Where Academic Advancements Come From.

From Nathan Schneider's new article at The Nation on the Templeton Foundation, "God, Science and Philanthropy":

Templeton has a history of seeding fields of study almost from scratch. After the foundation's initiative for research on forgiveness began in 1997, the number of psychology journal articles on the subject went from fewer than fifty per year to more than 100 in 2000 and nearly 250 in 2008. When Templeton first financed Larson's NIHR in the early 1990s, the number of medical schools with courses on religion could be counted on one latex glove. Now, according to Dr. Christina Puchalski of the Templeton-funded George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health, three-quarters of US medical schools have brought spirituality into their curriculums.

Nature, Science and Religion Are Coming Together.

At CNN, Todd Leopold talks to Margaret Atwood about her new novel, "The Year of the Flood," which is meant as a sequel to "Oryx and Crake," a book I've had on my "to read" pile for a few years now. The interview made me pull out the book from the bottom of the stack primarily because of the following bit:

"Flood" is, in some ways, a continuation of "Oryx and Crake," which introduced much of its world. The characters Oryx and Crake, the latter a genetic engineer, have small but pivotal roles. Atwood says she decided to continue the story because "so many people said, 'What happens?' ... I didn't know the answer, and therefore had to think about that."

A number of the issues raised in "Oryx and Crake," she continues, piqued her interest, particularly since they parallel what's going on in real life. "One of those is the way that nature, science and religion are coming together," she says, noting the popularity of the film "Avatar." "The interesting thing to me is [the] various trends, and my religion in the book is kind of what it would be if people just got a little bit more organized, though they might not go for those [shapeless] outfits."

Who Pays Wesley J. Smith?

Well, well. You've heard me gripe about the smooth but fact-less exaggerations made by Wesley J. Smith regarding end of life care and aid in dying. His blog at FirstThings is one screed after another of religious ideology - and the far right kind - that has no time for science or fact. But he's got articles galore and a gazillion nasty books - in short, the man has influence.

His "theory" of "human exceptionalism" skirts God talk. He's a connected, articulate lawyer who dabbles in bioethics; his opponents in the field have accused him of playing loose with the facts in order to reach his preferred conclusions.

Here's a little bit, from the book I'm reading, about the Discovery Institute, for which Smith is a Senior Fellow.

In the evolution wars, the campaign on behalf of intelligent design deserves special mention because it achieved success in many communities by brilliantly employing an intellectual and scientific vocabulary to attack "elitist" scientists who reject religious attacks on Darwin's theory. The intelligent design movement is spearheaded by the Discovery Institute, a think tank based in Seattle and bankrolled by far right conservatives. The slick, media-savvy right-wingers who run the Discovery Institute prefer to downplay religion and highlight the anti-Darwinist views of a handful of scientific contrarians, many with ties to the religious right. That their views are almost universally rejected by respected mainstream scientists is seen by the intelligent design crowd as evidence of a liberal establishment conspiracy to protect its Darwinist turf. Institute spokesmen constantly compare their contrarian faith-based researchers with once scorned geniuses like Copernicus and Galileo - a contention conveniently ignoring the fact that the Catholic Church, not other seekers of scientific truth, was the source of opposition to the heliocentric theory of the solar system. Intelligent design does not insist on the seven days of creation but it does rest on the nonscientific hypothesis that the complexity of life proves the existence of a designer.

Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason, pp 27

He may talk a good one but he is of a brand that will deny facts and statistics, endorse quack scientists, get funding from religious backers, and denigrate the diminishing American intellect for the sake of adherence to unprovable faith. He's no scientist; he's a marketing shill for the religious right.

If I had to pinpoint one of the greatest crises in this country, it would be the lack of sound scientific education and thought. The Discovery Institute is treasonous in this sense, diminishing our excellence in education and our future strength as a world leader by misdirecting us down a path of anti-intellectualism and anti-science. Smith is only one of their well-paid voices.

Science, Religion, And Politics.

Just a snippet of a post from Scienceblogs:

When you get right down to it, the Galileo affair was almost irreducibly complex. The very real conflict between science and religion over who gets to declare what the physical world was certainly a major factor, but it was only one of many. The political context - particularly as it involved challenges to the secular power of the church - was also important. So were the many longstanding interpersonal conflicts between the participants. So were the religious and political disputes involving various factions within the church. I'm not sure you can point to any one of those factors as being clearly the most important one involved.

While I'm at least partially in agreement with Jason over the problem with Dixon's view of the Galileo affair, I'm entirely on Dixon's side when it comes to the more modern ID/creationism issue. Here's Jason's perspective:

Dixon plays this gambit again when talking about evolution and creationism:

The debate about evolution and ID is a conflict not primarily between science and religion but between different views about who should control education.

But why is the control of education such a contentious issue? It is because fundamental questions about sources of knowledge are at stake. Young-Earth creationists believe the Bible constitutes a source of evidence that trumps anything a scientist might discover. Furthermore, failure to recognize that fact places your eternal soul in danger. From the other side scientists believe (with considerable justice, I would add) that their methods are far more reliable than those of religion. Failure to recognize that fact assaults reason and rationality themselves. The ID folks are religiously more diverse than the YEC's, but the source of the dispute is effectively the same.

How is that not primarily a dispute between science and religion?

If I thought that education was such a contentious issue because of the conflict over sources of knowledge, I'd have to agree with Jason. But I'm pretty sure it's not. It is true that creationists have a very different view of what constitutes an appropriate source of knowledge about the physical world than most scientists do, but that is not the source of the education conflict. If the creationists were willing to teach their views only in their churches - something that nobody challenges their right to do - the conflict would not exist.

Look at the Amish, for example. I'm honestly not sure what their view of evolution is, but I strongly suspect that a group that is religiously opposed to automobiles, television, and electric lighting does not view science as a source of authoritative knowledge. Their views on these topics do not create controversy because they have no problem with keeping their beliefs within their own community. They do not ask to be allowed to require our children to be educated in accordance with their views; they educate their children themselves, and leave the rest of us alone. Their views may be incompatible with science, but they do not cause controversy the way that creationists do.

The conflict arises when creationists attempt to force their religious views onto the children of other people, who do not necessarily share those views. That's not a dispute over what the most authoritative source of knowledge is; that's a dispute over the exercise of secular authority. In other words, it's a political conflict.