Governor Rick Perry has chosen another creationist, Republican Gail Lowe, to chair the State Board of Education. (Perry had first reappointed current chair Don McLeroy, a well-known young earth creationist, but the state Senate voted him out.) Lowe will serve as chairman until February 2011, just after the Texas Legislature reconvenes.
As with McLeroy, many are concerned about Lowe's divisiveness and her past attempts to undermine the treatment of evolution in the state's science standards. She repeatedly voted for changes to the curriculum that would water down evolution instruction, including having kids discuss the "strengths and weaknesses" of the theory. (Keep in mind that evolution is not a point of controversy or debate in the scientific community.)
As Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, notes:

It's disappointing that instead of choosing a mainstream conservative who could heal the divisions on the board, the governor once again appointed someone who repeatedly has put political agenda ahead of the education of Texas schoolchildren. Ms. Lowe has marched in lockstop with a faction of board members who believe that their personal beliefs are more imporatant than the experience and expertise of teachers and academics who have dedicated their careers to educating our children and helping them succeed. We can only hope that she will rise above her history on the board and as chair keep fellow members from continuing to hold the education of our children hostage to divisive "culture war" battles.

Creation, the Charles Darwin biopic starring Paul Bettany, will open the 34th annual Toronto International Film Festival on September 10. (Jennifer Connelly, Bettany's real-life wife, plays his on-screen wife Emma). The movie, directed by Jon Amiel, is based on the book Annie's Box by Randal Keynes, Darwin's great-great grandson.
As TIFF CEO and director Piers Handling explained the decision:

The tension between faith and reason is prominent in contemporary culture and this intimate look at Darwin puts a human face on a man whose theory remains controversial to this day. We are pleased to open the festival with such an impassioned look at Charles Darwin, especially on the year marking the 200th anniversary of his birth.

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)

"People sometimes say that science is about facts and religion is simply about opinion, but that's to make a double mistake actually," the Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, a physicist, theologian, and Anglican priest, recently told ABC Radio National in Australia. "There are no interesting scientific facts that are not already interpreted facts, and to interpret what's being measured, you have to use theoretical opinions. So there's a very subtle exchange between theory and experiment in science, which means its conclusions are never absolutely certain but well-justified. Similarly, religion isn't just a question of shutting your eyes, gritting your teeth, and believing impossible things on some unquestionable authority. It's also concerned with the search for truth through motivated belief, but it's a different level and kind of truth, and so it's motivations are a different kind of motivation. But I think, under the skin, science and religion are cousins in the search for truth."

Unscientific America, the new book from science writer Chris Mooney and marine biologist Sheril Kirshenbaum (which in part deals with the gap between science and the public in the religious arena), has hit bookshelves. You've seen the early reviews. You've heard the authors and PZ Myers are going at it. Perhaps you've seen Mooney and science writer Carl Zimmer discuss the the book on Bloggingheads.tv. Now, judge for yourself.

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)

Robert Short, the Presbyterian minister and theologian who is said to have initiated the study of religion through popular culture (with his 1965 best-selling book The Gospel According to Peanuts), died on July 6 in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was 76.