TruthBook Religious News Blog

Posted on Sat, Dec. 05, 2009
By David Masci
Los Angeles Times

A century and a half after Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," the overwhelming majority of scientists in the United States accept Darwinian evolution as the basis for understanding how life on Earth developed. But although evolutionary theory is often portrayed as antithetical to religion, it has not destroyed the religious faith of the scientific community.

According to a survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center in May and June this year, a majority of scientists (51 percent) say they believe in God or a higher power, while 41 percent say they do not.

Furthermore, scientists today are no less likely to believe in God than they were almost 100 years ago, when the scientific community was first polled on this issue. In 1914, 11 years before the Scopes "monkey" trial and four decades before the discovery of the structure of DNA, psychologist James Leuba asked 1,000 U.S. scientists about their views on God. He found the scientific community evenly divided, with 42 percent saying that they believed in a personal God and the same number saying they did not. Scientists have unearthed many important fossils since then, but they are, if anything, more likely to believe in God today.

Please claick on "external source" for the rest of the article

Labels: Charles Darwin, David Masci, evolution, faith, science, scientists

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Thursday, September 03, 2009

Martin lifts voice for science and religion

Former N.C. governor tells church the two need not be in conflict.
By Tim Funk
Monday, Aug. 31, 2009

For centuries, they waged war. It was religion vs. science.

Their battles ranged from 17th-century Italy, when the Catholic Church sentenced Galileo to house-arrest-for-life for saying the earth orbits the sun, to the Bible Belt in the 1920s, when Tennessee science teacher John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution.

Militants on both sides are still shouting away, but another, more nuanced voice can also be heard today: that of the scientist who believes in God.

On Sunday, former N.C. Gov. Jim Martin – son of a Presbyterian minister and a longtime chemistry professor – argued that science and religion are compatible, not contradictory, and that faith must evolve along with our understanding of nature.

"I believe the God of Abraham and Moses… was the creator of the universe and all forms of life," Republican Martin told about 230 people at Charlotte's Covenant Presbyterian, his church for 16 years. "I do not believe it was done in six days."

Six periods of time is more like it, Martin said, starting 4.5 billion years ago. And though one-time seminary student Charles Darwin's theory of evolution continues to be dismissed by many evangelical Christians, Martin called it "the best understanding we have available. You can't be a biologist unless you subscribe to that."

A thoughtful article - please click on "external source" to see the whole thing...

Labels: evolution, faith, Jim Martin, religion, science, Tim Funk

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Friday, August 21, 2009

Religion for a Galactic Civilization 2.0

William Sims Bainbridge
Ethical Technology
Posted: Aug 20, 2009

Progress in spaceflight technology has halted at a level that is insufficient for colonization of the solar system, let alone for voyages to the stars. That grim fact was not obvious to me when I wrote the original version of this essay thirty years ago (Bainbridge 1982), but it is apparent now.

The plans to return to the moon will employ the same general principles as the first expeditions over forty years ago, and no new technology is currently under serious development. I recently re-examined the classic motivations for spaceflight, and found that most of them had lost persuasiveness (Bainbridge 2009). Indeed, despite the optimistic tone in much science journalism, it may be the case that stasis has set in across many fields of science and technology, and the motivations needed to break out of this prison seem to be lacking (Horgan 1996). Thus we need a new definition of spaceflight that will energize investment and innovation. I suggest a return to the traditional view: The heavens are a sacred realm, that we should enter in order to transcend death.

Religion shapes science and technology, and is shaped by them in return. It has become fashionable to assume that religion and science simply are opposed, and that science has been winning the battle over the past century. But much historical evidence indicates that religion of a certain kind was instrumental in the rise of science and modern technology (Weber 1958; Ben-David 1971; Merton 1970; Westfall 1973). Religion will continue to influence the course of progress, and creation of a galactic civilization may depend upon the emergence of a galactic religion capable of motivating society for the centuries required to accomplish that great project. This religion would be a very demanding social movement, and will require extreme discipline from its members, so for purposes of this essay I will call it The Cosmic Order.

Despite competition from science, religion has a future. All human societies have possessed religion, because it serves universal human needs (Parsons 1964). People want to feel that life is meaningful and that there is hope for future rewards even as the end of life draws near. The most recent theories in social science argue that religion will arise in all intelligent species possessing society—a structure of social relations among individuals—and which are gripped by strong desires which the current level of technology cannot satisfy (Stark and Bainbridge 1987). Cognitive science theories suggest that religion is wired into our brains as the result of the early course of human evolution, and could not be abandoned without major transformation of human nature (Boyer 2001; Atran 2002; Barrett 2004; Bloom 2004).

Modern industrial society has been marked by secularization, an historical trend in which traditional religious organizations lose influence. This is caused by three main factors. First, the development of science has discredited some traditional beliefs to the general discredit of traditional systems of faith. Second, the development of political radicalism has offered deprived members of society the hope of triumph and glory here on earth, rather than in the supernatural Heaven where they previously sought it. Third, the geographical mobility which many persons experience in modern society tears them away from the congregation in which they were raised, without automatically affiliating them with a particular congregation near their new home.

These factors undercut traditional religion but open the way for novel cults, some of which will become the established denominations of the future. Contrary to what one might think, persons without current religious affiliation are not typically atheistic, secular rationalists. In fact, compared to other groups they are more open to deviant supernatural beliefs, and thus are potential recruits for novel cults. Secularization does not mean a decline in the need for religion, but only a loss of power by traditional denominations. Studies of the geography of religion show that where the churches become weak, cults and occultism will explode to fill the spiritual vacuum (Stark and Bainbridge 1985).

Very recently, throughout the industrialized nations, we have seen a loss of faith in the promises of radical politics, although there is no abating of revolutionary pressures in developing nations. The progressive collapse of utopian politics will remove a major competitor and permit religious revival. While old religions may be at odds with modern science, some of the most recent cults are cloaked in the garb of science. And the most successful new religions have learned to use geographic mobility to their advantage, recruiting aggressively among those individuals who are temporarily adrift in society without an anchor in the community.

Most novel religions are likely to retard rather than promote space exploration, because they focus on "inner space" and mystical experiences rather than on "outer space" and practical action. An extreme example is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the Hare Krishna cult, which expressed itself on the subject of spaceflight in a book, Easy Journey to Other Planets. The cover illustration shows drab Apollo vehicles approaching the moon through a bleak and inhuman space environment, contrasted with a Hare Krishna dancer blissfully floating upward through bright celestial bubbles, reaching out his arms to his Lord. In the introduction, cult founder A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami (1970: preface) argues for spiritual rather than technical ascendancy:

The latest desire man has developed is the desire to travel to other planets. This is also quite natural, because he has the constitutional right to go to any part of the material or spiritual skies. Such travel is very tempting and exciting because these skies are full of unlimited globes of varying qualities, and they are occupied by all types of living entities. The desire to travel there can be fulfilled by the process of yoga, which serves as a means by which one can transfer himself to whatever planet he likes—possibly to planets where life is not only eternal and blissful, but where there are multiple varieties of enjoyable energies. Anyone who can attain the freedom of the spiritual planets need never return to this miserable land of birth, old age, disease and death.

Thus, we are urged to reach the stars by chanting "Hare Krishna," rather than by building crass, material spaceships. Since we are going to have religion, whether we want it or not, we’d best have religions which promote scientific discovery and space progress rather than retrograde faiths which oppose them and might even lead to a new Dark Age. Indeed, I suggest that societies will not develop interplanetary civilizations without the transcendent motivations and perspectives which religion can best provide. Quite aware that I enter the arena of wild speculation, I shall sketch briefly the outlines of an argument stating that science and technology naturally contain the seeds of their own destruction, unless controlled by a firm, transcendent rudder like religion.

This is quite an interesting - and lengthy - article. This excerpt is but a small portion, so click on "external source" to access, and enjoy this thoughtful article.

Labels: cosmic citizenship, faith, religion, science, spaceflight

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Friday, August 14, 2009

We believe in evolution — and God

Nearly half of Americans still dispute the indisputable: that humans evolved to our current form over millions of years. We’re scientists and Christians. Our message to the faithful: Fear not.

By Karl Giberson and Darrel Falk

The "conflict" between science and religion in America today is not only unfortunate, but unnecessary.

We are scientists, grateful for the freedom to earn Ph.D.s and become members of the scientific community. And we are religious believers, grateful for the freedom to celebrate our religion, without censorship. Like most scientists who believe in God, we find no contradiction between the scientific understanding of the world, and the belief that God created that world. And that includes Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Many of our fellow Americans, however, don't quite see it this way, and this is where the real conflict seems to rest.

Almost everyone in the scientific community, including its many religious believers, now accepts that life has evolved over the past 4 billion years. The concept unifies the entire science of biology. Evolution is as well-established within biology as heliocentricity is established within astronomy. So you would think that everyone would accept it. Alas, a 2008 Gallup Poll showed that 44% of Americans reject evolution, believing instead that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years."

The "science" undergirding this "young earth creationism" comes from a narrow, literalistic and relatively recent interpretation of Genesis, the first book in the Bible. This "science" is on display in the Creation Museum in Kentucky, where friendly dinosaurs — one with a saddle! — cavort with humans in the Garden of Eden. Every week these ideas spread from pulpits and Sunday School classrooms across America. On weekdays, creationism is taught in fundamentalist Christian high schools and colleges. Science faculty at schools such as Bryan College in Tennessee and Liberty University in Virginia work on "models" to shoehorn the 15 billion year history of the universe into the past 10,000 years.

Evolution continues to disturb, threatening the faith of many in a deeply religious America, especially those who read the Bible as a scientific text. But it does not have to be this way.

Paradoxical challenges

Such challenges to evolutionary science are paradoxical. Challenging accepted ideas is how America churns out Nobel Prize-winning science and patents that will drive tomorrow's technology. But challenging authority can also undermine this country's leadership in science, when citizens reject it.

Darwin proposed the theory of evolution in 1859 in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. This controversial text presented evidence that present-day life forms have descended from common ancestors via natural selection. Organisms better adapted to their environments had more offspring, and these fitness adaptations accumulated across the millennia. And this is how new species arose.

In 1859 the evidence convinced many people, but not without challenges. Paleontology, the study of fossils, was new; no reliable way existed to determine the age of the Earth, and the physicists said it was too young to accommodate evolution; and Darwin knew nothing of genes, so the mechanism of inheritance — central to his theory — was shrouded in mystery.

But the biggest problem was dismay that humans were related to primates: "Descended from the apes? Dear me, let us hope it is not true," allegedly exclaimed the wife of a 19th-century English bishop upon hearing of Darwin's new theory. "But if it is true, let us hope it does not become widely known."

This is an interesting op-ed piece regarding a belief in evolution and a belief in God being able to co-exist - it is written by two scientists who also happen to be "religious believers." Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: Charles Darwin, conflict, Darrel Falk, evolution, faith, Karl Giberson, religion, science

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Friday, July 24, 2009

Science, religion is a theme in new Galileo book

Issues from scientist’s 17th-century trial still prevail, author says

By Ed Stoddard
July 20, 2009

DALLAS - The current struggles between religion and science in areas such as evolution and "intelligent design" are thrown into sharp relief in a new book about the Italian astronomer Galileo and his trial by the Roman Inquisition.

Author Dan Hofstadter described the Galileo affair as "the great religion-science clash of 1633 that in some form has persisted into our time."

The focus of the trial was the scientist's embrace of the Copernican view that the Earth revolves around the sun — a view informed by the observations Galileo made with his famous telescope.

Christians had been ordered not to teach or promote the Copernican take on the solar system. It was essentially for this reason that Galileo found himself in hot water with the clerical establishment.

Hofstadter spoke with Reuters about his book "The Earth Moves: Galileo and the Roman Inquisition," and the relevance of this 17th-century episode today.

Please click on "external source for the interview with the author.

Labels: Dan Hofstadter, Ed Stoddard, Galileo, religion, science

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NIH nominee Collins smartly balances top science, real religion

By MICHAEL GERSON
Washington Post

According to one survey, just 7 percent of elite American scientists believe in a personal god — the kind to whom you pray. About 8 percent, however, affirm their belief in personal immortality — indicating that some egos are so large that they fill eternity.

Should it matter that President Barack Obama’s nominee to be director of the National Institutes of Health — the Supreme Court nomination of the scientific world — is part of the believing few?

Francis Collins presents a perfect test case. His qualifications are beyond dispute. As a pioneering gene hunter, he helped identify the genetic markers for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington’s disease and adult onset diabetes. He was in charge of the program at NIH that mapped the human genome, the biological equivalent of the Apollo space program.

Collins is also an evangelical Christian who sings hymns while playing the guitar.

For some scientists, this combination of scientific excellence and religious faith is contradictory — like being a geneticist and believing in unicorns or astrology. "You clearly can be a scientist and have religious beliefs," says Peter Atkins of Oxford University. "But I don’t think you can be a real scientist in the deepest sense of the word because they (religion and science) are such alien categories of knowledge."

To which Collins, who has written and spoken extensively on this topic, replies that there are two categories of knowledge, two ways of knowing. And though they are different, they are not "alien" or contradictory.

For a further explanation, and the complete article, please click on "external source."

Labels: Francis Collins, Michael Gerson, NIH, religion, science

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Thursday, July 16, 2009

Pew Research survey on science and public attitudes

July 9, 2009
Russell Krauss

Pew Research just published a survey it conducted in conjunction with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public, Media," is how Pew summarizes the results. That's good news as far as the public attitude toward science is concerned. After eight years of Bush administration foot dragging on climate change and the environment, it's refreshing that this evident hostility toward science and knowledge didn't spread beyond Washington. As far as the scientists are concerned, isn't that the attitude of everyone who is an expert in a certain field - that the public is woefully ignorant about the subject? That's human nature.

As part of the study, Pew included a short, 12 question general science quiz which it administered to a random sample of 1005 adults. Pew invites readers of the survey to take the quiz - but do so before reading the report. No peeking. I accepted the challenge, and it took only a couple of minutes to complete, and it was fun to see what sorts of questions they asked. You know the answers or you don't, so it won't take up much time, and then you can compare yourself against the sample by age, sex, and education. More on the results at the end of this post.

The basic survey was conducted among 2001 adults selected randomly from the general population, and 2533 scientists who responded to a mailing to nearly 10,000 members of the AAAS who were likewise chosen randomly. Note, though, the 2533 were not randomly selected, only the pool from which they were drawn. The report is quite lengthy, but well worth reading beyond the summary. I won't repeat the details that were highlighted in the introduction, but there were a few surprises and a couple of jaw-droppers.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article, plus a link to the survey results

Labels: AAAS, Pew Research Center survey, Russell Krauss, science

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Monday, July 06, 2009

Majority think it is possible to believe in God and Darwin

Most people feel it is possible to believe in God and evolution, according to a survey.

01 Jul 2009

The poll carried out by the British Council found that 54 per cent thought that science and religion are compatible.

Only 19 per cent of those questioned said it is impossible to believe in a God while also holding the view that life on earth evolved as a result of natural selection. This is the theory proposed by Charles Darwin exactly 150 years ago in his groundbreaking book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

The study, which surveyed the opinions of more than 10,000 people across 10 countries worldwide including Great Britain, also uncovered wide regional variations in the acceptance of evolutionary theory.

Please click on "external source" for the complete results from the survey

Labels: Charles Darwin, evolution, God, Great Britain, religion, science

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Friday, June 26, 2009

Vatican’s Celestial Eye, Seeking Not Angels but Data

By GEORGE JOHNSON
Published: June 22, 2009

MOUNT GRAHAM, Ariz. — Fauré’s “Requiem” is playing in the background, followed by the Kronos Quartet. Every so often the music is interrupted by an electromechanical arpeggio — like a jazz riff on a clarinet — as the motors guiding the telescope spin up and down. A night of galaxy gazing is about to begin at the Vatican’s observatory on Mount Graham.
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“Got it. O.K., it’s happy,” says Christopher J. Corbally, the Jesuit priest who is vice director of the Vatican Observatory Research Group, as he sits in the control room making adjustments. The idea is not to watch for omens or angels but to do workmanlike astronomy that fights the perception that science and Catholicism necessarily conflict.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: astronomy, Catholicism, George Johnson, science, Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope

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Can Science and Religion Co-Exist in Harmony?

June 22, 2009

Some of the nation's leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in May 2009 for the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life.

Francis S. Collins, the former director of the Human Genome Project and an evangelical Christian, discussed why he believes religion and science are compatible and why the current conflict over evolution vs. faith, particularly in the evangelical community, is unnecessary.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty, the religion correspondent for National Public Radio, discussed how the brain reacts to spiritual experiences and her belief that people can look at scientific evidence and conclude that everything is explained by material means or look at the universe and see the hand of God.

Speaker: Francis S. Collins, Former Director, National Human Genome Research Institute

Respondent: Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Religion Correspondent, National Public Radio

Moderator: Michael Cromartie, Vice President, Ethics and Public Policy Center;

Senior Adviser, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

In the following excerpt ellipses have been omitted to facilitate reading. Read the full transcript, including audience discussion at pewforum.org.

FRANCIS COLLINS: I'll spend most of the time [today] talking about the current conflict that appears, at least in this country, to be a rather unpleasant one, where the voices that are arguing that science and faith are incompatible are actually quite loud -- even shrill at times. I'll offer up from my own perspective why that conflict is an unnecessary one and provide some possibilities of how it might be resolved in a way that I think would be good for our future...

Please click on "external source" to read the entire article, and also, to access the full transcript of this most insightful and important discussion regarding the compatibility of science and religion.

Labels: Barbara Bradley Hagerty, faith, Francis Collins, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, science

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Friday, June 19, 2009

Brain waves or beatific vision?

Tue, Jun. 16, 2009

Mystical experiences under the microscope
By David O'Reilly

Inquirer Staff Writer

As mystical experiences go, Barbara Bradley Hagerty's transcendent moment was not the kind that launches a new world religion. Still, it changed her forever.

The day was June 10, 1995. Hagerty, religion reporter for National Public Radio, was interviewing a terminally ill melanoma patient, Kathy, whose sunny outlook and trust in Jesus seemed to have prolonged her life, inexplicably, for years.

Then, as they talked, "I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end," Hagerty writes in her new book, Fingerprints of God, a survey of modern scientific investigation into religious experience.

"The air grew warmer and heavier, as if someone had moved into the circle [of lamplight] and was breathing on us. I glanced at Kathy." She, too, felt something and had "fallen silent in mid-sentence."

"I felt an unseen caress, engulfed by a presence I could feel but not touch," Hagerty continues. "I was paralyzed. . . . After a minute, although it seemed longer, the presence melted away."

What was it she sensed? Jesus? An angelic being? Or, as one researcher later suggested, had the temporal lobe of her brain been briefly hyperstimulated? This, he told her, likely induced the illusion of an unseen presence.

Whatever it was, it proved the "continental divide in my life," Hagerty said during a recent interview. "I decided I should investigate, the way we journalists do."

Her investigation grew into Fingerprints of God, a lucid overview of an essential question: Is mystical experience truly a glimpse of the divine, the eternal, the absolute? Or are the seemingly transformative moments known variously as "enlightenment" or "beatific vision" or cosmic bliss merely swells and quells in brain activity, signifying nothing beyond ourselves?

Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: Barbara Bradley Hagerty, brain, David O'Reilly, God, religion, science, transcendence

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Friday, May 22, 2009

Book Review: " Fingerprints of God"

NPR reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty uses journalism’s tools to explore the intersection of spirituality and science.
By Gregory M. Lamb | May 19, 2009 edition

Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality By Barbara Bradley Hagerty Riverheard Books 323 pp., $33.50

Using the reporting and explanatory skills of a talented veteran journalist, Barbara Bradley Hagerty has written a compelling account of her quest to answer an age-old question: Is this all there is?

The result is Fingerprints of God, a book that sails the roiling waters between religion and science and is unlikely to make quick friends among either evangelical Christians or those in the scientific community who conclude that God cannot exist. But for readers who consider themselves to be spiritual seekers, Hagerty treads some fascinating territory.

Rather than dismissing science as the enemy of spirituality, she engages with it, seeking out scientific pioneers, the outliers who are doing intriguing work on the nature of the brain and consciousness. She also talks with ordinary people who’ve had extraordinary personal encounters, such as near-death or out-of-body experiences, that have changed their views of themselves, reality, and on the existence of an afterlife.

Hagerty, the religion correspondent for National Public Radio, comes to a less-than-startling conclusion: Science can neither prove nor disprove these great questions. But she also sees hints of a “paradigm shift” in science now under way – akin, perhaps, to the early 20th century when the work of Einstein and others took a quantum leap away from a universe based solely on 18th-century Newtonian physics.

“Hard science does not mean petrified science,” Hagerty posits. “The paradigm to exclude a divine intelligence, or ‘Other,’ or ‘God,’ to reduce all things to matter, has reigned triumphant for some four hundred years, since the dawn of the Age of Reason,” she continues. “Today, a small yet growing number of scientists are trying to chip away at the paradigm, suspecting that its feet are made of clay.”

Please click on "external source" for complete article.

Labels: Barbara Bradley Hagerty, God, Gregory M. Lamb, religion, science, spirituality

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Friday, May 08, 2009

More From Francis Collins on God and Evolution

May 5, 2009

The scientific blogosphere, as well as the Washington, D.C., rumor mill, are buzzing this week about geneticist Francis Collins's latest project: a new foundation and Web site created "to engage America's escalating culture war between science and faith."

The new venture is funded by the Templeton Foundation, which supports research exploring the interface of science and religion.

—Jocelyn Kaiser

Please click on "external source" for a link to Dr Collins' website, Biologos.

Labels: faith, Francis Collins, Jocelyn Kaiser, science, Templeton Foundation

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Francis Collins: A Scientific Basis for God

May 04, 2009 04:32 PM ET |
Dan Gilgoff | Permanent Link | Print

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Is there a scientific basis for the existence of God? Many believers think so, even as they often dismiss science because they think it's incompatible with their religious beliefs. A recent Gallup Poll, for instance, found that 45 percent of Americans reject evolution, believing that human beings were created more or less in our present form within the past 10,000 years. Despite objections from scientists, many believers argue that there's scientific evidence
for such "Young Earth" creationism.

Francis Collins, director of the human genome project, is an atheist turned Christian who sees a scientific basis for God that not only embraces modern science
but actually relies on it. Collins has just launched a new website and a foundation called biologos, which "emphasizes the compatibility of Christian faith with what science has discovered about the origins of the universe and life."

Unless Christians—evangelicals, in particular—learn to integrate modern science with their religious faith, Collins believes, they are either stuck clinging to untruths about scientific ideas like evolution or, once they do accept evolution, are in danger of having to abandon their faith out of the mistaken belief that evolution and Christianity are incompatible.

Collins was raised without religion. He began questioning his atheism during medical school, when he witnessed patients who were near death but who were deeply comforted by their religious faith. Collins became a Christian in his 20s. "I believe in the literal rising of the body of Christ," he says today. "It's the cornerstone of my Christian faith."

In this very interesting article, Francis Collins' talking points for God's existence are enumerated...please click on "external link" for the complete article.

Labels: atheism, Dan Gilgoff, Francis Collins, God, human genome project, science

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Friday, May 01, 2009

Q & A: Francis Collins

The former director of the Human Genome Project hopes to show compatibility between Christianity and science.
By Daniel Burke, Religion News Service
4/30/2009

A year after stepping down as director of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Francis Collins is embarking on a new venture, one that may be even harder than deciphering DNA.

Collin's new BioLogos Foundation, which launched on April 28, aims to be a bridge in the debate over science and religion and provide some answers to life's most difficult questions.

Please click on "external source" to read the answers to the following questions asked of Dr Collins

What led you to this new project?

Where does the name BioLogos come from?

What kind of answers will the Web site give?

What's the goal for this Web site and foundation?

Can you give an example of the kinds of questions the Web site will be addressing?

Is your target audience fellow evangelicals?

Is the site interactive in the sense that people can pose questions that will be answered?

What about other BioLogos projects?

Labels: Daniel Burke, Francis Collins, religion, science

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Monday, April 27, 2009

RD10Q: Thinking About God Makes Your Brain Bigger

RD10Q: Thinking About God Makes Your Brain Bigger
By Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman
April 24, 2009

A new book argues that spiritual practices, be they secular or religious, are inherently good for you. Meditation and prayer—be it about God, or evolution, or peace, or the Big Bang—will actually change your brain.

Ten Questions for Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman on How God Changes Your Brain, (Ballantine, 2009).

What inspired the two of you to write How God Changes Your Brain? What sparked your interest?

Our newest brain-scan research showed that different forms of meditation and spiritual practice can actually improve memory, and it may even slow down the aging process itself. We had also gathered enough data to draw a more comprehensive picture of how spiritual practices affect and change different parts of the brain, and we wanted to share this new perspective with the general public. We also wanted to present evidence showing how the religious landscape of America is moving from traditional values to a more spiritual and science-based vision of the universe.

What’s the most important take-home message for readers?

Spiritual practices, secular or religious, are inherently good for your body, and especially your brain. Meditation and prayer—be it about God, or evolution, or peace, or the Big Bang—will strengthen important circuits in your brain, making you more socially aware and alert while reducing anxiety, depression, and neurological stress. And meditation can be adapted in endless ways. You can use it to become more motivated to succeed in business. You can apply it to communication to reduce relationship conflicts. You can do a sixty-second meditation involving yawning to quickly relax your body and mind. Indeed, you can use the same technique to bring a roomful of children, students, or CEOs to attention with their brains becoming acutely attuned to each other: a fancy way of saying that yawning can actually evoke social empathy with many living species on this planet.

Please click on "external source" to access the entire interview with the authors.

Labels: Andrew Newberg, brain, God, How God Changes Your Brain, Mark Robert Waldman, science

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Book Review: Solution to "The God Wars" Found in Award-Winning Book

WEBWIRE – Saturday, April 18, 2009

RETURN TO MEANING: THE AMERICAN PSYCHE IN SEARCH OF ITS SOUL redefines religious meaning and its importance for a Scientific Age. (http://www.andrewcort.com)

"Renaissance man” Andrew Cort (science and mathematics teacher, attorney, and doctor of chiropractic), has written an inspirational and scholarly book that “rescues philosophy from the mathematicians, sex from the hedonists, religion from empty sanctimony, and science from barren materialism,” says George Gilder, noted social commentator.

If there is a God, and God is all-powerful and good, why would God create such a painful and difficult world? Does religion have a credible answer? Morality, as secularists know, does not require a deity. Blind faith, as atheists know, often leads to hatred and violence. Taking scriptural stories as literal accounts of history, as scientists know, borders on the nonsensical. There has to be more.

Please click on "external source" for complete article, and a link to the author's website.

Labels: Dr. Andrew Cort, God, philosophy, religion, science, soul

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10 Minutes with … the Rev. John Polkinghorne

April 15, 2009
NEWS FEATURE
10 Minutes with … the Rev. John Polkinghorne
By Daniel Burke

(UNDATED) Christian thinkers have long employed insights from sociology, literature, and other fields to augment their ideas of how God works in the world.

Yet despite the world-changing insights of science, very few theologians have drawn on physics, biology or geology in the same way.

Renowned Anglican physicist-theologian John Polkinghorne wants to change all that. His new book, “Theology in the Context of Science,” examines what topics like space and time can teach us about God, and how a scientific style of inquiry can benefit theologians.

Polkinghorne, who was awarded the Templeton Prize in 2002 and knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his work reconciling science and faith, spoke about his new book from his home in England. Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Theology and science are highly specialized, often complex disciplines. Is it feasible for someone to become fully versed in both?

A: I’m not saying that every theologian has to approach theology through the context of science any more than a liberation theologian would say that everyone has to live in base community in South America. I wrote the book to encourage theologians to take the context of science more seriously ... without having to master all of the technical details.

This is a transcript of an interview with renowned Anglican physicist-theologian John Polkinghorne, who was the winner of the Templeton Prize in 2002. It is a worthwhile read. Please click on "external source" for complete article.

Labels: Daniel Burke, God, Rev. John Polkinghorne, science, Templeton Prize, theologians

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God and the Multiverse

April 14, 2009, 6:14 am
God and the Multiverse

Please click on "external source" to access the original article in "Seed" magazine. Interesting juxtaposition with Urantia Book revelation.

Today’s idea: Multiverse?theory —?the idea that many universes lie beyond what we can observe — doesn’t really undermine the argument for God as creator as some Christian thinkers contend, scientists and theologians say.

Science and Religion | New “multiverse” theories challenge both humanity’s uniqueness and our central place in the cosmos, Nathan Schneider writes in Seed magazine — so it looks like they could join evolution as another battleground in the culture wars. Christian thinkers have criticized such ideas as “motivated by a refusal to accept evidence of God’s handiwork in the cosmos.”

But among scientists and theologians focused on multiverse theory, many believe that it simply expands the job description for God.

Labels: God, multiverse, religion, science, Seed

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Sunday, March 15, 2009

U.S. Buddhists, Hindus Back Evolution, Says Study

India West, News Report, Ashfaque Swapan
Mar 13, 2009

Despite virtually unanimous support in the scientific community, there is considerable public skepticism in the U.S. about Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, with 39 percent believing in the theory, according to a Gallup poll.

Hindus in the U.S., however, overwhelmingly accept the scientific consensus, with four out of five Hindus agreeing that evolution best explains the origin of human beings, according to a recent study by the Pew Center.

Buddhists, edging Hindus by a slight margin, were the greatest supporters among different religious groups, the survey found.

As the world celebrated the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin Feb. 12, his legacy is a study in contrasts: While there is virtual unanimity among biologists regarding the validity of his theory of natural selection, public opinion continues to show surprising pockets of resistance in some nations.

The resistance has come almost entirely from religious groups, led by Christian groups, who support an alternative theory called intelligent design, which accepts the existence or agency of a supreme being.

However, skepticism among scientists about intelligent design in unanimous.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that "creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science." The U.S. National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have termed it pseudoscience. Many in the scientific community have been less kind, bluntly calling it junk science.

Public opinion in the U.S., however, continues to be surprisingly resistant to Darwin’s theory. According to an August 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 63 percent of Americans believe that humans and other animals have either always existed in their present form or have evolved over time under the guidance of a supreme being. Only 26 percent said that life evolved solely through processes such as natural selection.

Hindus in the U.S., however, do not share this view. In advance of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birthday on Feb. 12, the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life released a report exploring the evolution controversy in the U.S. The Pew Forum's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey found that views on evolution differ widely across religious groups.

Buddhists and Hindus led the study with 81 percent of Buddhists and 80 percent of Hindus agreeing that evolution is the best explanation of the origin of human life on earth, followed by Jewish (77 percent) and unaffiliated (72 percent) groups. Muslims (45 percent) were the fifth least enthusiastic about Darwin’s theory in the 12-group study, with Jehovah’s Witnesses (7 percent), Mormons (22 percent) and evangelical Protestants (24 percent) being the least enthusiastic religious groups.

Labels: Buddhists, Charles Darwin, creationism, evolution, Hindus, science

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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Religious Thoughts and Feelings Not Limited to One Part of Brain

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: March 9, 2009

Brain researchers trying to understand the neural basis of religious belief have concluded that the brain has no special region or network for this task. Rather, it depends on general networks that exist for other purposes.

A team led by Dr. Jordan Grafman of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke questioned volunteers about their religious beliefs while monitoring the blood flow in their brains with a scanning machine. Extra blood flow is assumed to reflect the activity of neurons in a specific region of the brain.

Different networks of neurons sprang into action when subjects were asked their view of three sets of statements about the religious beliefs, Dr. Grafman and colleagues report in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In all three cases the neural activity in the subjects’ brains corresponded to brain networks known to have other, nonreligious functions. These include the theory of mind networks, used to predict other people’s intentions.

Dr. Andrew Newberg, director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania, said Dr. Grafman’s findings were in line with other research that has so far failed to find any specific structure in the brain that is dedicated to religious belief. “Religion has so many different aspects that it would be very unlikely to find one spot in the brain where religion and God reside,” Dr. Newberg said.

But he expressed doubt as to whether the biological correlates of religious belief, as visualized in brain scans like those taken by Dr. Grafman, in fact captured all of what religion is. “There may be other elements that science is not capable of measuring,” Dr. Newberg said.

In his own work Dr. Newberg looks at subjects undergoing religious experiences, like speaking in tongues or meditating. In “How God Changes Your Brain,” a book being published later this month, Dr. Newberg reports that certain regions of subjects’ brains have enlarged areas of neural activation after many months of intensive meditation.

He questioned whether asking subjects questions about religion when they were not in a religious frame of mind would capture much of interest about religious belief.

Dr. Grafman said that religious cohesion for a common purpose, and the ability to infer what others are thinking, would each have been favored by evolution, along with the theory of mind networks that serves both systems.

Labels: belief, brain, God, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Nicholas Wade, religion, science

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Religion Reduces Anxiety—A Matter of Faith or Fact?

March 06, 2009
by Rachel Balik

This article reference a number of studies, and provides links for further exploration of this most interesting topic.

Two studies show that the brains of religious people have less intense responses to error, suggesting that faith in God can reduce anxiety.

God on the Brain

Many previous studies have tried to determine whether religion has a positive effect on mental health. In February 2008, the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion and the Centre for Anthropology and Mind at Oxford began a three-year study to develop a scientific understanding of why humans believe in God. Researchers will look for evidence that faith in God is a desirable evolutionary trait, and attempt to discover what aspects of religion can be attributed to nature, and which must be taught.

Psychologists compared a group of students trained for a month in mindfulness meditation with another that was taught somatic relaxation. Both techniques reduced stress, but meditation was more effective at reducing “distractive and ruminative thoughts and behaviors,” indicating that it offered a “unique” method for minimizing distress.

Mindful meditation has also been found to alter the structure and functioning of monks’ brains, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2004. Five neuroscientists visited the Dalai Lama to explore neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to rewire itself) and its relation to meditation. The brains of novice and experienced monks were scanned as they meditated; the experienced monks showed a significantly higher level of gamma waves, a type of brain activity that plays a key role in consciousness.

Religion’s effect on the brain has yet to be fully assessed. However, research suggests that incorporating spirituality into children’s lives can help them navigate the difficult choices of adolescence. Several studies have shown that children raised with a spiritual or religious tradition are less likely to make poor choices about drugs and alcohol.

And in hard times, many find comfort in religion. In September, as the foundation of Wall Street began to crumble, many financiers turned to God and organized religion for support. Churches and synagogues throughout New York City reported a higher number of congregants in business suits.

Labels: believers, God, meditation, mental health, Rachel Balik, religion, science, Stroop

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Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Keeping (Or Finding) The Faith

Keeping (Or Finding) The Faith
Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009

Not all that long ago, you'd have had a hard time finding a research institute, an academic department or even a decent conference exploring the link between spirituality and health. And with good reason. Health is science, spirituality is something else entirely, and people who say otherwise clearly need to sit down with a medical journal or two.

But that's all changing. Everyone's got a stake in getting human health right--whether families and individuals simply trying to stay well or governments trying to build a functioning health-care system that doesn't break the bank. With so much on the line, no one can afford to take options off the table.

For that reason, investigators around the world backed by both public and private money are studying the faith factor in all manner of diseases and conditions. They have examined the spiritual-care needs of children with terminal illnesses and looked at how religion and superstition affect schizophrenia in China and how spirituality influences the well-being of college students in Malta and nuns in India. They have probed the links between religion and psychological woes too: neuroticism in Dutch twins, obsessive-compulsive symptoms in Italians, death anxiety among Egyptian nursing students and substance abuse in adolescents in Jerusalem. They have tried to measure the benefits of Bible therapy for patients with Alzheimer's disease, as well as the impact of religious guilt and congregational criticism on doubting members of the flock. They've looked at the health effects of psychoactive sacramentals (think peyote) and the spiritual preferences of neo-pagans (think Wiccans and druids).

The fact that what began as a trickle of studies has become a torrent doesn't mean that everyone is happy, and many scientists will continue to have nothing to do with what they see as fluff. Still, the movable feast of institutes, academic treatises, self-help books, websites, healing centers and luxury spas with a spiritual bent grows steadily larger. Here is just a sampling of what's available.

Please click on "external link" for the list of spiritually focused healing sites.

Labels: faith, health, science, spirituality, websites

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The Biology of Belief

The Biology of Belief
By JEFFREY KLUGER Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009

This is page one of a four-page article - well worth the read. Please click on "external source" to access the entire article

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. (Read "Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs".)

Needy creatures that we are, we put the brain's spiritual centers to use all the time. We pray for peace; we meditate for serenity; we chant for wealth. We travel to Lourdes in search of a miracle; we go to Mecca to show our devotion; we eat hallucinogenic mushrooms to attain transcendent vision and gather in church basements to achieve its sober opposite. But there is nothing we pray — or chant or meditate — for more than health.

Health, by definition, is the sine qua non of everything else. If you're dead, serenity is academic. So we convince ourselves that while our medicine is strong and our doctors are wise, our prayers may heal us too.

Here's what's surprising: a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that faith may indeed bring us health. People who attend religious services do have a lower risk of dying in any one year than people who don't attend. People who believe in a loving God fare better after a diagnosis of illness than people who believe in a punitive God. No less a killer than AIDS will back off at least a bit when it's hit with a double-barreled blast of belief. "Even accounting for medications," says Dr. Gail Ironson, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Miami who studies HIV and religious belief, "spirituality predicts for better disease control." (Read "Finding God on YouTube.")

It's hard not to be impressed by findings like that, but a skeptic will say there's nothing remarkable — much less spiritual — about them. You live longer if you go to church because you're there for the cholesterol-screening drive and the visiting-nurse service. Your viral load goes down when you include spirituality in your fight against HIV because your levels of cortisol — a stress hormone — go down first. "Science doesn't deal in supernatural explanations," says Richard Sloan, professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and author of Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine. "Religion and science address different concerns."

That's undeniably true — up to a point. But it's also true that our brains and bodies contain an awful lot of spiritual wiring. Even if there's a scientific explanation for every strand of it, that doesn't mean we can't put it to powerful use. And if one of those uses can make us well, shouldn't we take advantage of it? "A large body of science shows a positive impact of religion on health," says Dr. Andrew Newberg, a professor of radiology, psychology and religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of Penn's Center for Spirituality and the Mind. "The way the brain works is so compatible with religion and spirituality that we're going to be enmeshed in both for a long time."

It's All in Your Head
"enmeshed in the brain" is as good a way as any to describe Newberg's work of the past 15 years. The author of four books, including the soon-to-be-released How God Changes Your Brain, he has looked more closely than most at how our spiritual data-processing center works, conducting various types of brain scans on more than 100 people, all of them in different kinds of worshipful or contemplative states. Over time, Newberg and his team have come to recognize just which parts of the brain light up during just which experiences.

When people engage in prayer, it's the frontal lobes that take the lead, since they govern focus and concentration. During very deep prayer, the parietal lobe powers down, which is what allows us to experience that sense of having loosed our earthly moorings. The frontal lobes go quieter when worshippers are involved in the singular activity of speaking in tongues — which jibes nicely with the speakers' subjective experience that they are not in control of what they're saying.

Labels: Andrew Newberg, brain, faith, health, Jeffrey Kluger, medicine, parietal lobe, prayer, religion, science, spirituality

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The Cost of Unbelief

By: Simon Smart
Posted: Tuesday, 10 February 2009, 9:43 (EST)

This is the first of a three-page article - well worth reading. Just click on "external source" to access the entire article.

Australian atheists were recently prevented from running a series of ads on buses with the message, “There’s probably no God, so sleep in on Sundays.” It was a funny ad and should have been permitted, and if the Bureau of Statistics A Picture of a Nation report is anything to go by, there’s a generation of young people who don’t need convincing. According to the latest figures young Australians are increasingly secular with the proportion of people stating ‘no religion’ on their census form up from 6.7% in 1971 to 19% in 2006; the younger generation leading the charge to the beach on Sunday mornings (or perhaps staying under the doona). 23.5% of 15 – 34 year-olds did not specify a religion compared with 7.9% of Australians 65 and older.

No doubt this finding will be good news to those who believe religion has only paranoia, superstition, violence and hypocrisy to contribute to society, and there are plenty of them. Freud famously articulated the notion that religion is a neurosis. Likewise, Psychologist Albert Ellis saw only the pernicious effects of religion on individuals, claiming that ‘Religiosity … is in many respects equivalent to irrational thinking and emotional disturbance.’ (Ellis, 1980, 67)

But the latest scientific data on the effects of religiosity on health, might give us reason to pause. In 2001 Duke University researchers conducted a large survey of 100 evidence-based studies of the correlation between religion and well-being and found that 79 reported a positive correlation, 13 no correlation, 7 mixed correlation and 1 a negative correlation.1 The masses of research completed since then has largely pointed in the same direction.

This is a growing field. It reflects a more serious attempt to integrate ‘whole-person care’ in medical areas that previously gave little importance to the spiritual side of patient management. Of the 141 medical schools in the U.S. and Canada 70% now offer courses on religion, spirituality and medicine.

This is largely a response to the vast amount of data emerging over the last eight years that reveals positive correlations between commitment to religion and better outcomes for dealing with depression and anxiety, strength of immune systems, cardiovascular health and even longevity.

It is well accepted that stress and depression have serious adverse health impacts and studies that show religious coping improves outcomes in this area need to be taken seriously. It is the scientists who are telling us that religious involvement is associated with lower rates of a host of stress-related medical conditions including cardiovascular disease, stroke, immune and endocrine functioning, cancer—especially gastrointestinal, breast and oral—and better outcomes for cancer in general.

It is worth quoting some research to give a small taste of the sort of data being reported:

Labels: atheism, depression, mental health, religion, science, Simon Smart, spirituality

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Monday, February 09, 2009

Scientists and religious leaders call for end to fighting over Darwin's legacy

Prominent scientists and leading religious figures have joined forces to call for an end to the fighting over Charles Darwin's legacy.

By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent
09 Feb 2009

Ahead of the 200th anniversary of the pioneering naturalist's birth on Thursday, they warn that militant atheists are turning people away from evolution by using it as a weapon with which to attack religion.

However, in a letter published in The Daily Telegraph, they also urge believers in creationism to acknowledge the overwhelming body of evidence that now exists to back up Darwin's theory of how life on Earth has developed.

It comes after a survey of 2,000 people conducted by Theos, the religion think tank, found that half believe the theory of evolution cannot explain the complexity of the natural world. One in three said they thought God created the Earth within the past 10,000 years.

The influential signatories of the letter include two Church of England bishops, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain and a member of the Evangelical Alliance, as well as Professor Lord Winston, the fertility pioneer, and Professor Sir Martin Evans, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

They write: "Evolution, we believe, has become caught in the crossfire of a religious battle in which Darwin himself had little personal interest.

"We respectfully encourage those who reject evolution to weigh the now overwhelming evidence, hugely strengthened by recent advances in genetics, which testifies to the theory's validity.

"At the same time, we respectfully ask those contemporary Darwinians who seem intent on using Darwin's theory as a vehicle for promoting an anti-theistic agenda to desist from doing so as they are, albeit unintentionally, turning people away from the theory.

"In this year of all years, we should be celebrating Darwin's great biological achievements and not fighting over his legacy as some kind of anti-theologian."

Labels: Charles Darwin, evolution, Martin Beckford, religion, science, Theos

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Darwin's 200th anniversary - Lessons still to be learned

The Daily Telegraph called him "the greatest naturalist of our time, perhaps all time". For the Morning Post he was "the first biologist of his day". The Times saluted the rapid victory of Charles Darwin's great idea and said that "the astonishing revelations of recent research in palaeontology have done still more to turn what 20 years ago was a brilliant speculation into an established and unquestionable truth". The Manchester Guardian said that "few original thinkers have lived to see more completely the triumph of what is essential in their doctrine". The St James's Gazette predicted that England's children would one day be taught to honour Darwin "as the greatest Englishman since Newton".

These responses appeared in print on 21 April 1882, after the news of Darwin's death at his home in Down, Kent. The writers were people who knew the Bible, and they addressed readers who had grown up in an overtly devout society. Many remembered the religious and scientific uproar following publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859. It argued, with detailed evidence, that life's extraordinary variety had stemmed, over an enormous period of time, from a common ancestry, and that the mechanism was the operation of natural selection upon tiny variations in heredity.

But Darwin's audience heard only part of the story. The clinching discovery of the biochemistry of genetic inheritance and therefore of random genetic mutation - the famous double helix of DNA - was not made until 1953. The mostly anonymous contributors who rushed to judgment that morning had before them only a fraction of the findings that now support the theory of evolution: a theory as confident as the predictions of Newtonian physics at speeds significantly lower than the velocity of light, as sure as the thesis that matter is composed of atoms. They could have been forgiven for their sometimes equivocal salutes.

There can be no such equivocation in the week of a survey which showed that only around half of all Britons accept that Darwin's theory of evolution is either true or probably true. In a democracy, citizens should respect each other's beliefs; and citizens have a right to express their beliefs. But in a democracy, a newspaper has an obligation to what is right. The truth is that Darwin's reasoning has in the last 150 years been supported overwhelmingly by discoveries in biology, geology, medicine and space science. The details will keep scientists arguing for another 200 years, but the big picture has not changed. All life is linked by common ancestry, including human life. The shameful lesson of this 200th anniversary of his birth is that Darwin's contemporaries understood more clearly than many modern Britons.

Two things distinguish a late-Victorian audience from a modern one. Educated Victorians knew much more about their own religion, and the problems of interpretation in sacred scripture. They understood that if the Bible was God's word then the world around them must also be an account of His handiwork, to be scrutinised, glossed and annotated by science. Second, they were prepared to follow and even join in scientific debate about those chapters of Earth history revealed in the rocks. Many of the tribute-payers of 21 April 1882 understood that evolution had not been, in 1859, a new or particularly shocking idea. Others had proposed it; they understood that Darwin had demonstrated it. They foresaw disturbing moral, political and intellectual implications. But they were ready to confront them.

If Darwin's doctrine be true, said the Morning Chronicle, "the result may be contemplated with composure, for the further we get from falsehood, the nearer we get to happiness". Science has advanced, but left a very large number of people behind. Unhappily, 200 years on from the birth of one of the world's greatest scientists, we are still not so far from falsehood.

Labels: Britain, Charles Darwin, DNA, evolution, science

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Friday, January 23, 2009

God and Science: An Inner Conflict

By Robin Lloyd, LiveScience Senior Editor
15 January 2009

God and science are inherently at odds, or so goes the story with roots that reach back nearly 400 years to the Inquisition's trial of Galileo on suspicion of heresy.

The ongoing effort of U.S. creationists to inject doubt about evolution into science classrooms in public schools is an example of that conflict, not to mention the polarizing arguments over the decades offered by numerous members of the clergy, politicians, and some atheist scientists and scholars including Richard Dawkins.

Now a new study suggests our minds are conflicted, making it so we have trouble reconciling science and God because we unconsciously see these concepts as fundamentally opposed, at least when both are used to explain the beginning of life and the universe.

But what is the source of this seeming "irreconcilable difference" — are we hard-wired for it, or is it tenacious cultural baggage?

The experiments

Experiments headed up by psychologist Jesse Preston of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her colleague Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago provide some data to support the argument that the conflict is inherent, or hard-wired. They found that subjects apparently cannot easily give positive evaluations to both God and science as explanations for big questions, such as the origin of life and the universe, at the same time.

To see the rest of this very interesting article, please click on "external link" at the end of this edit.

Labels: evolution, God, Jesse Preston, Nicholas Epley, Robin Lloyd, science

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Thursday, December 25, 2008

Brain Activity Altered during Religious Experience

December 24, 2008 in Mind & Brain

A study in Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science finds that religious experience is associated with decreased activity in the brain's right parietal lobe. Cynthia Graber reports

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.] Please click on "exteranl link to access the entire podcast.

In America there’s a feeling of Christmas. But that’s not the only winter holiday going on. Jews are lighting Hanukkah candles, Muslims recently feasted on Eid al-Adha, and pagans celebrated the solstice. So it’s a good time for researchers to consider spirituality—from a scientific point of view.

One experience central to major religions around the world is that of transcendence, the idea of almost losing a sense of self to the feeling that there’s something bigger out there. Now scientists at the University of Missouri say they’ve located that experience in our brains. All the people studied, from Buddhist monks in meditation to Francescan nuns in prayer, experience this transcendence. And they all have decreased activity in the right parietal lobe of the brain. That area has to do with senses such as orienting yourself in the space around you. The study was published in Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science.

Interestingly, people with injuries to the right parietal lobe report increased levels of spiritual experiences. The researchers are quick to say that this connection doesn’t minimize the role of religion, and that religious or spiritual experiences might decrease activity in that region and thus increase that special feeling of transcendence. Just in time for the holidays.

Labels: brain, Cynthia Graber, religion, science, spiritual experience, transcendence, Zygon

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Thursday, December 18, 2008

The living dead

From The Sunday Times
December 14, 2008
The living dead

This is a lengthy article which is encapsulated here. Please click on "external link" to view the entire article.

NDEs (near-death experiences)are so common, so vivid and so life-transforming — survivors frequently become more compassionate, religious and serene as a result of what they experience — that scientists, philosophers, priests, psychologists and cultists all want a piece of the action. Their problem is that the human mind is unreachable. We can’t see what’s going on in there. Even if we could rush cardiac-arrest patients into an MRI scanner, we’d only see lights in the brain. We wouldn’t know what they meant. But now NDEs are to be scientifically investigated in a US and UK study involving 25 hospitals. This is co-ordinated by Dr Sam Parnia at Southampton University and is designed to find 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrests — “clinical death” — who tell such stories.

Getting a scientific handle on this phenomenon is fiendishly difficult. Dead people don’t report back, and it is very hard to assess the status of survivor accounts — are they merely hallucinations occurring before the crisis or just after? Perhaps they are no more than the brain’s way of soothing your path to extinction.

Parnia’s study is aimed solely at OBEs in cases of cardiac arrest. It uses a technique known as “hidden target”. In the participating hospitals he is placing pictures on high shelves so that they will be invisible both to patients and staff. But anybody floating near the ceiling would see them. A substantial number of accurate reports of the pictures would seem to establish the reality of OBEs. There are numerous problems with this. Parnia’s study does not have enough money to put laptops on the shelves generating random pictures to ensure that cheating is impossible. Furthermore, previous hidden-target experiments by, among others, Parnia himself and Dr Penny Sartori at Morriston Hospital in Swansea have failed to produce a single positive result. In fairness, this may be because the last thing that a floating dying person, with Jesus behind him and his body being pounded in front of him, will notice is some odd picture left on a shelf. This leaves believers in OBEs with an evidential mountain to climb.

There are plenty of sceptics who will pounce on negative results or even positive ones with any signs of ambiguity. Dr Peter Fenwick, a neuro-psychiatrist who has overseen Parnia and Sartori’s work, admits that, whatever the outcome, there will still be “wriggle room” for sceptics.

Hidden targets are the best key science has for unlocking the true nature of NDEs. If Parnia comes up with positive results, then even the most hardened sceptics will have to pay attention. They will force a serious rethinking of all current ideas about the brain and the mind.

“This is definitely a legitimate scientific inquiry,” says Chris French, professor of psychology at Goldsmiths College, London, and co-editor of The Skeptic magazine.

French’s position is important. He specialises in paranormal beliefs and experiences. In some cases his position is that of outright scepticism. For example, people started reporting alien-abduction scenarios — flying saucers, anal probes — in large numbers only after a single case, that of Betty and Barney Hill, was publicised in Look magazine in 1966. This was clearly a kind of mental virus, made more virulent by the fact that most of the accounts were retrieved under hypnosis. But NDEs were widely reported even before they became known to a mass audience through Raymond Moody’s 1975 book Life after Life. And hypnosis has not been involved in retrieving the accounts. The consistency and clarity of these reports across cultures and time zones convince French that, even if NDEs may not prove the afterlife, they do cast light on the human mind.

And, as in all things, it is the human mind that is at the heart of the matter. If we can float out of our bodies, then the mind is separable from, and, perhaps not dependent on, the brain. Twelve years after Tom Wolfe famously announced in Forbes magazine that, as a result of developments in neuroscience, “Your soul just died,” it may be time to say: “No, it didn’t.”

But is such a thing as a separable mind poss-ible or even conceivable? The answer is yes. In explaining why, it will be necessary to plunge into philosophy and quantum mechanics. Bear with me: it will be as painless as a cardiac arrest and much more interesting. And at the end of it, you might just believe you are immortal.

Labels: Dr Sam Parnia, near-death experience, out of body experience, science, Southampton University

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Friday, December 12, 2008

For Nanotechnology, Religion In U.S. Dictates A Wary View

ScienceDaily (Dec. 9, 2008) —

When it comes to the world of the very, very small — nanotechnology — Americans have a big problem: Nano and its capacity to alter the fundamentals of nature, it seems, are failing the moral litmus test of religion.

In a report published Dec. 7 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, survey results from the United States and Europe reveal a sharp contrast in the perception that nanotechnology is morally acceptable. Those views, according to the report, correlate directly with aggregate levels of religious views in each country surveyed.

In the United States and a few European countries where religion plays a larger role in everyday life, notably Italy, Austria and Ireland, nanotechnology and its potential to alter living organisms or even inspire synthetic life is perceived as less morally acceptable. In more secular European societies, such as those in France and Germany, individuals are much less likely to view nanotechnology through the prism of religion and find it ethically suspect.

"The level of 'religiosity' in a particular country is one of the strongest predictors of whether or not people see nanotechnology as morally acceptable," says Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication and the lead author of the new study. "Religion was the strongest influence over everything."

The study compared answers to identical questions posed by the 2006 Eurobarometer public opinion survey and a 2007 poll by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center conducted under the auspices of the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Nanotechnology and Society at Arizona State University. The survey was led by Scheufele and Elizabeth Corley, an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University.

The survey findings, says Scheufele, are important not only because they reveal the paradox of citizens of one of the world's elite technological societies taking a dim view of the implications of a particular technology, but also because they begin to expose broader negative public attitudes toward science when people filter their views through religion.

"What we captured is nanospecific, but it is also representative of a larger attitude toward science and technology," Scheufele says. "It raises a big question: What's really going on in our public discourse where science and religion often clash?"

For the United States, the findings are particularly surprising, Scheufele notes, as the country is without question a highly technological society and many of the discoveries that underpin nanotechnology emanated from American universities and companies. The technology is also becoming more pervasive, with more than 1,000 products ranging from more efficient solar panels and scratch-resistant automobile paint to souped-up golf clubs already on the market.

"It's estimated that nanotechnology will be a $3.1 trillion global industry by 2015," Scheufele says. "Nanotechnology is one of those areas that is starting to touch nearly every part of our lives."

To be sure that religion was such a dominant influence on perceptions of nanotechnology, the group controlled for such things as science literacy, educational performance, and levels of research productivity and funding directed to science and technology by different countries.

The findings from the 2007 U.S. survey, adds Scheufele, also suggest that in the United States the public's knowledge of nanotechnology has been static since a similar 2004 survey. Scheufele points to a paucity of news media interest and the notion that people who already hold strong views on the technology are not necessarily seeking factual information about it.

Labels: Eurobarometer, nanotechnology, religion, religiosity, science, synthetic life, technology

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Friday, November 14, 2008

Poll finds support among teachers for creationism

Nearly one-third (29 per cent) of teachers in the UK believe creationism and intelligent design should be taught in science lessons, a new survey has found.

Teachers TV surveyed 10,600 education professions and received 1,210 responses, reports The Guardian.

According to the poll, almost 50 per cent of respondents think that excluding alternatives to evolution would be counter-productive.

Andrew Bethell, Chief Executive of Teachers TV, said: 'This poll data confirms that the debate on whether there is a place for the teaching of creationism in the classroom is still fierce.'

The issue is already a hot topic in parts of the US where religious faith plays a greater role in peoples' everyday lives.

Labels: creationism, intelligent design, public school, science, United Kingdom

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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Near-death experiences, guardian angel research projects connected?

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

by Steve Hammons

This month, news coverage of two research studies related to near-death experiences and belief in guardian angels provoked surprise, skepticism, and for some people, curiosity about transcendent and anomalous phenomena.

Are there cosmic connections between the two research project results?

The Human Consciousness Project at the University of Southampton in the UK began the biggest research study to date of near-death experiences (NDEs) among heart attack survivors who have been resuscitated.

The Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion also released results of a survey that found more than half of those polled believed they have been helped by a guardian angel during their lives.

There is an obvious link between NDEs and angels.

For those who suspect there may be some truth in both of these phenomena, the connections between them take only a small leap of faith, or even of scientific logic.

If, when we pass on, we go from this existence to some other place, then this afterlife or other dimension is probably associated with the dimension from which angels conduct their activities.

DIMENSIONS AND HEAVENLY WORMHOLES

Some physicists now tell us that the Universe may have many dimensions, including several we may not be able to easily perceive.

The Universe may be a "multi-verse" where layers or interfaces of different realities exist in ways that are both separate and connected.

People who report NDEs often describe going through a tunnel-like experience. This tunnel is often described as consisting of warm and beautiful light – a deeply loving and compassionate light.

In some cases, at the end of this tunnel, they may meet loved ones who had previously passed on. Or, they may encounter other beings.

Dr. Sam Parnia, head researcher of the University of Southampton project, was quoted in the UK newspaper The Telegraph as noting, "What people experience during this period of cardiac arrest provides a unique window of understanding into what we are all likely to experience during the dying process."

These NDE accounts seem to indicate a pathway from our daily reality to another dimension or another kind of reality.

One in five of those respondents identified themselves as not being religious.

Why do so many people have this belief? Wishful thinking? A psychological security blanket? Or, is it something more?

If it is true that they (we) do go to another dimension of reality, what kinds of activities are undertaken there? Are the daily lives of family members and friends back on Earth simply forgotten and left behind? Or, are missions and projects undertaken that have some important meaning?

CONSCIOUSNESS BEYOND DEATH

The NDE study at Southampton University, led by Dr. Parnia, is called the AWARE study, referring to "AWAreness during REsuscitation."

Parnia has done previous research on patient consciousness while experiencing clinical death.

The research will be conducted in the UK and the United States and will involve 25 hospitals. Researchers will look at 1,500 patients who had heart attacks that resulted in cessation of heartbeat and brain activity.

Parnia was quoted in The Telegraph newspaper as saying, "If you can demonstrate that consciousness continues after the brain switches off, it allows for the possibility that the consciousness is a separate entity."

The Telegraph article also quoted Parnia as explaining, "Contrary to popular perception, death is not a specific moment. It is a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working and the brain ceases functioning – a medical condition termed cardiac arrest, which from a biological viewpoint is synonymous with clinical death."

According to Parnia, "During a cardiac arrest, all three criteria of death are present. There then follows a period of time, which may last from a few seconds to an hour or more, in which emergency medical efforts may succeed in restarting the heart and reversing the dying process."

Some recent scientific studies reportedly have found that 10 percent to 20 percent of people experiencing clinical death also claim to have had consciousness and vivid, very interesting experiences during the period between death and resuscitation.

AN ENCHANTED WORLD

The Baylor survey included a wide range of religious topics, not just guardian angel encounters. Christopher Bader was the director of poll. The survey queried 1,700 people.

The response that generated the most interest, however, was the agreement by those polled with the following statement:

"I was protected from harm by a guardian angel."

Fifty-five percent of those surveyed agreed with this statement.

This general response was consistent across educational levels, geographic region and religious denominations.

Bader was quoted in TIME magazine as saying, "If you ask whether people believe in guardian angels, a lot of people will say, 'sure.' But this is different. It's experiential. It means that lots of Americans are having these lived supernatural experiences."

The number of people saying they believed they were protected by an angels was "the big shocker," Bader said.

The TIME article also quoted Randall Balmer, chairman of the religion department at Barnard College in New York. He said the Baylor survey reflects the fact that "Americans live in an enchanted world" and that "There is much broader uncharted range of religious experience among the populace than we expect."

According to an ABC News article on the Baylor poll, Rodney Stark, a professor of social sciences and co-director for studies of religion at Baylor, said, "While I knew there were a lot of people who had such [beliefs in angels], I wasn't prepared for the frequency of it."

NOTE TO READERS: For more information, please visit the Joint Recon Study Group site and have a look around.

Labels: AWARE, Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion, faith, guardian angels, Human Consciousness Project, near-death experience, religious experience, science, Steve Hammons

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Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Science was once part of religious study

Jerry Bergman
Mennonite Sunday school teacher

Many people today are unaware that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all historically have taught that God has given his people two books, his word, the Bible, and his works, the book of nature. It is for this reason that for centuries clergy were required to study science as part of their seminary training. This is also why many scientists – until recently – were originally trained as clergy and later became scientists. Examples include Charles Darwin, Rev. Adam Segwick, a prominent geologist “who interpreted all sciences as aids to religion” and Rev. Jon Henslow who devoted his life to observing nature “for evidence of divine handiwork.”

This history explains why all branches of science were once called – not science, a word coined relatively recently – but natural theology. Old book lovers soon learn that when looking for old, pre-1900, books on chemistry physics, or biology, they often contain the words “Natural Theology” in the title.

In fact, our modern university system was originally established to train pastors. Only much later did theology – once called “queen of the sciences” – break off into a separate area of study. The language that science uses today to name everything from animals to body parts, as anyone who has studied biology or anatomy knows, is Greek and Latin. This is just one legacy of the ecclesiastical past of science. Even today the No. 1 reason people give for their belief in God is the existence of the wonders and beauty of the natural world, especially the living world.

Some people feel closer to God when communing with nature, leisurely strolling in a forest, or even resting by a stream or river enjoying the sounds of nature. This is a major reason why modern science was birthed in Christian Europe. Cathedrals were designed to imitate an old growth forest, and stained-glass windows designed not only to tell a biblical story but also to mimic the sun shinning through the trees as well.

This other book is important because the dominant reason, even today, why people hold to theism is the argument best articulated by William Paley in his 1802 book appropriately titled “Natural Theology.” Paley argued that if one came across a watch lying on the road, he would conclude that the watch had an intelligent designer. Likewise, one who studies science is led to ask the same question: Who is the intelligent designer of the universe and the life in it? Paley’s book of science argued in over 400 pages that, after studying the wonders of creation, one could only conclude that, like the watch, it must have had an intelligent watchmaker to explain its origin.

Likewise, the living creation must also have a creator behind it. Thomas Aquinas, often regarded as the greatest Christian philosopher who ever lived, eloquently argued that wherever complex design exists there must have been an intelligent designer. Life, the most specified complex machine in the universe, likewise must have had an intelligent designer. The key is not complexity, but specified complexity. A junkyard is complex, as is a modern jet airplane, but only the airplane is complexity specified for a purpose, to rapidly carry passengers in the air from one point to another.

And it is for this reason why ministers throughout history have preached from the book of nature, called science today, and should continue to do so.

As studying an artist’s art works is an important way to learn about the artist as a person, so, too, studying the works of God is an important way to learn about the Creator.

As Proverbs 3:19 says “The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath He established the heavens.” Likewise, we can better understand the Lord by understanding the products of his wisdom.

Labels: God, Jerry Bergman, natural theology, nature, religion, science

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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The healing power of forgiveness

Science measures physical as well as mental benefits
By Sandi Dolbee

August 16, 2008

Paul Livingston doesn't look like a victim. At 6-foot-7 and 330 pounds, he is taller than Michael Jordan and big enough to play offensive tackle for the San Diego Chargers. But 36 years ago, when he was only 6 years old, he became prey for a pedophile custodian at a Catholic school in Orange County.

Last summer, his lawsuit was one of more than 500 claims in a record $660 million settlement with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Then, in May, he took another step toward healing: During a weeklong program at a private institute near Napa, Livingston forgave his now-dead abuser.

“When I first heard 'forgiveness,' I could not imagine forgiving someone for doing such heinous acts to children. I thought it would be letting him off the hook,” says Livingston, who lives in San Diego. “Boy, have I been taught a lesson in life. Forgiveness is not about letting them off the hook. It's about continuing on with our journey. It frees up our soul, in a way. You let go of the anger.”

He says he can feel the difference. His acid reflux is gone. He's stopped yelling at his daughter. Livingston has discovered what science has been saying for years: Forgiveness is good for you. Literally.

FORGIVENESS

What it is: Researchers studying the health benefits of forgiveness generally define it as the process of letting go of the pain, anger and resentment caused by an offense.

What it isn't: Forgiveness isn't denying the hurt, nor is it having to trust someone who is not trustworthy or staying in a relationship that is not healthy. It is not instant; premature forgiveness could be a sign of low self-esteem or other problems.

Why it matters: Hundreds of studies have linked forgiveness to improved physical and emotional well-being. In controlled tests at the University of Wisconsin Madison, for example, researcher Robert Enright sums up the findings in two words: "Forgiveness works."

A new science is exploding. It's not about measuring the big bang or excavating the ice on Mars. This science is more homeward bound, dealing with a word that religions have exulted and people have largely eluded.

Since its emergence in the 1990s, the new science of forgiveness has mushroomed into hundreds of studies by researchers testing aspects ranging from the physical and mental health effects on college students seething over being dumped by their dates to abuse victims reeling from betrayal and people rendered paralyzed in accidents.

In journal after journal, year after year, the cumulative evidence is enough to even convince a team from “CSI.” Bag 'em and tag 'em: People who learn to forgive seem to have fewer cardiovascular problems and stress-related ailments, and generally feel happier than those still holding a grudge.

Just last month, the journal of Mental Health, Religion and Culture reported that people who forgave had decreased odds of depression – women more so than men. Another study published this year found that men generally have a harder time forgiving than women.

Religion & Ethics Editor Sandi Dolbee was one of 10 participants this summer in the Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science and Religion.

Dolbee's project was on the science of forgiveness, particularly how the ancient religious virtue is being popularized by studies showing that it has mental and physical health benefits.

Perhaps it's ironic that the midwife for this birth was a theologian and ethicist. The late Lewis Smedes, of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, knew the God stuff. He knew the world's religions considered forgiveness a virtue. From Hinduism's Bhagavad Gita to the Koran of Islam to Christianity's Lord's Prayer, scriptures extol forgiveness as a heavenly attribute.

But Smedes was convinced that forgiveness was good for the forgiver, as well. And he wanted researchers to put it to the test. Everett Worthington Jr., a psychology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who became a pioneer in forgiveness research, remembers Smedes' message this way: “We can do this. We can study it scientifically.”

The first challenge for researchers was the word itself. Just what is forgiveness?

“Forgiving does not mean excusing, forgetting or pretending that an offense never occurred,” says Julie Juola Exline, associate professor of psychology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. “Forgiveness also does not imply that you trust the person who hurt you. Forgivers still seek le gal justice in some cases, and they may take steps to protect themselves from being hurt again.”

Instead, forgiveness is a letting go of the “bitter, grudging, vengeful feelings.”

It is a decidedly secular definition, far short of the radical forgiveness preached by Jesus, who told an offender to go and sin no more and offered forgiveness to his executioners even as he was dying.

“I think Jesus was an exemplar of forgiveness,” says Ken Pargament, a clinical psychologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. “We're not Jesus. For other human beings, forgiveness is a process.”

Part of that process is empathy, “putting yourself in the perspective of the person who hurt you rather than just demonizing them,” Pargament says.

Earlier this year, a Mayo Clinic journal reported that people who held grudges had increased blood pressure and heart rates, part of a mounting body of evidence, including a previous study of more than 2,000 twin pairs in Virginia that found that forgiveness related to less nicotine dependence and less drug abuse.

Other research found that HIV-infected patients took better care of themselves if they successfully forgave themselves and others. So did recovering alcoholics. People suffering spinal-cord injuries tended to cope better with their health situation and their treatments if they had forgiven.

Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet, an associate professor of psychology at Hope College in Holland, Mich., decided to see what physical effects people exhibited when they remembered the transgressions against them. She focused on heart rate, blood pressure, facial muscles and sweat levels.

When people remembered the transgressions, the bio-markers showed elevated stress and tension. When she had them think about forgiveness, she says the results were significant. “It had this fascinating quelling effect,” she explains.

Witvliet also made headlines with a study of forgiveness involving 213 Vietnam military veterans experiencing post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Her team found that vets who had trouble with forgiveness experienced more problems with PTSD.

As for the immune system, the theory is that unforgiveness is a personal stressor, which means every time it is felt, it triggers a stress reaction. Cortisol, a hormone produced by the adrenal glands, rushes to the body's defense, contributing energy, suppressing inflammation and even regulating the deposition of fat in the body. Too much cortisol, however, can interfere with the immune system over time. “Our bodies aren't designed to operate that way,” is how Worthington puts it in an interview from Virginia.

Researchers aren't ready to pronounce forgiveness as a cure. While forgiveness seems to contribute to a healthier existence, mentally and physically, the field of research is still too young to know exactly what part it plays in the human jigsaw. “I think we've got a long way to go,” says Witvliet, the Hope College researcher.

This is particularly true about long-term research, which could better define the role of forgiveness and unforgiveness in cumulative health and disease.

But those who have toiled in this field the longest – psychologists such as Worthington in Virginia and Robert Enright of the University of Wisconsin Madison – are bullish.

In an e-mail from Northern Ireland, where he spent much of the summer working on a forgiveness curriculum for schoolchildren, Enright says he now is more impressed with the power of forgiveness to heal than when he began his research two decades ago.

Worthington also is adamant. “It is not going to be refuted,” he says. “It's going to be refined.”

Labels: forgiveness, health, Lewis Smedes, Sandi Dolbee, science

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Monday, August 04, 2008

Why We Must Teach Evolution in the Science Classroom

Saturday, 2 August 2008, 03:00 CDT

By Laura Lorentzen

OUR COUNTRY HAS LAWS THAT SEPARATE church and state. Public institutions like schools must be neutral on the subject of religion, as required by the Constitution's First Amendment. Our courts have mandated that creationism is not an appropriate addition to the science curriculum in public schools; yet supporters of intelligent design press to have antievolutionary discussions enter the science classroom. Creationists even advocate that, when leaching evolution, educators should add the disclaimer that it is "just a theory."

Let's consider why all of us as educated persons, scientists and nonseientists alike, should take note of what science is taught - and not taught - in our public schools. In common language, a theory is a guess of sorts. However, in scientific language, a theory is "a set of universal statements that explain some aspect of the natural world... formulated and tested on the basis of evidence, internal consistency, and their explanatory power."1 The theory of evolution meets all of these criteria.

On the opposite side of the argument, "intelligent design fails on hold basic tenets of a scientific theory; design cannot be observed, and it cannot be tested," writes Mary Crowley in the New York Academy of Sciences Update magazine.2

The National Science Teachers Association (NTSA) argues the importance of teaching evolution in one of its own, most fundamental, writings - its position statement: "If evolution is not taught, students will not achieve the level of scientific literacy they need." The NSTA recognizes that evolution is a major unifying concept across multiple disciplines of science, and the National Science Education Standards, updated in 1996, recommend evolution as a means to "unify science disciplines and provide students with powerful ideas to help them understand the natural world,"1 Indeed, the evolutionary perspective is vitally important in modern molecular and cellular hiology, not to mention biomedicine - for example, the nature of disease and targeted treatments - and other scientific disciplines.

As we discuss fundamentals of science education for students, let's also discuss how we prepare our teachers for their role in the science classroom and broader educational system. Are we sufficiently preparing them to teach evolution? Are we equipping them with the knowledge and resources to withstand an onslaught of antievolutionary pressure from the public? Some support, such as various published materials available from the National Academy of Sciences, exists. However, much more is needed in terms of information and public education. For example, Nehm and Schonfeld's 2007 study of more than 40 pre-certified secondary biology teachers in New York City showed that, even after a semester-long graduate evolution course, the majority of science teachers "still preferred that antievolutionary ideas be taught in school."4 As our "science teachers are an important 'missing link' between scientists' understanding of evolution and the general public's ignorance of, or resistance to, the idea,"5 we must do more.

The curriculum taught in our science classrooms should be that which is based on measurable, quantifiable fact. Nonscientific content has its place as well, such as philosophy or religion classes. Let's just be certain that evolutionary theory is a standard feature of our science classroom lesson plans so that we ensure our students' literacy, competitiveness, and futures in the global world of scientific study.

1 National Science Teachers Association [NSTA] position statement on the teaching of evolution, http://www.nsta.org/about/positions/ evolution.aspx.

2 "Teaching evolution and the nature of science" Sept/Oct 2006, p.7.

3 National Academies Press, http://www.nap.edu/ openbook.php?record_id=4962&page=104.

4 Journal of Science Teacher Education 18:699.

5 Brooks 2001, Newport 2006, as cited in Nehm and Schonfeld 2007.

LAURA LORENTZEN, PhD, is associate professor & chairperson, New Jersey Center for Science, Technology & Mathematics Education at Kean University, Union, New Jersey. While her doctorate is in the biomedical sciences, her master's degree research was determining the molecular evolutionary relationship among lower metazoan animals.

Labels: creationism, evolution, intelligent design, Laura Lorentzen, National Science Teachers Association, religion, science

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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Study Entices Thoughts Of Hands-On Healing

By HILARY WALDMAN | Courant Staff Writer
July 28, 2008

Steeped in white-coat science since she earned her Ph.D. in cell biology at Columbia University 20 years ago, Gloria Gronowicz is about the last person you'd expect to put stock in the touchy-feely discipline of energy medicine.But then the University of Connecticut researcher saw it with her own eyes, under a high-power microscope in her own laboratory, where, once, only well-accepted biological building blocks — proteins, mitochondria, DNA and the like — got respect.

Therapeutic Touch performed by trained energy healers significantly stimulated the growth of bone and tendon cells in lab dishes.

Her results, recently published in two scientific journals, provide novel evidence that there may be a powerful energy field that, when channeled through human hands, can influence the course of events at a cellular level.

Gronowicz and others said more studies are needed to figure out how and why Therapeutic Touch seems to stimulate cell growth — and if the findings can be applied to patient care.

Through history and across cultures, spiritual healers have long believed that the laying on of hands could cure disease and relieve pain. In the last 30 years or so, many forms of energy healing — sometimes called Reiki, Qigong, Therapeutic Touch, or Healing Touch — have found their way into hospitals and other clinical settings.

Still, it is often derided as hocus-pocus, although some medical practitioners have come to accept it as a harmless diversion that, if nothing else, might relieve stress.

Even when early studies showed some evidence of healing in patients treated with energy therapies, it was impossible to say whether the improvement was a result of the touch. More likely, critics suggested, the nurturing therapy simply improved the patient's frame of mind, promoting a healing response.

Gronowicz was in the doubting camp. She had spent her career studying the biology of bone cells. Her work with hormones, growth factors and tissue engineering has shed light on the very elements of bone — a slow, sometimes tedious effort she hopes might someday help doctors find treatments for crippling diseases.

But when a colleague asked her to collaborate on an experiment looking into the power of Therapeutic Touch, she was curious. As a full professor in the department of surgery, with tenure and respect, Gronowicz had the stature to dabble in an endeavor that some of her scientific colleagues might criticize as a fool's errand.

She applied for a National Institutes of Health grant to fund an experiment designed to isolate the mind/body conundrum from the question of energy healing by applying Therapeutic Touch techniques to presumably inanimate bone cells cultured in an incubator.

At first, even the NIH's branch that funds research in alternative and complementary medicine turned her down. Eventually, she received $250,000 for her study.

To put Therapeutic Touch to the test, cell cultures were divided into three groups.

One dish of cells was treated by a trained healer. A second set of cells was treated by untrained students who were instructed to hold their hands over a petri dish for 10 minutes twice a week. A third dish of cells stood ignored in its metal stand.

After the treatment, the dishes were returned to an incubator. Scientists who later examined the cells under the microscope didn't know which group each dish had been in.

To Gronowicz's astonishment, the cells treated by trained Therapeutic Touch practitioners grew faster and stronger than those that received the sham treatment, or none at all.

"Therapeutic Touch stimulated growth in bone, tendon and skin cells at statistically significant rates," Gronowicz said.

She tested the cells using several different biological markers for growth, and each test confirmed her finding. In one test, Gronowicz found that cells treated with Therapeutic Touch grew at double the rate of untreated cells.

In addition to seeing increased cell division under the microscope, the bone cell cultures treated with Therapeutic Touch also absorbed more calcium, the essential mineral for growing strong bones. Her findings were published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research and The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

Gronowicz also looked at bone cancer cells. Cancer occurs when cells grow out of control, so a treatment that stimulates growth could be detrimental to people with cancer. But unlike healthy cells, bone cancer cells did not appear to be stimulated by the touch therapy — an interesting, though not fully explained, finding, Gronowicz said.

Beyond growing bones, the findings may begin to explain why people with strong social support systems appear to be healthier and recover from disease better than those who are isolated. Maybe it's not all in their heads.

"In this case, the bones didn't know, that's why what she did is so intriguing," Chesney said. "To our knowledge, those cells didn't know who was a healer and who wasn't."

Labels: energy medicine, Gloria Gronowicz, healing, Hilary Waldman, laying-on-of-hands, Reiki, science, Therapeutic Touch