present viewpoints that challenge or contradict their own, according to a new study in the journal Communication Research. “It appears that people with these characteristics are more confident in their views and so they’re more inclined to at least take a quick look at the counterarguments,” notes Ohio State University communication professor Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, who worked on the study. But, she adds, “they’re not looking for insights that might change their mind.”
Overall, Americans spend 36 percent more time reading articles that reinforce their point of view than reading articles that challenge their viewpoint, the researchers found. When we do read articles that challenge our preexisting views, we almost always balance that with reading articles whose messages support our opinions. In general, we don't want our views “to be challenged by seriously considering other viewpoints," Knobloch-Westerwick says.
When volunteers were given five minutes to read an online magazine that had pro and con articles on four hot-button topics (gun ownership, abortion, health-care regulation, and minimum wage), most of them chose to read only articles that agreed with their current beliefs. While some volunteers read articles from both perspectives on an issue, very few people read only articles that challenged their opinions.
What does this mean for the escalating culture war between science and faith? If people choose to read and listen only to messages they already agree with—which often contain rhetoric that's hostile toward the other side— it can make them more extreme in their viewpoints, Knobloch-Westerwick says, and make tolerance and compromise less likely. “Citizens really should be weighing and monitoring diverse arguments in order to make informed decisions," she says. "Unfortunately, that’s not happening as often as it should." —Heather Wax

Eternal Life Is Like What?

2009-05-29T12:07:00.012-04:00

FROM V.V. RAMAN, EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS AND HUMANITIES AT THE ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: Eternal life, as a mere persistence of life here on Earth, could be very boring. But then, considering that old age doesn’t have to be boring, if there are things to do and experiences that one enjoys, whether it's listening to music, eating chocolates, reading romance novels, or tending to gardens, never-ending life could be a welcome permanence.
We may trivialize the concept by saying that it all depends on the phase and health of life at which this imagined eternal existence is going to be. If it is going to be in the sort of physical body we are accustomed to in the prime of salubrious life, with refreshing showers, decent wardrobes, and variation in breakfast cereal and dinner menu, with near and dear ones within reach, it would be ideal.
We may say that our images can be eternal (whether as fading photographs or on YouTube), by which we mean existence of form and sound for others to see and hear as long as technology and terrestrial civilization last. Likewise, there is immortality in the ideas and discoveries left behind. In recent decades, some physicists have argued that eternal life is a distinct possibility for us all in cyberspace. Like alchemists of ancient times, one might concoct any theory to make ourselves live in saecula saeculorum: forever and ever, to use a biblical phrase from Galatians.
The temporal view of eternity was expressed by the poet Bayard Taylor:

Till the sun grows old,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of Judgment Book unfold.

Eternal life is a sophisticated theological concept, which has little to do with physical time. It is related to the doctrine that we are all endowed with a soul. The soul may be envisioned as an intangible supernatural entity that can exist beyond space-time, with an innate connection to an Eternal Being. The general religious belief is that in the postmortem phase, eternal life would be ecstatic for the soul that attains the celestial realm.
The eternity of which religions speak is holistic existence that transcends ticking time. As Robert Neville put it in his book Eternity and Time’s Flow, “eternity is the togetherness of past, present, and future in which they are all equally real and in which each allows the others to be what they are precisely in their temporal difference, … eternity is an eternal togetherness.” In the imagery of poet John Donne, who described time as a short parenthesis in eternity, we may say that our physical life is an even shorter parenthesis within that parenthesis. Thus, eternal life would involve jumping out of two parentheses into an ocean without bounds. Another poet noted that in mystic moments, we are watching the shadows of eternity. In this metaphor, we may say that eternal life would be moving from sheltered shade to dazzling sunshine.
From a mathematical perspective, the only things of whose eternal life we can be rationally certain (not in the temporal sense but in their continued actualization ad infinitum) are the values of pi and other transcendental numbers that go on and on and on without end in their decimal mode, and the integers more generally (1, 2, 3, …). But their eternal life, impressive as it may be, gets to be pretty drab after a while.

V.V. Raman appears with Richard Swinburne, J.P. Moreland, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Neil Gillman, Michael Tooley, and Huston Smith in "Eternal Life Is Like What?" the 38th episode in the Closer to Truth: Cosmos, Consciousness, God TV series. The series airs on PBS World (often Thursdays, twice) and many other PBS and noncommercial stations. Every Friday, participants discuss a recent episode.

Bye Bye, Don McLeroy

2009-05-29T09:55:00.013-04:00

Encouraging news out of Texas this morning: The state Senate has voted Don McLeroy out as chair of the State Board of Education. Gov. Rick Perry had reappointed McLeroy for another two-year term, and while the vote to confirm him was 19–11 (all Republicans v. Democrats), a two-thirds majority is needed.
McLeroy, a dentist who has been chairman of the board for almost two years, is well-known as a young earth creationist, and it seems a number of board members were deeply concerned with his divisiveness and continuous attempts to undermine the treatment of evolution in the state's science standards. During the most recent debate in March—while pushing an amendment that would require students to "describe the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record"—he famously (and shockingly!) told board members, "Somebody's got to stand up to experts!" and "Science doesn't operate on consensus."

McLeroy will remain a board member, and the governor will now have to pick a new nominee. —Heather Wax

NASA Nominee Says S&R Are Compatible

2009-05-28T12:24:00.006-04:00

"Religion and science don’t conflict with each other—they are mutually supportive,” former astronaut Charles Bolden Jr. told Baylor College of Medicine graduates earlier this week, speaking publicly for the first time since being nominated to lead NASA.

Religion "Neutrality" Bill in South Carolina

2009-05-28T08:11:00.013-04:00

Republican Senator Michael Fair has introduced a new bill into the South Carolina Senate that would require the State Board of Education to look at the curriculum that "purports to teach students about the origins of mankind to determine whether the curriculum maintains neutrality toward religion, favoring neither one religion over other religions, nor religion over non-religion, including atheism. Related to non-religion, the examination must include a review as to whether the curriculum contains a sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus preferring those who believe in no religion over those who hold religious beliefs." Any "offending" curriculum, the bill says, will then be revised or replaced as soon as is feasible.
Keep in mind two things: There are many scientists who assert that evolution is not an atheistic principle; you can both accept evolution and believe in God. And Fair has previously pushed for teaching alternatives to evolution (like the religious ides of "intelligent design") in the state's public school science classrooms.
The bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Education, likely for review next year. —Heather Wax

Is Caring About Climate Change in Our Genes?

2009-05-27T13:26:00.016-04:00

A few years ago, Bill McKibben wrote a piece for Science & Spirit magazine in which he explained that "we've spent 99 percent of our life as a species living in a world where you had to react instantly to procure dinner (or to avoid becoming dinner). It is, therefore, extremely difficult for us to take action against, say, global warming because the dangers are a few years away, and the costs are immediate, and we're just not built that way."
He's right. For the most part, we're designed to live in the present, and we attach greater value to immediate rewards than future rewards. But in a new paper, researcher Peter Sozou reports that in some cases, our biology seems designed for the long term. Sozou used a mathematical model to look at how we value future benefits and found that we discount future personal benefits more than we discount future benefits for our community.
As Sozou notes:

This analysis shows that the social discount rate is generally lower than the private discount rate. An individual’s valuation of a future benefit to herself is governed by the probability that she will still be alive in [the] future. But she may value future benefits to her community over a timescale considerably longer than her own lifespan.
Evolution is driven by competition. Caring about the future of your community makes evolutionary sense to the extent that future members of your community are likely to be your relatives.

In today's world, Sozou believes, this preference for social benefits and our innate tendency to care about the long-term future of our communities translates into caring about the future of the planet as a whole and taking actions against global problems like climate change. —Heather Wax

Don't Worry, We're Optimistic By Nature

2009-05-26T15:51:00.014-04:00

Humans are universally optimistic, according to a new study from the University of Kansas and the Gallup World Poll. More than 150,000 people in more than 140 countries were polled, and 89 percent say they expect the next five years to be as good or better than their life now. An even higher number—95 percent—expect their life five years from now to be as good or better than their life was five years ago.
Still, some countries are more optimistic than others. Ireland, Brazil, Denmark, and New Zealand are at the top, while Zimbabwe, Egypt, Haiti, and Bulgaria are at the bottom. The United States ranks 10th.

Francis Collins Is Top Candidate to Lead NIH

2009-05-26T11:19:00.010-04:00

It looks like Dr. Francis Collins—a familiar name to regular readers of this blog—will be running the National Institutes of Health. According to someone familiar with the selection process, Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and most recently the founder of The BioLogos Foundation, is the leading candidate, and screening is in the final stages.
Collins became a Christian in his 20s "after realizing that his atheist perspective was unable to provide answers to profound questions about the meaning of life, and was inconsistent with observation about the nature of the universe and of humankind," according to the BioLogos Web site. In his 2006 best-selling book The Language of God, he shared how he found harmony between his scientific and religious worldviews, and he launched BioLogos last month to address the country's culture war between science and faith.
Stay tuned: The announcement from President Barack Obama could come this week. —Heather Wax