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.

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).

Check out Hardball host Chris Matthews asking Republican Rep. Mike Pence from Indiana some very interesting—and pointed—questions about his party's views on some of the big science and religion issues.
Pence, for his part, won't say whether he believes in evolution, but does say that he thinks "in our schools we should teach all of the facts about all of these controversial areas and let our students, let our children and our children's children decide based upon the facts."
Keep in mind that evolution (like climate change) is not a point of "controversy" or debate in the scientific community—and regular readers of this blog will recognize Pence's response as a variation of the "teach the controversy" and "academic freedom" arguments that are so often used by "intelligent design" supporters hoping to get religious ideas like creationism and ID taught in public school science classrooms.
Still, Pence fought Matthews on his characterization of the Republican party as anti-science, calling it a "caricature" that's "a little bit weak." —Heather Wax

Check out the first installment of a cool new project that the Templeton Foundation has launched with philosopher and journalist Robert Wright and Bloggingheads.tv. It's called "Percontations" (an inquiry that requires more than a yes or no answer), and it will be a weekly video exchange on life's "big questions." Here, Jesse Bering, a psychologist and director of the Institute of Cognition & Culture at Queen's University Belfast, and Joshua Knobe, a philosopher at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, engage in a smart, fascinating conversation about why we're religious.

Biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins has released the full, uncut version of his interview with Father George Coyne, former director of the Vatican Observatory and a proponent of the compatibility of science and religion. The interview was filmed for Dawkins' TV miniseries, The Genius of Charles Darwin, but didn't make it into the program. Enjoy: The conversation is open, honest, civil, thoughtful, and interesting.

Evolutionary biologist and very vocal atheist Richard Dawkins says he's planning to become a children's author. In an interview with Britain’s More4 News, Dawkins, who recently retired as the Charles Simonyi Professor in the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, says he wants to write a book that explores children’s relationships with fairy tales and myths, and whether these stories affect their ability to think about the world rationally and scientifically.
Bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards and things turning into other things is "unscientific" and "anti-scientific," he says. "Whether that has a pernicious effect, I don't know."
Dawkins says he will "look at mythical accounts of various things and also the scientific account of the same thing. And the mythical accounts that I will look at will be several different myths of which the Judeo-Christian one will just be one of many. And the scientific one will be substantiated by appeals to the children to think for themselves, to look at the evidence. Always look at the evidence." —Heather Wax

Not able to attend the upcoming "Open and Relational Theology Engaging Science" seminar at Azusa Pacific University next weekend? Thanks to Open Theology's YouTube channel, you can still watch some of the biggest names in science and religion discuss and debate this new field of research. The channel contains free, full-length lectures from scholars like the Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne (at last summer's open theology conference in the clip above) and theologian Clark Pinnock. More videos will be posted on the channel in the coming weeks, so check back regularly. —Stephen Mapes