Alexander Todorov, an assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University, and Nikolaas Oosterhof, a research specialist, have built a computer program that will help scientists better analyze why certain human faces evoke trust while others elicit fear. In past studies, the researchers learned that people make instant judgments about a person's face and that these judgments then affect how they feel about the person. "Humans seem to be wired to look to faces to understand the person's intentions," Todorov said in a press release. "People are always asking themselves, 'Does this person have good or bad intentions?'"
Recently, the researchers discovered that these split-second decisions are based on two things: whether a person should be approached or avoided and whether a person seems weak or strong. So they decided to try to define just which facial characteristics—namely, what eye, nose, and mouth placements—make a face seem trustworthy or dominant. The most trustworthy face, the researchers found, has a U-shaped mouth and eyes that look almost surprised, with upturned eyebrows. The most untrustworthy face has a mouth curled down at the edges and eyebrows that also point downward—basically, an angry face. The least dominant faces, they say, have a larger distance between the eyes and eyebrows than other faces do. While you can't control your facial features, the study shows that expressions do matter, which could be an extra important lesson for people whose jobs require a high-level of public interaction (think teachers, politicians, and religious leaders).
The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online. —Heather Wax

"The Atheon: A Temple to Science," an upcoming art installation at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, has won a neighborhood improvement project grant from the University of California, Berkeley Chancellor's Community Partnership Fund. The installation, by conceptual artist Jonathon Keats, will be the first Windows exhibit on the second floor of the Jewish museum's new downtown Berkeley location and "calls forth the fusion of science and religion by building a temple for scientific worship," according to the museum's Web site. From street level, anyone walking by the building will be able to see NASA images of the universe's early years on the building's large vaulted windows, while listening to accompanying sounds on their cell phones. The Atheon exhibit begins September 27 with the start of the museum's new season. —Heather Wax

"The truth is that blind faith in the ability of technology to sustain a growing global population—hard-wired to materialism—that has already breached environmental limits is bonkers," writes Nick Reeves, executive director of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, in a piece on religious environmentalism in today's Guardian. "Faith group leaders must be more vociferous in challenging this—they have unique access to governments and institutions. They must exercise that influence by holding them to account." According to Reeves, who's responding to an earlier profile of Archbishop Bartholomew of Constantinople, a spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians and an environmental campaigner, "faith groups have been silent for too long on this crisis, and should do far more to remind us of our moral duty to restore and protect the fragile ecological balance of the planet." —Heather Wax

The first episode of the three-part TV series The Genius of Charles Darwin, featuring biologist and hard-core atheist Richard Dawkins, aired on BBC last night and the reviews are starting to come in. They're not completely favorable.
"On the one hand, we got a brilliant and heartfelt guide to how Darwin’s ideas developed. On the other, virtually every point was accompanied by a vigorous yet entirely predictable sideswipe at religious believers and their benighted ways," writes James Walton in the Telegraph. "This only had the effect of constantly interrupting the interesting stuff. It was also like watching someone with a sort of anti-religious version of Tourette’s syndrome—and certainly confirmed that the downside of having an obsession is that you become a bit of a bore."
In The Independent, Deborah Orr is even harsher. Though "Dawkins did well in his role as writer and presenter to remain as placid as he did, given his well-known impatience with humans who still believe in such superstitious nonsense as God," she writes, the episode illuminated the fact that, for him, it is not enough that a person accept evolution—a person must also abandon belief in God; believing in both is unacceptable. "What became clear during this first programme," writes Orr, "was that Dawkins is not only a rationalist but is also a literalist. Even deeply religious Christians are happy to consider the Bible to be metaphorical rather than narrative. But he cannot do so. He sticks rigidly to the idea that since the Bible describes the world beginning 6,000 years ago, when really life began four million years ago, God can't exist."
What's perhaps most interesting is that both writers seem to pick up a theme that physicist Karl Giberson wrote about on Salon.com last week—the idea that "new atheists" like Dawkins are becoming, in a sense, our new preachers. It's strange, says Orr, how Dawkins has "come to resemble that which he most despises"—namely, fundementalists and absolutists. "There is something almost biblical in the desire of this high-profile hard-rationalist to smite the unbelievers, and remove them from the face of the earth, using the implacable power of science and reason," she writes.
Walton, too, chooses religious language in describing what he calls Dawkins' "evangelical atheism." According to Walton, the "sight of him looking awestruck as he gazed at a first edition of On the Origin of Species was especially stirring. When he showed us some of Darwin’s own pigeon specimens from the 1850s, he duly handled them like holy relics."
The second episode of the series airs next Monday. —Heather Wax

Historian Marcel Chotkowski LaFollete takes a new look at the Scopes trial—and the role the Science Service played in it— with her book Reframing Scopes. Today, the Science Service is known and revered as the Society for Science & the Public, but back in 1925, it was a young nonprofit, which played a significant role in shaping the trial. According to Science News (published by the group), the Science Service Executive Committee gave reporters 1,000 dollars to cover the trial and supported the defense of John Scopes. Two pioneering science journalists in particular, Watson Davis and Frank Thone, the senior biology editor of the service's newsletters, became liaisons between the defense lawyers and the scientific community, helping to find scientists to comment and testify during the trial and even living among the defense team.
The book takes readers inside the trial from the perspective of these journalists, based on records, the reporters notes and letters, and never-before-seen photographs that LaFollette uncovered at the Smithsonian Institution Archive. "All day and far into the night," Thone reportedly wrote, "the rumble of scientific discussion and laughter issues forth from the Defense mansion, that pleasant old house ... that has become the headquarters for the discussion of science, religion, and freedom." —Heather Wax

New videos are now available on Open Theology's YouTube channel. Take a look at what was discussed during the "Answering the Critics" panel at the spring "Open and Relational Theology Engaging Science" seminar at Azusa Pacific University. The scientists and theologians who participated in the seminar hope to create a new field of science-and-religion research centered around "open theology."
But just what is open theology? We asked Tom Oord, one of the directors of the Open Theology & Science conference and a professor of theology and philosophy at Northwest Nazarene University, for a definition:

"The theological tradition known as Open Theology (a.k.a., Open Theism, Openness Theology) has gained wide attention in Christian theological circles since the 1990s. Reduced to its bare bones, Open Theology affirms that 1) God uniquely exemplifies love, 2) love is the human ethical imperative, 3) God and creatures enjoy free and mutually-influencing relations, 4) and the future is open and not settled. With regard to the fourth point, Open Theology affirms that God knows everything that may possibly happen in the future. But God does not know with absolute certainty what free creatures will actually choose to do."

Given that the movement is still relatively new, it seems some of the finer points, core ideas, and difference of opinions are still being worked out. To the other open theologians out there: What do you think? Does Tom Oord's definition match your own?

What most voters really want to know about the Repulicans campaigning for the Kansas State Board of Education is whether or not they believe in evolution, according to The Topeka Capital Journal. "Everybody wants to talk about evolution and creationism," Bill Pannbacker, a candidate hoping to represent the north-central to northeast of the state, tells the newspaper.
In each board election, half of the ten seats are up for grabs, meaning the makeup of the board can change significantly—and the makeup, history shows, greatly affects the course the board's decision take. In 2005, conservative school board members, who held a majority, pushed through science standards that heavily criticized evolution and refused to define science as a field that deals only with "natural" explanations, basically backing "intelligent design." The standards were changed only after an election altered the makeup of the board, giving power to more moderate and liberal members.
Republican candidates for the general school board election will be decided in a primary on August 5. —Heather Wax