Science & Technology

Science & TechnologyDecember 19, 2011

Top Ten Peacemakers in the Science-Religion Wars

By Paul Wallace

This year has marked, I believe, the beginning of the end of the war between science and religion. Creationism cannot last. The New Atheists are now old (or departed). And between these camps the middle ground continues to expand. Indeed, many folks have been hard at it, doing a new kind of peace work. Some have done it intentionally, some have not. Outliers, both atheist and religious hardliners, continue to wage battle but they look increasingly irrelevant.

Science & TechnologyJuly 6, 2011

Can a Pig Heart be Kosher?

By Ari Stillman

What happens when a breakthrough in technology leaves religious scholars without much to go on?

Science & TechnologyJune 24, 2011

Do iPads Cause Religious Experiences?

By Andrew Aghapour

In a recent BBC documentary, Secrets of the Superbrands, presenter Alex Riley attended the opening of a London Apple store and noted the “evangelical frenzy” of the Apple fans lining the block.

Science & TechnologyJune 23, 2011

High on Drugs: Breaking the Just Say No Addiction

By Gary Laderman

Forget the war on drugs. As Jimmy Carter recently argued in the New York Times, it is time to call off this wasted effort.

Science & TechnologyJune 17, 2011

Size Matters According to New Study

By Louis A. Ruprecht

A new study concludes that the brains of born-again Christians are smaller than those of other affiliations or non-believers. Welcome back to the 19th century.

Science & TechnologyMay 5, 2011

Were You Born Selfish?: An Interview with Frans de Waal

By Benjamin Hale

Both the good and bad in our species come from our primate background, says primatologist Frans de Waal, author of The Age of Empathy.

Science & TechnologyApril 5, 2011

The End (of Religion) is Near, Scientists Say

By Louis A. Ruprecht

Something is clearly up (or down) with religious affiliation, but reading that data calls for the art for interpretation, not mathematical modeling. That’s what makes this story far more interesting—and far less funny.

Politics/Law, Science & TechnologyFebruary 18, 2011

Conservatism’s Bulldog Claims Psychology Tilts Liberal

By Ira Chernus

If you haven’t heard of Jonathan Haidt yet, you probably will soon. The social psychologist from the University of Virginia is making quite a media splash. Most recently, he set off a small media storm by calling out his fellow psychologists for unacknowledged liberal bias.

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Science & TechnologyFebruary 9, 2011

Why Evolution Should Be Taught in Church

By Paul Wallace

The church, in its ignorance of and hostility to evolution, is passing up one of its greatest opportunities to apprehend the very God it claims to represent. This irony is due to a terrible case of what may be called “small-god-ism” and is, unfortunately, encouraged by much popular theology. This theology makes claims about scripture and church practice that reduce God to a cheerleader, or a cosmic vending machine, or some domesticated and pale image of our own confused selves.

Science & TechnologyJanuary 11, 2011

What’s Truth? Scientific Method Under the Microscope

By Arri Eisen

While I might have some kind of God-experience, unlike testing aspirin, I can’t easily carry out my God-experience simultaneously on statistically significant large numbers of people, write up the experience, repeat it, compare the same number of people at the same time who don’t believe in God, but are otherwise similar, see if they have the same experience, and then have someone repeat my experiment and see if they get the same results. This method is what science is supposed to be about; this is scientific proof, this is what scientists believe in. But, says Jonah Lehrer, it’s not that simple. He describes what he calls ‘the decline effect’: many experimental results that are strikingly positive and statistically significant are not replicable.