“I’m a Creationist,” Says Former Times Tech Writer, Heffernan
Don’t worry, it’s mostly aesthetic.
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Does God know if I cheat on a test in São Paulo?
Anatomy of a cross-cultural study.
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If Apes Could Talk to Atheists
The famed primatologist’s latest book is a conversation about the common ground among atheists and bonobos, both of whom make it clear that religion has, lamentably and unjustifiably, been given credit for human morality.
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The Evolution of Religion, According to Darwin
“Today we’d probably call Darwin something of a seeker. You might say he’s something of a proto-None.”
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Beloved Immortals: Science, Miracles and ‘Jellyfish Time’
A recent piece by novelist Nathaniel Rich focused on eccentric Japanese researcher Shin Kubota, who studies the “immortal jellyfish.” But what are we after when we seek immortality? And does this quest tell us more about us than the natural world?
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High Ark: A Geologist on the True Meaning of Noah’s Flood
At the Creation Museum in Kentucky, a place that promotes the idea that all of these layers of rock got created at once through Noah’s Flood—and yet right under their feet is this beautifully vetted stretch of limestone, it’s really too finely laminated and too extensive to possibly be explained by something like that. So you look at these things and you have to ask, what do you make of the world? Can the world tell its own story?
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Does Analytic Thinking Erode Religious Belief?
If three wacky experiments and a host of assumptions makes it so.
Read MoreDeath Penalty Inconsistent with Life
With Kennedy v. Louisiana the highest court in the land has given America a wonderful gift: it has reminded us that life is the highest value there is; the life of humans, of all the species, of nature.
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Where Do “Sacred” Values Live in the Brain?
For the research subjects’ sacred values, the ones they wouldn’t give up on for any amount of money (they could ‘auction off their value’ for up to $100), what lit up in the brain were areas known to be involved in right-wrong decisions, not in cost-benefit/utilitarian parts of the brain. That is, we naturally go to right-wrong thinking in making sacred value decisions.
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The Good Liberal Fear of a Yoga Planet
By now, it should be clear that William Broad’s broadside against yoga (sorry about that) in the New York Times is thin on facts and thick on rhetoric. Excerpted from his forthcoming book, the article, “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body,” is a full-on, un-fair-and-balanced…
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