NewsTrust - Science and Religion - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

When God is Watching, People Are More Generous.

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Psychology Today - By Gad Saad - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - One argument in support of religiosity is that it makes people more moral. I am not particularly moved by this premise, as I find it a lot more impressive to be ethical, moral, kind, honest, and decent for reasons other than the fact that a "celestial dictator" (to borrow Christopher Hitchens' brilliant term) is watching over me. Moral and immoral acts are committed both by atheists and believers so neither group holds a monopoly over either form of behaviors.

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Atheism: class is a distraction

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Carlo Strenger - Oct. 15 (Opinion) - Reading through some of the contributions on class and atheism I am struck by a glaring omission. Brown's opening salvo has been to argue that atheism can be a class thing worn for the status it presumably imparts in certain circles – thus implying that there might not be an intrinsic, intellectual reason for choosing atheism. Nick Spencer shows that there is indeed a correlation between educational level and atheism. In the US this phenomenon is far more pronounced: a recent Pew survey shows that among scientists in the US only one-third believe in God, as opposed to 83% in the general population.

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Bob McChesney interviews Chris Mooney, blogger for Discover Magazine and author of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

will.illinois.edu - By Bob McChesney, Chris Mooney - Sep. 13 (Interview) - Chris Mooney is a visiting associate in the Center for Collaborative History at Princeton University and the author of The Republican War on Science, Storm World and, with Sheril Kirshenbaum, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. Chris's blog can be found at blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection

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Reporting From the Front Lines of the Texas Evolution Debate

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Juli Berwald - Apr. 01 (Opinion) - Just hours before the Texas State Board of Education held its final hearings on the science education standards that would be put in place for the next decade, I set my kitchen timer for three minutes. I practiced my testimony among open jars of peanut butter and jelly strewn about from making kids' lunches. Ding. I still had my conclusion to read. What could I cut? For months I had been slinking around the controversy in Texas. I had gone to every public hearing, sitting on the floor in the back of the packed room. Behind rows of folding chairs, I had gotten to know the voices, if not the faces, of the board members. At issue was the wording of a science standard that states students must be taught the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. Since Kansas passed similar legislation in 2005 and Dover, Pennsylvania, in 2006, scientists have viewed these three words as a means for inserting the creationist theology that goes under the name "intelligent design" into science classes.

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Creationism Feels Right, but That Doesn't Make it So

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Scientific American - By Jesse Bering - Mar. 22 (Review) - Presently I’m attending a small symposium on “Belief and Reason” at Trinity College, Cambridge, being sponsored by the Perrott-Warrick Fund. It’s a rather intimate affair with mostly cognitive scientists discussing the latest research and theory on everything from paranormal beliefs to free will to the placebo effect. One of the standout talks Monday was by Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, who gave a presentation titled “Is Religion Natural?” He focused on the puzzling case of creationist beliefs.

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Mind Matters

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Steven Johnson, Jonah Lehrer - Mar. 18 (Review) - Most great stories revolve around decisions: the snap brilliance of Captain Sullenberger choosing to land his plane in the Hudson, or Dorothea’s prolonged, agonizing choice of whether to forsake her husband for true love in “Middlemarch,” or your parents’ oft-told account of the day they decided to marry. There is something powerfully human in the act of deliberately choosing a path; other animals have drives, emotions, problem-solving skills, but none rival our capacity for self-consciously weighing all the options, imagining potential outcomes and arriving at a choice. As George W. Bush might have put it, we are a species of deciders.

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The God of Eth (Skeptical Inquirer September/October 2005)

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

csicop.org - By Stephen Law - Feb. 14 (Advocacy) - Most people who believe in God assume their belief to be pretty reasonable. “Perhaps God’s existence can’t be conclusively proved,” they’ll say, “but it’s a fairly sensible thing to believe—far more sensible than, say, belief in fairies or Santa Claus.” But are they right? Christians, Muslims, and Jews all believe that God is both all-powerful and all-good. Indeed, God is often characterized as an infinitely loving father. Yet most of the popular arguments for the existence of God allow us to deduce little if anything about his moral character. Take the argument from design, for example. Even if it can be shown that the universe does show signs of design, what’s the evidence that its creator is all-good? There is also a well-known argument that, even if the universe was created by an all-powerful being, that being is not all-good. The argument is called the problem of evil, and runs roughly as follows: if God is both all-powerful and all-good, why is there so much suffering in the world? Why does God inflict earthquakes, floods, famines, and the Black Death upon us? Why does he give small children cancer? Why does he make life so grindingly miserable for so many? Why does he arrange for millions of us to end our lives horrendously scarred—in many cases both physically and psychologically crippled—by the world he created for us? This hardly sounds like the behavior of a supremely compassionate and loving father figure, does it? Surely, there’s overwhelming evidence that the universe is not under the control of a limitlessly powerful and benevolent character.

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The Darwins' marriage of science and religion

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Deborah Heiligman - Jan. 29 (Opinion) - Although they never were able to see eye-to-eye on the question of religion and God, they were able to reach their hands across the gulf. In the end, each of them accepted and, it seems, truly understood what the other believed. If it is a sign of intelligence to be able to hold two opposite thoughts or opinions in your head, then it is a mark of a successful marriage to be able to truly see the other person's point of view. This is also the mark of a successful society.

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Why should I respect these oppressive religions?

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Jan. 28 (Editorial) - The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated 60 years ago that "a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief is the highest aspiration of the common people". It was a Magna Carta for mankind – and loathed by every human rights abuser on earth.

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Divine Impulses: Kath Jefferts Schori

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - Dec. 22 (Interview) - The presiding bishop of the Episcopal church talks about homosexuality as a gift and the future of her church

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A sustainable world

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Christian Century - By James Halteman - Dec. 16 (Review) - Speth devotes an entire chapter to research showing that material growth not only fails to enhance human welfare but in many cases diminishes the quality of life. When workers migrate in search of higher pay and living standards, families and communities are fractured. Lonely people are surrounded by goods, the production of which has destroyed the environment. Much of this production has come from large corporations which are legally and socially constructed in ways that give them power in markets and policy circles where the interests of the wealthy are promoted first. Sensitivity to social concerns is low on the list of goals for most corporations, according to Speth. That is why it is appropriate to change the rules of the game so corporations are not privileged in their operations. But regulations that achieve this goal are not enough. Mere tinkering with incentives will have only a limited impact on the environmental crisis.

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Equating evolution with atheism will turn Muslims against science

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Salman Hameed - Dec. 12 (Opinion) - The next battle between science and Creationism is likely to take place in the Muslim world, argues Salman Hameed today in the US journal Science. Here, he suggests how scientists should approach the debate

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