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

It is possible to build a religion based on science and nature rather than on God and sacred texts? And if so, would this new scientific religion be better than our current religions? These are the questions Karl Giberson, a physics professor at Eastern Nazarene College (and a regular contributor to this blog), asks in a piece posted today on Salon.com. We need to recognize that science is also a belief system, says Giberson, and its loudest, brashest advocates— namely, biologist PZ Myers, chemist Peter Atkins, and other leaders of the "new atheism" movement—are our "new preachers," trying to turn science into a replacement for religion.
Giberson doesn't really think science can or will be turned into a religion, but he worries that attempts to turn it into the one true belief system will drive a bigger wedge between science and religion. He worries, he says, "about dogmatism and the kind of zealotry that motivates the faithful to blow themselves up, shoot abortion doctors and persecute homosexuals. But I also worry about narrow exclusiveness that champions the scientific way of knowing to the exclusion of all else. I don't like to see science turned into a club to bash religious believers."
Myers has already responded, and the piece continues to elicit comments, many of them hostile and many of them saying that Giberson lacks a fundamental understanding of science—which, by its very nature, could never and will never be made into a religion. We asked the author for his own comment, and here's what he had to say:

"This has been an eye-opener for me. The public atheists—Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Weinberg, etc.—are very civilized. In debates they are polite and restrained, and their writings, while critical, have a certain sophistication to them. They have always seemed like good citizens of the worldwide intellectual community. When I was on some NPR show with Dennett, he was most diplomatic, listened carefully, referred to me in flattering terms. I might disagree with him, but he doesn't seem dangerous or hostile. And, for all his bluster, Dawkins is really fine. In his debates with McGrath, he is most polite and restrained.
In contrast to these guys, the public religious leaders don't come off so well. Think of John Hagee, the horrible Fred Phelps, Ken Ham, James Dobson, etc.
But, I knew the comparison was not fair. Dawkins is a world class intellectual, as is Dennett and Weinberg. We can't compare them to people like Dembski and certainly not to John Hagee or Ken Ham.
The people assaulting me on Salon.com seem uninformed, mean-spirited, and closed-minded. I would worry if they were in charge of the country, just as I would worry if the Christian fundamentalists were in charge."

Thanks, Karl, as always, for your candor. —Heather Wax

A new study claims that religion may have helped prevent the spread of disease among ancient humans by dividing people and reducing the likelihood that they'd pass infections to one another. When religious beliefs kept one group apart from its neighbors, the theory goes, members of the group were less likely to pick up new diseases and, generation after generation, the group's genetic makeup would change.
The scientists, Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, believe their study explains the genesis of religious diversity—namely, why countries with hotter climates, where disease is more common, have a greater number of different religions than do countries with cooler climates. "Why does Cote d'Ivoire have 76 religions while Norway has 13, and why does Brazil have 159 religions while Canada has 15 even though in both comparisons the countries are similar in size?" the scientists ask.
What they found is that "religion diversity is the highest where disease diversity is also the highest and the lowest where disease diversity is also the lowest," they say in their report.
"Our analysis suggests that the nature of religion needs to be reconsidered," the researchers conclude. Although religion apparently is for establishing a social marker of group alliance and allegiance, at the most fundamental level, it may be for the avoidance and management of infectious disease."
The study appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences. —Heather Wax

A group of 25 European roboticists, developmental psychologists, and neuroscientists have been working together on the Feelix Growing project, trying to develop robots that are more in tune with human emotions and more intelligent and sensitive than ever before. The idea is to build perceptive and caring robots that will be able to learn when a person is happy, sad, or angry, so that they'll be better able to live alongside us. The learning is done through artificial neural networks, with cameras and sensors helping the robots to read facial expressions, tone of voice, and other things associated with different emotional states, and the scientists hope the technology will allow the robots to differentiate cries of pain, for instance, from those of happiness. The ultimate goal is that the robots will learn from experience how best to respond to these emotional cues and adapt their behavior accordingly. —Heather Wax

FROM ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER KIMBERLY ROOTS:
During its nine-season run on television, The X-Files was one of the best places to watch matters of science and religion tangle on camera. Skeptical scientist Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) constantly challenged FBI partner Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) on his belief in what the show lovingly referred to as “extreme possibilities”—aliens, the paranormal, and such. At its best, the Fox drama dabbled in areas as diverse as multiverse theory and faith healing with a isn’t-this-cool? sense of wonder.
Unfortunately, that joyful exploration of the inexplicable is absent from The X-Files: I Want To Believe, director Chris Carter’s second celluloid outing based on the show. The first film, The X-Files: Fight The Future, hit theaters during the series’ run and dealt with a government conspiracy to cover up alien presence on Earth. As such, Mulder and Scully were up to their security badges in the us-against-them fight that continued until the series finale in 2002. Her Catholic faith, paired with her training as a medical doctor, made her the perfect foil for his cocky, outlandish genius. They may have been the “FBI’s most unwanted,” as Mulder liked to joke, but their joint search for truth provided the momentum that kept their professional (and ultimately romantic) story moving forward. Even when we last left the paranoid pair, they were on the lam from an FBI gunning to shut down Mulder’s quest for good.
I Want To Believe picks up six years after the finale, during a bleak West Virginia winter that serves as a gruesome serial killer’s canvas. When a defrocked priest (Billy Connolly) suddenly begins having visions of the murderer’s victims, the FBI contacts Scully—now a doctor at a Catholic hospital straight out of the 1960s—in the hopes of luring Mulder and his atypical insight back to the fold. Though our heroes have sworn off fighting crime, they’re sucked in with relatively little resistance. Too bad the fight’s gone right out of both of them, leaving behind weary protagonists who love each other but would rather be done with the larger mysteries of the universe and human nature.
Amanda Peet and rapper Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner play secondary roles as FBI agents searching for one of their own but serve little purpose; each part’s lines could have been divvied up among no-name actors with audiences none the wiser. On the other hand, series regular Mitch Pileggi both forwards the plot and plays right into an homage to the first movie during his brief scenes as Deputy Director Walter Skinner. Ultimately, though, whether or not the good guys will figure out the killer’s plan—and how it may or may not overlap with Scully’s recent interest in stem cell research—becomes secondary to whether Mulder and Scully can ever truly be happy. For those who always wanted to see those kooky kids settle down, I Want To Believe is a sweet resting point. But fans who enjoyed watching the pair spar over everything from little green (or is it gray?) men to past-life regression may want to hold out hope: The truth, and another sequel, may still be out there.

Publisher's Weekly has released its fall religion book listing and says it's seeing a continuation of many of the trends spotted earlier—namely, books on the relationship between faith and politics and books promoting or criticizing atheism (like A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists by David Myers).
Books that look at the relationship between science and belief also remain popular, with a number of titles looking at how we might find common ground between the two camps.

"How Do We Survive Our Death," a conference exploring personal identity and resurrection, begins today at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. The aim of the conference, according to its Web site, is "to clarify the presuppositions of the belief in life after death: What of our earthly existence continues to live? Which features of the human person are indispensable for surviving death? How can we talk about personal identity on the evidence of death? What does resurrection of the person mean?"
The international conference will host many speakers from the United States, and those familiar with the field of science and religion will recognize a number of the names, including Ted Peters, Robert Russell, and Dean Zimmerman. The conference runs through Friday.