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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)