In an interview on ABC's Nightline last night, co-anchor Cynthia McFadden asked President George W. Bush about evolution and creation:

Cynthia McFadden: So you can read the Bible and not take it literally. I mean you can—it's not inconsistent to love the Bible and believe in evolution, say.
George W. Bush: Yeah, I mean, I do. I mean, evolution is an interesting subject. I happen to believe that evolution doesn't fully explain the mystery of life and ...

McFadden: But do you believe in it?
Bush: That God created the world, I do, yeah.

McFadden: But what about ...
Bush: Well, I think you can have both. I think evolution can—you're getting me way out of my lane here. I'm just a simple president. But it's, I think that God created the earth, created the world; I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an almighty and I don't think it's incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution.

Stephen Johnson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and a devout Christian, expressed a similar view in an in-depth profile published in The Philadelphia Inquirer this past weekend. Asked about evolution and creation, Johnson, who majored in biology at Taylor University, an evangelical college, said, "It's not a clean-cut division. If you have studied at all creationism vs. evolution, there's theistic or God-controlled evolution and there's variations on all those themes." —Heather Wax

"I am a person of faith. I'm certainly not an atheist or an agnostic and I see some divine force somewhere," Judge John E. Jones III, who presided over the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, says in a new Q&A with Jane Gitschier in the journal PLoS Genetics. "That said, having had a pretty good education, a great liberal arts education at Dickinson College, I must say that I never had any substantial doubts about evolution generally. I had forgotten, admittedly, a lot of what I had learned about evolution back in college. Moreover, a lot had happened since the '70s, so my understanding was rudimentary. But I never had a crisis of confidence about evolution or a reason to doubt that it constituted a valid theory and good science."

The Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, the religious division of the Center for Inquiry, has launched a new scholarly journal called Caesar (a replacement for the committee's first periodical, the CSER Review). The journal—which, like the CSER, will be humanistic in outlook and secular in perspective—hopes to bring the critical study of "religion and human values" to a wider audience. The goal is to help Americans differentiate between opinion and verifiable fact, and understand how religion affects science and other aspects of their lives. Published twice a year, the journal will cover topics like the history of biblical and Quranic texts, same-sex marriage, stem cell research, and the rise of religious extremism. "Religious illiteracy—not knowing the history of religious traditions, their sacred writings, the development of their core beliefs—has often been defended in the United States on the premise that religious belief is a privileged form of knowledge that transcends scrutiny. But because uninformed views about religion affect public life and ethical debate as much as well-informed views, a vehicle is needed to keep the information level at a high standard," says CSER Chair R. Joseph Hoffman.
"CSER might accept as a working premise that there are two sides to every story. But the history of knowledge depends on knowing when to let go of the wrong one and not to bring it up in every generation as though it still has standing," he says. "Fair representation does not mean that belief in the unverifiable has the same weight as knowing something for certain, and societies have only ever advanced in material terms when they acted on the latter." —Michele Calandra

Religious values significantly influence whether or not people think nanotechnology is morally acceptable and how useful they think it is for society, according to survey results published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. More specifically, a country's general opinion on the morality of nanotechnology correlates directly with the aggregate level of religious views in that country. (Click on image for larger view.)
"The level of 'religiosity' in a particular country is one of the strongest predictors of whether or not people see nanotechnology as morally acceptable," says Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication and lead author of the study. In the United States and European countries in which religion plays a large role in everyday life (Italy, Austria, Ireland), the use of nanotechnology in synthetic biology is generally perceived as immoral, while in more secular countries like Germany and France, people are much less likely to feel the same way.
Back in February, Scheufele and his colleague Elizabeth Corley of Arizona State University released results that showed only 29.5 percent of the 1,015 American adults sampled in their survey said they think the applications of nanotechnology are morally acceptable. This rejection, Scheufele said, seems to comes from the country's strong religious history rather than a lack of knowledge regarding the technology; many with strong religious convictions were well-informed on the subject, he found, but still considered nanotechnology, along with biotechnology and stem cell research, as a way for researchers to "play God."
Scheufele says there "is absolutely no change in what people know about nanotechnology between 2004 and 2007"—possibly in part because people who already hold strong views regarding the technology are not necessarily seeking factual information about it. Overall, he says, the findings show that religiosity serves as a tool for interpreting new technologies—and when people filter their views through religion, it often leads toward broader negative public attitudes toward science. "What we captured is nanospecific, but it is also representative of a larger attitude toward science and technology,"he says. "It raises a big question: What's really going on in our public discourse where science and religion often clash?"
The study, Scheufele writes on his blog, "highlights the importance of values, beliefs, and confirms findings from a number of recent studies (Brossard, Scheufele, Kim, & Lewenstein, forthcoming; Ho, Brossard, & Scheufele, 2008; Kahan, 2008; Nisbet, 2005) that all examine how values shape the interpretation of scientific information. This research shows that the exact same information can translate into very different attitudinal conclusions for highly religious respondents than for nonreligious ones. In other words, we may be wasting valuable time and resources by focusing our efforts on putting more and more information in front of an unaware public, without first developing a better understanding of how different groups will filter or reinterpret this information when it reaches them, given their personal value systems and beliefs." —Heather Wax

FROM ROBERT RUSSELL, FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR THEOLOGY AND THE NATURAL SCIENCES AND A PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE AT THE GRADUATE THEOLOGICAL UNION : Yesterday, I watched the episode of the Closer to Truth series that asks whether science can deal with God, and it's a compelling journey into the hearts and minds of leading scientists whose discoveries about the universe fill us all with wonder and excitement. There is biologist Francis Collins, a devout believer in God, and also physicist Lawrence Krauss, who, though a nonbeliever, candidly reminds us that what science can tell us, though immense, is still in some very important ways intrinsically limited. After all, saying that science makes it possible to not believe in God, which is certainly true, is a far cry from saying that science makes belief in God impossible, which is patently false.
And then there's series host and creator Robert Lawrence Kuhn, a brain scientist, subtly and yet unmistakably welcoming us further and deeper into his personal and moving journey. In a gentle interplay between interviewing others and pondering in solitude, Kuhn's own personal journey was quietly ever there, yearning for truth, weighing arguments and evidence, and deciding at each crossroads which direction to take. And in what may be the most telling moment, Kuhn gives us a challenging insight into what he considers the real demarcation between science from religion: "Scientists, generally, know when their claims are extravagant; theologians, generally, do not." With this sentence, Kuhn has put his finger on a difference between science and religion which, if correct, is starkly more compelling than the reasoned similarities that scholars like Ian Barbour and Nancey Murphy have championed. His claim invites me to probe further with him and discover what might lie hidden within it.
At the outset, it would actually be easy to find counterexamples in which scientific claims, and frequently the scientists who make them, seem wildly incredible compared with religious ones. Consider fundamental particles that are nonseparable even at distances of light-years, or the superstring multiverse composed of 10⁵⁰⁰ universes; the claims that many physicists make today are almost incomprehensibly grander and more mind-boggling than those of their forebears like Maxwell or Newton. Theologians, on the other hand, in the apophatic traditions found in all world religions, stress the ineffability of the ultimate and the abject failure of human language to convey any positive truth about it—be it the schools of kalam in Islam, the Upanishad texts in Hinduism, the account of the ineffable name of God given to Moses, or the Buddha's description of nirvana only in terms of what it is not. Cyril of Jerusalem sums up this multivalent stream of mystical wisdom: Our best knowledge of God comes through confessing our ignorance and remaining in silence.
But counterexamples like these deflect us from what I see as the vital truth that Kuhn urges us to recognize: extravagant claims defending the absolutist truth of a particular religion and the worthlessness of all the others are the real danger, and not the intrinsic truths, such as compassion or humility, contained within the shared treasured wisdom of the world religions. Consider the millennia of destruction that have resulted from the overweening elevation of genuine revelation into ecclesiastical dogma held uncritically and univocally, as even a cursory recollection of the Spanish Inquisition or the 30 Years War in post-Reformation Europe reminds us all too well. It is essential to keep clearly separated the truths that religious experience seeks to convey from the idolatry that results when that truth is held up as literal and absolute. "The Church of God is always betrayed by the churches of God," theologian Paul Tillich once famously proclaimed.
And yet scientists, too, are vulnerable to a similar hubris. When science is valorized as the only route to truth and all other kinds of knowledge are discarded as worthless, when scientific discoveries alone are viewed as telling us all we can know about what is real and that God, not being a part of scientific epistemology, therefore doesn't exist, and when countries like Maoist China or Stalinist Russia build an entire culture on a scientific worldview that excludes all public religious voices, then scientism, not science, bears the stigma of blind extravagance.
So we come to the real question stimulated by Kuhn's provocative comment: Is the temptation to absolutize religion more powerful than it is to absolutize science? In my view, it probably is. Why is this so? That points us in the direction of a HUGE set of interconnected and complex issues, ones which are far too detailed and debatable for further inspection here. But regardless of this, the answer to the following question is certain: Ought we to resist such temptations regardless of whether dogma is disguised as religion or scientism as science? You bet. As Barbour wisely points out, both sides, when they make totalizing claims, need a strong dose of good, down-to-earth humility. Humility provides a space for both the wondrous discoveries of science and the numinous encounters with ultimacy in religious experience. It lets us be grasped by the infinite, while never mistaking ourselves and our opinions for the infinite. Humility is a practice by which both science and religion can point us to that ultimate mystery of existence, a bridge connecting people in both worlds in their common humanity and common quest for understanding. Let our extravagance be a banner celebrating that which genuinely deserves it: the joy and wisdom of knowing that together in modest, mutual, and creative interaction, we are truly coming "closer to truth."

Robert Russell appears with Lawrence Krauss, Francis Collins, Ian Barbour, Alan Leshner, Freeman Dyson, and Michio Kaku in "Can Science Deal With God?" the 13th episode in the Closer to Truth: Cosmos, Consciousness, God TV series, hosted and created by Robert Lawrence Kuhn. The series airs Thursdays on the PBS HD network and many other PBS stations. Every Friday, participants will share their views on the previous day's episode.

In Oklahoma, Representatives Mike Reynolds and Sally Kern, both Republicans from Oklahoma City, have again filed a "religious expression" bill, which they say will protect students who express religious viewpoints in the classroom or assignments from being penalized (or rewarded). The measure, known officially as the "Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act," is essentially the same as a bill that was passed earlier this year by both the House and Senate before being vetoed by Governor Brad Henry.
According to Kern, the "bill does not exempt students from learning the required classroom instruction. If passed, the bill would put already existing U.S. Supreme Court decisions into Oklahoma statutes." But many, including the Oklahoma Science Teachers Association, believe the bill is an attempt to sneak religious ideas into public school science classrooms, given that it "would require full classroom credit to be given to religious explanations of scientific phenomena." In response to the bill filed during last legislative session, the association issued the following statement:

The Oklahoma Science Teachers Association (OSTA) is dedicated to the promotion and development of high quality science education for all students in Oklahoma. The development of a scientifically literate citizenry, conversant in principles and processes of science, is essential for any state or nation to be competitive in a global economy. The effort to grow 21st century industry and agriculture, including Oklahoma’s burgeoning research in nanotechnology and biotechnology, depends on the availability of a scientifically literate workforce that understands the process of posing and testing hypotheses, logically evaluating the results, and expanding our understanding of the natural world. OSTA believes the provisions of HB 2211 hold great potential for harm to the development of scientifically literate citizens in this state. Teachers will be shackled in their efforts to guide students to explore scientific data and explanation and will be forced to give full credence and course credit to viewpoints that have no scientific data or basis. The damage to the credibility of an Oklahoma high school diploma cannot be overstated. While some might posit that examination and exploration of alternative viewpoints is appropriate in a classroom, those ideas that are not scientific and cannot be tested have no place in a science classroom. Under the provisions of this bill, teachers will be required to give full forum to non-scientific viewpoints and will be prevented from explaining that such ideas have no scientific support. Provisions currently in law and expressed in the Constitution give ample protection for religious expression within schools. The Oklahoma Science Teachers Association believes the late Harvard Paleontologist Steven J. Gould’s concept of “Nonoverlapping Magisteria” accurately reflects the interaction of science and religion; both having important, but non-interacting roles in helping us make sense of our place in the physical and spiritual world. HB 2211 actively violates that concept in a direct effort to inject religious viewpoints into public school classrooms and should not be enacted.

Julian Barnes' book Nothing to Be Frightened Of, a "memoir on mortality that touches on faith and science and family," has been named one of the 10 best books of 2008 by The New York Times. "This absorbing memoir traces Barnes’ progress from atheism (at age 20) to agnosticism (at 60) and examines the problem of religion not by rehashing the familiar quarrel between science and mystery, but rather by weighing the timeless questions of mortality and aging," writes the newspaper. "Barnes distills his own experiences—and those of his parents and brother—in polished and wise sentences that recall the writing of Montaigne, Flaubert and the other French masters he includes in his discussion."