NewsTrust - Science and Religion - Most Recent Stories: News

God, the Army, and PTSD

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Boston Review - By Tara McKelvey - Nov. 11 (Special Report) - During the Iraq war, however, the great difficulty veterans experienced in getting psychiatric care—greater than before—was not a product of cost-cutting, but of conviction: many Bush administration officials believed that soldiers who supported the war would not face psychological problems, and if they did, they would find comfort in faith. In a resigned tone, one prominent researcher who worked for the VA, and asked that he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press, explained that high-ranking officials believed that “Jesus fixes everything.” Benimoff and the others who returned with devastating psychological injuries found a faith-based bureau within the VA. At veterans’ hospitals, chaplains were conducting spirituality assessments of patients.

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Scientists in a flap over dinosaur nesting

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

bozemandailychronicle.com - By Gail Schontzler - Aug. 11 (News Report) - The science of the living and the science of the dead clashed Monday at a Museum of the Rockies symposium on dinosaur nesting and whether the creatures brooded on their nests like gigantic chickens. It was all very civilized, but it was hard not to miss a few feathers flying.

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Culture Wars Hit History Classes in Texas

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Stephanie Simon - Jul. 15 (News Report) - The curriculum culture wars have taken a new twist, with a brewing controversy in Texas about how much of the Bible belongs in American history.

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The Healing Power Of Prayer?

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ScienceDaily - Jun. 21 (News Report) - Health and religion have always been intertwined, most obviously through prayer on behalf of the sick. Does intercessory prayer for sick people actually help heal them? For thousands of years some people have believed so. But new Brandeis University research in the Journal of Religion this month shows that over the last four decades, medical studies of intercessory prayer—the prayer of strangers at a distance—actually say more about the scientists conducting the studies than about the power of prayer to heal.

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Report: Violence common among Scientology managers

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

seattlepi.com - Jun. 21 (News Report) - The leader of the Church of Scientology struck his subordinates numerous times and set an example for physical violence among the tightly controlled religion's management team, four former high-ranking executives told a newspaper for a story published Sunday.

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Homosexual behaviour widespread in animals according to new study - Telegraph

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Telegraph - By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent - Jun. 18 (News Report) - The pairing of same sex couples had previously been observed in more than 1,000 species including penguins, dolphins and primates. However, in the latest study the authors claim the phenomenon is not only widespread but part of a necessary biological adaptation for the survival of the species.

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Of trust and science

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Stephanie Desmon - Apr. 05 (News Report) - On a recent morning they knocked on Mary Ann Stoltzfus' door, the research nurse and her Amish helper, just as they have on so many doors over the years. They didn't call ahead - most Amish don't have telephones. They tracked down Stoltzfus the old-fashioned way: They asked her mother-in-law for the address when they ran into her. There were consent forms to sign, nosy medical questions to ask. The pair turned Stoltzfus' kitchen into a makeshift doctor's office, where nurse Theresa Roomet drew five vials of blood as the 40-year-old mother of six rested her elbow on the lacy tablecloth.

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Brains of Steele

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Chip Giller - Mar. 16 (News Report) - OMG. RNC Chair Michael Steele (i.e., the titular head of the GOP) says that global warming is really "global cooling." Sam Stein at HuffPost excavates Steele's thoughts on global warming from his little-noticed stint as guest host of a conservative talk radio show on March 6:

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Obama Aims to Shield Science From Politics

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Rob Stein - Mar. 09 (News Report) - the president believes that it is particularly important to sign this memorandum so that we can put science and technology back at the heart of pursuing a broad range of national goals.

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Born believers: How your brain creates God

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New Scientist - By Michael Brooks - Mar. 04 (Special Report) - That's not to say that the human brain has a "god module" in the same way that it has a language module that evolved specifically for acquiring language. Rather, some of the unique cognitive capacities that have made us so successful as a species also work together to create a tendency for supernatural thinking. "There's now a lot of evidence that some of the foundations for our religious beliefs are hard-wired," says Bloom.

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The Wholesale Sedation of America’s Youth

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

csicop.org - By Andrew M. Weiss - Feb. 20 (Investigative Report) - In the winter of 2000, the Journal of the American Medical Association published the results of a study indicating that 200,000 two- to four-year-olds had been prescribed Ritalin for an “attention disorder” from 1991 to 1995. Judging by the response, the image of hundreds of thousands of mothers grinding up stimulants to put into the sippy cups of their preschoolers was apparently not a pretty one. Most national magazines and newspapers covered the story; some even expressed dismay or outrage at this exacerbation of what already seemed like a juggernaut of hyper-medicalizing childhood. The public reaction, however, was tame; the medical community, after a moment’s pause, continued unfazed. Today, the total toddler count is well past one million, and influential psychiatrists have insisted that mental health prescriptions are appropriate for children as young as twelve months. For the pharmaceutical companies, this is progress. In 1995, 2,357,833 children were diagnosed with ADHD (Woodwell 1997)—twice the number diagnosed in 1990. By 1999, 3.4 percent of all American children had received a stimulant prescription for an attention disorder. Today, that number is closer to ten percent. Stimulants aren’t the only drugs being given out like candy to our children. A variety of other psychotropics like antidepressants, antipsychotics, and sedatives are finding their way into babies’ medicine cabinets in large numbers. In fact, the worldwide market for these drugs is growing at a rate of ten percent a year, $20.7 billion in sales of antipsychotics alone (for 2007, IMSHealth 2008).

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The Biology of Belief

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Time - By Jeffrey Kluger - Feb. 12 (Special Report) - Most folks probably couldn't locate their parietal lobe with a map and a compass. For the record, it's at the top of your head — aft of the frontal lobe, fore of the occipital lobe, north of the temporal lobe. What makes the parietal lobe special is not where it lives but what it does — particularly concerning matters of faith. If you've ever prayed so hard that you've lost all sense of a larger world outside yourself, that's your parietal lobe at work. If you've ever meditated so deeply that you'd swear the very boundaries of your body had dissolved, that's your parietal too. There are other regions responsible for making your brain the spiritual amusement park it can be: your thalamus plays a role, as do your frontal lobes. But it's your parietal lobe — a central mass of tissue that processes sensory input — that may have the most transporting effect.

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Abstinence-Only Clowns?! Your Federal Tax Dollars at Work

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Amanda Terkel - Jan. 16 (Special Report) - Thanks to George W. Bush and a complicit Congress, we currently spend $1.5 billion a year to fund abstinence-only until marriage sex education in our public schools. And yes, that money goes to people like Derek Dye, as he is employed by the Elizabeth New Life Center that received a $800,000 CBAE grant in 2007 to promote abstinence until marriage.

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Spirituality Spot Found in Brain - Yahoo! News

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Yahoo! News - By Robin Nixon - Dec. 24 (News Report) - The area in question - the right parietal lobe - is responsible for defining "Me," said researcher Brick Johnstone of Missouri University. It generates self-criticism, he said, and guides us through physical and social terrains by constantly updating our self-knowledge: my hand, my cocktail, my witty conversation skills, my new love interest ...

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Judge in Miami Rules Florida Ban on Gay Adoption Unconstitutional

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

U.S. News & World Report - By Amanda Ruggeri - Nov. 25 (News Report) - A 1977 Florida state law that bans gay individuals from adopting has received its biggest challenge thus far: Foster father Frank Martin Gill won his suit to adopt two brothers he has been fostering since 2004. In her decision this morning, Miami Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman ruled that there was no "rational basis" to prevent the children from being adopted. The case, which marks the first time that a gay adoption case has been taken before a trial court in Florida, seems likely to go before the Florida Supreme Court, which could overturn the ban.

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