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‘Miracles’ Rejects Disenchantment, Not Science

By Joseph Laycock

…y Night Live even created a parody of the video. The most common complaint about “Miracles” is that it appears to celebrate ignorance. Critics frequently point to Shaggy’s lyric, “F-ing magnets! How do they work?” The implication is that anything the artist fails to understand is ipso facto miraculous, making ignorance a sort of sacrament. Shaggy goes on to add: And I don’t want to talk to a scientist/ Y’all motherf**kers lying, and making me piss…

Dear Scientists: Please Stop Bashing Free Will!

By John Horgan

…gaps,” who dwells within those shadowy realms into which science has not fully penetrated, such as the imaginary time before the Big Bang banged. In the same way, maybe we can have a free will of the gaps. No science is more riddled with gaps, after all, than the science of human consciousness. I don’t believe in God—at least, not a God described in any text I know of—but I do believe in free will….

Using Science to Diss Religion

By Evan Derkacz

…s. But, as one who’s often skeptical of the conclusions drawn from social science research—if not of the methodologies behind the research itself—I’m particularly disappointed to see misleading conclusions drawn from a PS post. I’ll explain. Earlier this week PS’s excellent staff writer Tom Jacobs outlined some of the takeaways from a Canadian study looking at the personality traits of those who lied for financial gain, including business majors…

Your Pseudoscience Beach Read: Creationist Infighting Edition

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…west Science Museum” recently opened in Boise. That’s right, the Northwest Science Museum. Guess it’s time to trademark the word “science.” As a friend quipped on Twitter, “next the Westboro Baptist Church will be opening a Museum of Tolerance.” But it’s not quite as bad as all that. The “Northwest Science Museum” is really a small group of creationists who have opened an admission-free “Vision Center,” in a small building next to a video-game sup…

Did the “Science Guy” Bill Nye Single-Handedly Revive Noah’s Ark Theme Park?

By Mike Greer

…ounter project in northern Kentucky. When asked, Nye brushes off questions about whether he may rightly be criticized for taking part in a debate that helped to revive a creationist project he says he despises. Perhaps the correct question for Nye is, “Were you aware of Ham’s ulterior motives behind the staging of the February debate?” If Nye says he was not aware then it would only be fair to assume that Ham is light-years ahead of Nye when it co…

Is It Immoral to Believe in Miracles?

By Noah Berlatsky

…apiro has no explanation. Shapiro does note that, for some, religion isn’t about miracles. It’s about “belonging to a religious community.” But if a community is organized around the miraculous or the divine, how do you separate the faith and the community? This isn’t an incidental question. Shapiro is so eager to unlink abstract ideas from their real-life contexts that he’s often blind to the ways that both belief and skepticism are tied up with…

Video: How the Religion v. Science ‘Debate’ is Like Professional Wrestling

By Byron R. McCane and Dan Mathewson

…RD and Wofford College collaborated to produce this exclusive video based on a popular lecture given by professors Mathewson and McCane. Presentation begins at 3:43. To watch on full screen click the four arrows next to the word “vimeo.” —ed. Rasslin’ with Religion & Science from Religion Dispatches on Vimeo….

Why Belief in the Primacy of Language Leads to a Misunderstanding of Richard Dawkins, Islamophobia, and Politics

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…hey’re talking about religion as if it’s a package of beliefs. And talking about science as if it’s exclusively about truth, when it’s actually about the production of knowledge in process. That ultimately isn’t subject to any kind of resolution, and so they’re able to go back and forth with each other forever and produce these intractable conflicts [with no way] for them to be resolved. On Islamophobia, Human Differences, and the Political Questi…

Prisoners In the Hands of an Angry God: A Conversation About Religion and Reform

By Andrew Aghapour and Stephanie Gaskill

…. It’s hard to account for this kind of complexity with multiple-choice questions. Also on the Cubit: The Problem with Pew’s Science & Religion Poll…

Will a New Dawkins Foundation-Sponsored App Help Atheists Talk to Believers?

By Alana Massey

…fications of talking about their God belief. When you’re talking to people about God, you’re talking to them about more than God. You’re talking about their family, their social structure, who they go on Sunday cookouts with, and who has supported them their whole lives,” said Paquette. “So that’s definitely somewhere that we could grow,” she added without hesitation, noting that they could add essays to the resources or new scenarios that address…