Here is a study that shows that psychiatrists are the least religious of American physicians. However, its not as dramatic as the news headline makes it appear.

Psychiatrists are more likely to be Jewish or have no religious affiliation than U.S. doctors overall and less likely to be Protestant or Roman Catholic Christians, said the study, published on Monday in the journal Psychiatric Services.

In terms of percentages, only 10% of all doctors and 17% of psychiatrists say that they are not affiliated with any religion. On the other hand, 31% of all college professors have no religious affiliation (this is a pdf file of the paper on beliefs of college professors by Gross & Simmons).

So what's the big deal about psychiatrists being the least religious amongst doctors? I'm really not sure. But here are some speculations by the lead investigator of the study:

Dr. Farr Curlin, a University of Chicago medical professor who led the study, said research by the American Psychiatric Association in 1975 saw similar patterns among psychiatrists.

"There still seems to be something about the field to lead doctors who are religious to be less likely to go into it," Curlin said in a telephone interview.

Anti-religious views expressed by some early figures in the field, including Sigmund Freud, may play a role in driving religious medical students from psychiatry, he said.

And does Dr. Curlin have a similar explanation for college professors? I think he is making a big deal out of this slight difference. Some of the reasons are probably true but then, so what? Furthermore, I'm not sure what to make of the over-representation of Jewish psychiatrists. A more troubling (perhaps?) result is this:

The survey asked the doctors to whom they would refer a patient with continued deep grieving two months after his wife's death. More religious doctors were less likely to send patients to psychiatrists and more inclined to send them to a member of the clergy or religious counselor, the survey found.

Overall, 56 percent of doctors said they would send him to a psychiatrist or psychologist, 25 percent to a member of the clergy and 7 percent to a health care chaplain.

Protestant doctors were half as likely as those with no religious affiliation to send a patient to a psychiatrist or psychologist, the survey found.

Hmm...let me quickly check the affiliation of my doctor.

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Here's the YouTube part:Here's a description:HBO BUYS U.S. TV RIGHTS TO SECOND LIFE MACHINIMA SERIES, PROMOTES IT AS OSCAR NOMINEE CONTENDER
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The host of "What the Buck" explains a little bit of the history of his channel and some of the things that made it successful. If you aspire to building a resonant channel on YouTube, you might want to take a look.
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Back to the old question: how to approach touchy scientific issues that come in conflict with religion? There is an interesting recent survey that shows that American adults understand that science is important, they are in favor of science, but when it comes in conflict with core religious values, they side with religion. And more importantly, they know that the reason for their views are religious and not based on lack of evidence! This is problematic at one level (low emphasis on evidence for evaluating matters involving physical science), but it raises again the issue of how to properly address scientific issues that could possibly conflict with religion. From this perspective, Richard Dawkins' approach of attacking religion and presenting more evidence is clearly not going to work. Here is the survey: How the Public Resolves Conflicts between Faith and Science.

On the acceptance of evolution:

Indeed, according to a 2006 survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 42% of Americans reject the notion that life on earth evolved and believe instead that humans and other living things have always existed in their present form. Among white evangelical Protestants – many of whom regard the Bible as the inerrant word of God – 65% hold this view. Moreover, in the same poll, 21% of those surveyed say that although life has evolved, these changes were guided by a supreme being. Only a minority, about a quarter (26%) of respondents, say that they accept evolution through natural processes or natural selection alone.

But most people are pro-science and understand that there is scientific consensus on evolution:

Interestingly, many of those who reject natural selection recognize that scientists themselves fully accept Darwin's theory. In the same 2006 Pew poll, nearly two-thirds of adults (62%) say that they believe that scientists agree on the validity of evolution. Moreover, Americans, including religious Americans, hold science and scientists in very high regard. A 2006 survey conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University found that most people (87%) think that scientific developments make society better. Among those who describe themselves as being very religious, the same number – 87% – share that opinion.

Thus, the public simply ignore the scientists when scientific ideas come in conflict with religion - and evidence doesn't feature much in the debate:

When asked what they would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people say they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept the contrary scientific finding, according to the results of an October 2006 Time magazine poll. Indeed, in a May 2007 Gallup poll, only 14% of those who say they do not believe in evolution cite lack of evidence as the main reason underpinning their views; more people cite their belief in Jesus (19%), God (16%) or religion generally (16%) as their reason for rejecting Darwin's theory.

But here is a surprising result from the survey:

This reliance on religious faith may help explain why so many people do not see science as a direct threat to religion. Only 28% of respondents in the same Time poll say that scientific advancements threaten their religious beliefs. These poll results also show that more than four-fifths of respondents (81%) say that "recent discoveries and advances" in science have not significantly impacted their religious views. In fact, 14% say that these discoveries have actually made them more religious. Only 4% say that science has made them less religious.

So the question is, how to best approach scientific ideas that clash with religion. Richard Dawkins' thinks that if you show evidence, all smart people will immediately side with it. This may still work, except he puts science and religion in opposition and makes one choose between them. The Pew survey shows that under these circumstances, most of the public will choose religion over science.

I think the starting point regarding that should be an emphasis on the use of evidence for physical phenomenon irrespective of ones' faith. Is it even possible? Hmm...well...you can use God for "meaning" - to answer the "why" questions and leave "how" questions to science and scientific evidence (in the same spirit of Gould's non-overlapping Magistaria and Galileo's two books: book of scripture and book of nature). Second, take advantage of the existing positive attitude towards science, and show how ideas like evolution has shaped modern medicine and is saving lives every day (Is it possible to show that a rejection of evolutionary theory in the modern world would almost be an immoral position from this perspective?). If this makes someone more religious...that is fine...as long as they accept that events in the physical world can be explained only by natural causes. Check out this article on Framing Science, published in Science, in the context of global warming debate, evolution, and the stem cells controversy. Also check out Krauss & Dawkins on this issue and also Michael Shermer.
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The September issue of National Geographic has a good and well-balanced article on Pakistan. It is titled, Struggle for the Soul of Pakistan, and it talks about two versions of Islam competing for power there - a peaceful version of the planes and a harsher religion of the mountains. It summarizes the rise of fundamentalism in the 80's (jihad against the Soviets) and the 90's (the rise of the Taliban) and also provide a glimpse of the present. I will add some quotes from the article below that are relevant to this blog, but if you do have time, please read the section on Abdul Sattar Edhi - he has been doing phenomenal humanitarian work for the past 60 years (see Edhi Foundation) and his story is truly incredible.

The article has a nice beginning - Pakistan is indeed situated on a religious fault line:

If there is an address, an exact location for the rift tearing Pakistan apart, and possibly the world, it is a spot 17 miles (28 kilometers) west of Islamabad called the Margalla Pass. Here, at a limestone cliff in the middle of Pakistan, the mountainous west meets the Indus River Valley, and two ancient, and very different, civilizations collide. To the southeast, unfurled to the horizon, lie the fertile lowlands of the Indian subcontinent, realm of peasant farmers on steamy plots of land, bright with colors and the splash of serendipitous gods. To the west and north stretch the harsh, windswept mountains of Central Asia, land of herders and raiders on horseback, where man fears one God and takes no prisoners.

This is also where two conflicting forms of Islam meet: the relatively relaxed and tolerant Islam of India, versus the rigid fundamentalism of the Afghan frontier. Beneath the surface of Pakistan, these opposing forces grind against each other like two vast geologic plates, rattling teacups from Lahore to London, Karachi to New York. The clash between moderates and extremists in Pakistan today reflects this rift, and can be seen as a microcosm for a larger struggle among Muslims everywhere. So when the earth trembles in Pakistan, the world pays attention.

The more radical madrassas were built and funded for the war against the Soviets in the 80s, and it is through these madrassas, that the Taliban (literally, students) later arose.

During the 1980s, as the mujahideen prevailed against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the winds of extremism blowing from the northwest began to chill all of Pakistan. Millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia flowed into the hard-line Sunni madrassas clustered along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, which eventually spread across Pakistan. Not all Pakistani madrassas today are fundamentalist or radical. Some are shoestring operations run by moderate clerics to meet the educational needs of the poor. But the majority—more than 60 percent—are affiliated with the fundamentalist Deobandi sect, an austere interpretation of Islam that calls for a rejection of modernity and a return to the "pure," seventh-century Islam of the Prophet Muhammad. Politically savvy and extremely well funded, more than 10,000 of these schools operate across Pakistan today, compared with fewer than 1,000 before General Zia took power. Thousands more operate unofficially.

By the time Zia died in a mysterious 1988 plane crash, the Islamization of Pakistan was well under way. The following year, the Soviet Union, preoccupied with its own implosion, pulled its demoralized troops from Afghanistan. The U.S. promptly declared victory and returned home, leaving the Afghan people to the chaotic rule of the mujahideen warlords. One crucial chapter in the story of radical Islam's ascendancy had come to a close. The one we are still living had just begun. Osama bin Laden and other leaders of the Afghan jihad now moved freely in and out of northwestern Pakistan and its Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The madrassas swelled with the children of the Zia Generation. In the rugged mountainous land shared by Afghanistan and Pakistan, the seeds of the Taliban, and al Qaeda, had been sown.

And to get a glimpse of a Deobandi madrassa, here is an amusing exchange:

My new friends want to know why Americans think they are terrorists. It's a good question, and an innocent one, judging by the young and open faces of the dozen or so students sharing their evening meal with me. They don't look like terrorists as they sit in a semicircle on green mats in the courtyard of Jamia Uloom-ul-Quran, a small Deobandi madrassa located in a historic downtown mosque in Peshawar. This provincial capital served as headquarters for the Afghan resistance against the Soviets, and jihad is still a going concern here. A block away from the madrassa, at shops selling shoes and used clothes, I'd bought a 50-cent al Qaeda DVD of a suicide bomber preparing for a mission. At the end of the disc, over religious music, the bomber is shown in his car at a distant crossroads, blowing up a convoy. "We know that shop," the students say. "But we're not terrorists."

A few of the students appear to be ten or younger, but most are in their late teens or early 20s. They say their dream for Pakistan is "a peaceful nation, in which justice prevails, in keeping with Islamic law." But they believe, as many here do, that Islam is under attack. By America, by the West, by India, by their own government. Under these circumstances, they say, jihad is justified. What about suicide bombing? Is it sanctioned by Islam? "You must think we have classes here in making bombs or AK-47s!" exclaims one boy, and they all laugh.

"In any Muslim land that's occupied, suicide bombing is allowed," says a personable older boy named Rafiullah, who has bright brown eyes and the beginnings of a beard. A few mention Iraq and Palestine as places where such bombings are justified. Another boy mentions Afghanistan. "But it's not allowed in Pakistan," Rafiullah says, "since we're not an occupied country." ("Not yet!" somebody else interjects, to laughter.) "Nobody has a right to blow you up, even if you're a non-Muslim, or an infidel. If you are here as a guest, you are welcome." He reaches to shake my hand, as if to reassure me.

By the way, I grew up in Karachi in the 80' s and for me (and probably for a lot of Karachiites) Peshawar was scary conservative even then. Perhaps Alabama for someone growing up in New York city, except Alabama with lots and lots of guns (preferably AK-47s).

But if the state does not provide education, what options do people have:

About a third of the students at the Deobandi madrassa in Peshawar, for instance, are poor kids from far-flung regions of the North-West Frontier Province or the tribal areas. They are like Mir Rahman, 16, a sweet-faced boy from a family of poor herders in the Mohmand Tribal Area. The family lives miles from the nearest public school, which is so badly run that few kids attend. It's not unusual in Pakistan to hear of public schools that receive no books, no supplies, and no subsidies from the government. Thousands more are "ghost schools" that exist only on paper, to line the pockets of phantom teachers and administrators. Faced with choosing between bad public schools and expensive private ones, many poor parents send their children to the madrassas, where they get a roof over their heads, three meals a day, and a Koran-based education—for free.

But Zia managed to reshape the whole education system and it will take time to reverse the damage:

Pervez Hoodbhoy lives every day with the consequences of the lack of public education in Pakistan. An MIT-trained professor of nuclear physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, he was speaking to a graduate-level class in physics a few days after the huge earthquake that devastated Kashmir in 2005, describing the geophysical forces that produced the disaster. "When I finished, hands shot up all over the room," he recalls. "'Professor, you are wrong,' my students said. 'That earthquake was the wrath of God.' "

This, he says, is the legacy of General Zia-ul-Haq, whose education ministry issued guidelines on bringing an Islamic perspective to science and other subjects in the public schools. "The Zia Generation has come of age," he says. "It isn't Islamic to teach that earthquakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plates. Instead, you are supposed to say, by the will of Allah, an earthquake happens." Today a government commission is working to modernize education, but "it goes deeper than updating textbooks," he says. "It's a matter of changing society."

A step in the right direction...but it will take time. Zia (with a supportive US) did enormous damage and it will take at least another generation to reverse the effects of his Islamization.


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Discusses things that did not work as newspapers migrated to the web:Web Editors Reveal Online Flops or FailuresA good chance to learn something from history.
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7 Ways to Grow the Action HabitFrom the article: "People at the top of every profession share one quality — they get things done. This ability supercedes intelligence, talent, and connections in determining the size of your salary and the speed of your advancement. Despite the simplicity of this concept there is a perpetual shortage of people who excel at getting results. The action habit — the
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This time its on energy/quantum healings, chakras, and homeopathy. Actually this episode is quite funny and it includes discussions of body black holes, Atlantian DNA and other such amusing topics. I also liked the ending where there is a good discussion of placebo effect and why people find alternative medicine attractive.
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There has been a division amongst atheists on how to respond to the recent resurgence of religion. Whereas, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris et al. have gone on all out offensive, Michael Shermer, Lawrence Krauss et al. have promoted a more tolerant (and perhaps a more reasonable) approach (check out discussion between Krauss and Dawkins here). Shermer's latest column in Scientific American is titled Rational Atheism, and is "an open letter to Messrs. Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens".

He correctly states that:

Whenever religious beliefs conflict with scientific facts or violate principles of political liberty, we must respond with appropriate aplomb. Nevertheless, we should be cautious about irrational exuberance.

Shermer then lists five points that can be summed up as: Have a positive message and be tolerant of others if you want your beliefs to be tolerated.

Here are his 5 points:

• Anti-something movements by themselves will fail

• Positive assertions are necessary
  

• Rational is as rational does (i.e. "It is irrational to take a hostile or condescending attitude toward religion because by doing so we virtually guarantee that religious people will respond in kind")
  

• The golden rule is symmetrical (i.e. "If atheists do not want theists to prejudge them in a negative light, then they must not do unto theists the same")

• Promote freedom of belief and disbelief (i.e. "As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant because our freedom to disbelieve is inextricably bound to the freedom of others to believe")
  

The last point, in particular, is crucial.

All of this may be more reasonable but it won't sell many books nor will it make for good television.
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Science & religion debates, on many occasions, center around issues of origins. It is about defining limits & boundaries and this justifiably makes scientists uncomfortable. For a while, the origin of the Earth was considered a problem beyond the boundary of science. But not today and now we have a very detailed explanation of the formation of the Solar System.

We may be getting closer to solving another origins question - the origin of life. Here is a claim that scientists will be able to create life from scratch in the next 3-10 years. This is a bold (and exciting) claim!

"Creating protocells has the potential to shed new life on our place in the universe," Bedau said. "This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role."

And several scientists believe man-made life forms will one day offer the potential for solving a variety of problems, from fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to eating toxic waste.

If you are creating life at home, please note of the following minor challenges:

Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic life:

A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply.

A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes.

A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy.

One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School, predicts that within the next six months, scientists will report evidence that the first step -- creating a cell membrane -- is "not a big problem." Scientists are using fatty acids in that effort.

Szostak is also optimistic about the next step -- getting nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic system.

His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution could simply take over.

I'm not a biologist, so I don't know how crazy and speculative these ideas are. However, scientists have been making attempts in this direction for a few decades now, so its totally plausible that we are getting close. I love the last step of letting evolution take over after mixing-in the right ingredients - I do that with cooking all the time.

And here is the Frankenstein we were all waiting for in the news story:

In Gainesville, Florida, Steve Benner, a biological chemist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution is attacking that problem by going outside of natural genetics. Normal DNA consists of four bases -- adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine (known as A,C,G,T) -- molecules that spell out the genetic code in pairs. Benner is trying to add eight new bases to the genetic alphabet.

Eight new bases! If successful, this would indeed be quite awesome...but don't know what kind of effects it will potentially have.

Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could "run amok," but there are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem.

I hope so. Still a very neat story.

Now lets solve the issue of the origin of the universe.

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This time its on astrologers, psychics, dowsers and even a bit on post-modernists. There should really be no sympathy for psychics. Enjoy!
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Here is Taner Edis talking about the religious state of Islamic science. This serves as a nice companion piece to an earlier article by Pervez Hoodbhoy. One thing they absolutely agree on is the separation of science with Islam, and this may be the biggest hurdle in the development of basic sciences in the Islamic world. Also check out Edis' excellent book, An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam.

Why was it so much harder for science to take root in the Muslim world?

It was harder for science to achieve intellectual and institutional independence. This was not restricted just to science. In the Western world, the institution of law achieved a kind of autonomy from religion early on. Some historians argue that this was really a precursor to science achieving autonomy as well. In the Muslim world, law was never entirely disentangled from religion. Islamic culture has not been as supportive of intellectual independence for different areas of life.

Did science actually decline in the Islamic world in the 14th or 15th centuries? Or is it just that science in Europe exploded a little later, leaving science in the Islamic world far behind?

It depends on which historian you consult. The older point of view has been that Islamic intellectual life and science went into a period of decline after the Golden Age. But nowadays, many historians argue that science in the Islamic world continued to develop at its own pace. I don't know if I would entirely agree. But it's definitely true that much more emphasis has to be put on Europe taking off and therefore a relative gap opening. It's not so much a story of Islamic decline as Europe inventing an entirely new way of thinking about the natural world and really making a break with medieval ways of thinking. That didn't happen in the Islamic world.

Yes, its more complicated than that, but still this is an important point when considering why scientific revolution didn't take place in the Islamic world.

On "Islamic Science" or "Islamization of science":

Many Muslim thinkers talk about trying to resurrect and tap into the past glory of Islamic science. Are you saying this is a mistake?

Yes and no. If you go back to the 9th through the 12th centuries, some practices were useful, such as being more open to intellectual currents from many directions. But other things are not going to be helpful. If you look into the literature on Islam and science, one of the names you will very soon encounter is Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who is a Muslim philosopher of science. He works in the United States but has origins in Iran.

He teaches at George Washington University. Clearly, he has a distinguished academic position.

That's right. Seyyed Hossein Nasr says he's trying to revive certain distinctly Muslim ways of thinking about the universe. But it's a revival of all the strands of classical Islamic thought, including those strands which are very antithetical to science as we understand it today.

Where does this actually create problems?

One of the features of medieval Islamic science that some modern Muslim thinkers want to revive is the way of perceiving the universe as a spiritual, God-centered place. This tends to work against the independence of science from religious institutions. It's precisely this autonomy that helped science make the breakthrough in the Western world. In the Muslim world, this is still a relatively controversial concept. There is a tendency to say that science should operate under the guidance of religious concerns. I think this is one of the obstacles facing science in the Islamic world.

But this is complicated. Everyone agrees that Western science has been successful at what it does. And yet I'm willing to bet that many Islamic thinkers would say the price of scientific success in the West has been too high. Once science was divorced from religion, you could argue that it was only a matter of time before secular values would triumph, atheism would become a viable option, and the modern world would end up with the rampant materialism and consumerism that we have today. A lot of Islamic thinkers don't want that version of Western science.

This is a dilemma for many people in the Muslim world who are thinking about science and religion. On the one hand, there is a desire to catch up, especially in the technological realm which underpins the military and commercial superiority of the Western world. On the other hand, there is a desire to adopt modern science in such a way that local religious culture is not corrupted. So yes, they are very concerned not to go down the Western path. You can find many Muslim thinkers who say that Western Christians made a mistake by allowing science to operate independently of religious constraints. However, that is the way modern science has achieved the success it has. So it's hard to negotiate between these options.

I don't want to sound like I'm describing the Muslim world as a monolithic entity with no differences between Muslims. There is a very heated internal debate in Muslim countries about how to respond to the modern West, and science is only one concern. Some say the Islamic world has to secularize. Turkey has for many decades been an example of taking a more secular path and adopting westernization full scale. It has had some successes, though it hasn't fully taken root. But a lot of people think if you try and westernize totally -- if you separate science from religion and you separate politics from religion -- then you end up with the more compartmentalized modern society that we're familiar with in the West. And they're reacting against it. The intellectual options in the debate over science and religion are very similar to what we have in the West. What's different is the historical background and the institutional landscape. In the Islamic world, the liberal option is much weaker compared to what we have in the Western world.

By "the liberal option," do you mean reading sacred texts as metaphor rather than literal truth? For instance, liberal Christians don't take the creation stories in Genesis as scientific fact. They read these stories more as poetry. Are you saying that option, for the most part, doesn't exist for Muslims because the Quran is seen as a text that's been handed down from God?

It would be an overstatement to say that option does not exist, but it has a much weaker social position. Let me give an example. Here in the United States, the mainstream scientific community has a big problem with creationist movements and intelligent design. As scientists, one of our closest allies in trying to combat creationism is the liberal religious community. It's much more effective to send somebody to a school board meeting who's not a scientist but actually a priest or rabbi or minister in a more liberal denomination and to explain that they don't see a conflict between teaching evolution and religion. But in the Muslim world, this is much more difficult because the public affinity toward creationism is much stronger. Darwinian thinking really hasn't penetrated the popular discourse. Plus, it's very hard for scientists who work in Muslim countries to find liberal religious figures who would go out there and publicly say Darwinian evolution is not a problem for Islam.

This is the new science battle ground in the Islamic world. Some religious scholars have somewhat accepted evolution, for example, very conservative Israr Ahmad in Pakistan, but they are outnumbered and even those that have accepted still have problems with human evolution.

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Richard Dawkins has a new 2-part documentary Enemies of Reason that take shots at astrologers, psychics, dowsers and people dealing with other New-age crap. It starts on August 13th on Channel 4 in UK. So anyway of getting it to the US or a copy on the internet??

Here is a review from The Sunday Times.

And a medium found Dawkins' father on the far side:

When Dawkins consulted a medium who has appeared on daytime television and charges £50 for instant phone readings she said she could hear or see his father “on the other side”.

He did his best not to look surprised as she continued: “I’m aware of your father stood right behind you. “On a spiritual level he wasn’t the most openest man with his thoughts and his feelings. Ummm, I kind of want to say that I do love you and I do care – but that wouldn’t have been his character.” (Or that of many middle-class father figures of his generation, a sceptic might have said.)

But Dawkins let her continue. “I’m aware that you don’t have you dad’s photograph out” – it was true, he didn’t – “so I’m a little bit concerned why. So I’m going to ask you: why don’t you have it out?” Dawkins had a bombshell ready: “Well, he might be aware that I don’t have it out because he comes to the house about once a week.” “Oh, he’s still here,” she said, adding after a few seconds: “I don’t feel it’s working.”

“Is that because you thought my father is dead and discovered that he’s still alive?”

“No, nothing to do with that. I don’t know.”

She commented later: “As a clairvoyant you’re only as good as the client.”

well...of course.

And here is an interview that includes couple of short clips from the show.

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This should not not be an issue to worry about. However, here is an article from Boston Globe, Understanding Evolution is Crucial to Debate that talks about some of the challenges.

Even a great curriculum doesn't necessarily mean an individual teacher is doing a good job. Across the country, school boards and instructors contend with pressure to adopt books or offer supplements that "balance" biology texts or "teach the controversy." The Institute for Creation Research, for one, hasn't given up on Massachusetts. An event planned for Methuen in November will teach "creation evangelism" and "scientific evidence for creation/design in nature." On the institute's website, students and teachers across the country can get inspiration and tools to challenge an evolution-based curriculum.

Some teachers assign their evolution module a slot at the end of the year, then run out of time. Some speed right through it. When confronted with students' probing questions, the AAAS discovered, teachers find themselves at a loss. "The state standards say nothing about what goes on in the classroom," points out Louise Mead, education project director for NCSE.

Read the full article here.

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Science sections of bookstores are lined up with books that have God somewhere in the title (The Language of God, The God Gene, God in the Machine, God's Equation, etc). Its all about selling books and about getting attention in the media. Astronomers also have a special penchant for this. For example, we have fingers of god - an observational effect that makes clusters of galaxies appear elongated in our direction and to some it seems that cosmic fingers are pointing towards us. Some also described the variations in cosmic background radiation as the fingerprint of Creation. But here is an excellent article in defense of using such metaphors, and it focuses on the Higgs Boson - now also known as the God particle: What's in a name? Parsing the 'God Particle' as the Ultimate Metaphor

In a stroke of either public relations genius or disaster, Leon M. Lederman, the former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, referred to the Higgs as “the God particle” in the book of the same name he published with the science writer Dick Teresi in 1993. To Dr. Lederman, it made metaphorical sense, he explained in the book, because the Higgs mechanism made it possible to simplify the universe, resolving many different seeming forces into one, like tearing down the Tower of Babel. Besides, his publisher complained, nobody had ever heard of the Higgs particle.

In some superficial ways, the Higgs has lived up to its name. Several Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work on the so-called Standard Model, of which the Higgs is the central cog. Billions of dollars are being spent on particle accelerators and experiments to find it, inspect it and figure out how it really works.

But physicists groan when they hear it referred to as the “God particle” in newspapers and elsewhere (and the temptation to repeat it, given science reporters’ desperate need for colorful phrases in an abstract and daunting field, is irresistible). Even when these physicists approve of what you have written about their craft, they grumble that the media are engaging in sensationalism, or worse.

But he presents an interesting defense for the use of this metaphor:

My guide in all of this, of course, the biggest name-dropper in science, is Albert Einstein, who mentioned God often enough that one could imagine he and the “Old One” had a standing date for coffee or tennis. To wit: “The Lord is subtle, but malicious he is not.”

Or this quote regarding the pesky randomness of quantum mechanics: “The theory yields much, but it hardly brings us closer to the Old One’s secrets. I, in any case, am convinced that He does not play dice.”

With Einstein, we always knew where he stood in relation to “God” — it was shorthand for the mystery and rationality of nature, the touchstones of the scientific experience. Cosmic mystery, Einstein said, is the most beautiful experience we can have, “the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”

“He who does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement,” he continued, “is as good as a snuffed-out candle.”

If we didn’t already have a name for the object of Einstein’s “cosmic religion,” we would have to invent one. It’s just too bad that the name has been tainted and trivialized by association with the image of a white-bearded Caucasian-looking creature who sits in the clouds attended by harp-strumming angels.

This is wonderful stuff! However, I don't think public has a clear understanding of Einstein's impersonal god and he is often quoted out of context or misquoted altogether. But the main point of the article is more interesting:

Historians have suggested that it was a mistake for the antiwar movement of the 1960s to yield the flag — a powerful symbol of patriotism — to the war’s supporters, and likewise I think it would be a mistake for scientists to yield such a powerful metaphor to creationists and religious fundamentalists.

But at what cost? Creationists and religious fundamentalists are not the bigger problem. The more sophisticated Intelligent Design proponents are already exploiting the use of these metaphors and are successfully blurring the boundary between science & religion. Perhaps we can hold-off on these metaphors for a bit - at least until ID controversy takes a back seat in the media. But I completely agree with the spirit of the article and its ending:

Is there a God who worries about the flight of every sparrow? Einstein said that was a naïve and even abhorrent idea.

Do I believe the universe is a mystery? Absolutely. Is that mystery ultimately explicable? Intellectual empires from Plato to Einstein have been founded on that presumption, bold and optimistic as it is, and I wouldn’t advise betting against it.

In the meantime, I wouldn’t dream of depriving any future Einstein of his or her rhetorical or metaphorical tools.

Not to mention myself.

ah...written almost in God's language ;)

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Here is an excellent article by Pervez Hoodbhoy, Science and the Islamic world - the quest for rapprochement, published in this month's Physics Today. This is also a good summary of arguments from his book, Islam and Science - Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality. This is a long article but definitely worth the effort - so please read it and if you like, post comments here.

Couple of interesting things to note:

According to a recent survey, among the 57 member states of the OIC, there are approximately 1800 universities.⁵ Of those, only 312 publish journal articles. A ranking of the 50 most published among them yields these numbers: 26 are in Turkey, 9 in Iran, 3 each in Malaysia and Egypt, 2 in Pakistan, and 1 in each of Uganda, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan, and Azerbaijan. For the top 20 universities, the average yearly production of journal articles was about 1500, a small but reasonable number. However, the average citation per article is less than 1.0 (the survey report does not state whether self-citations were excluded).

An average of less than one citation!! I really hope self-citation has been excluded from the study. But I think he rightly points out that just pouring money into science and education is not going to change much. What really needs to be changed is the attitude towards learning:

Poor teaching owes more to inappropriate attitudes than to material resources. Generally, obedience and rote learning are stressed, and the authority of the teacher is rarely challenged. Debate, analysis, and class discussions are infrequent.

An intellectual climate is essential. There are new universities coming up in Dubai, Sharjah, and Saudi Arabia and it will be interesting to see if students there will be exposed to intellectual traditions of the world and if they will have freedom to explore the boundaries of their own ideas.

Here, as in other Pakistani public universities, films, drama, and music are frowned on, and sometimes even physical attacks by student vigilantes who believe that such pursuits violate Islamic norms take place. The campus has three mosques with a fourth one planned, but no bookstore.

Here, Pervez is talking about Quaid Azam University (QAU), which is the second highest ranked university amongst Islamic countries. Theater, films and music pose an interesting challenge. Even during the peak of Greek translations in the Islamic world (8th-10th century), much of Greek dramas and theater works were ignored. There is, of course, a rich tradition of story telling in the Arab world, such as the Arabian Nights, but I'm not sure how much theater and music permeated the general culture.

No Pakistani university, including QAU, allowed Abdus Salam to set foot on its campus, although he had received the Nobel Prize in 1979 for his role in formulating the standard model of particle physics. The Ahmedi sect to which he belonged, and which had earlier been considered to be Muslim, was officially declared heretical in 1974 by the Pakistani government.

The treatment of Ahmedis in Pakistan is simply shameful. In fact, in order to get a Pakistani passport, one has to declare that Ahmedis are non-Muslims (check out for yourself from the Government of Pakistan website and download passport application form from here. Look for item number 25). Ah...bigotry has so many faces. I really really hope, this insane portion of the passport form is dropped by the government soon.

In the article, Hoodbhoy later makes a bold statement regarding veils:

The imposition of the veil makes a difference. My colleagues and I share a common observation that over time most students—particularly veiled females—have largely lapsed into becoming silent note-takers, are increasingly timid, and are less inclined to ask questions or take part in discussions.

I'm curious if sociologists and psychologists have looked into the impact of veiling in a conservative society like Pakistan. The last 10 years have seen a sharp increase in voluntary veiling by educated, middle-class women, and there must be a noticeable difference in work and educational environments.

While in the remaining article, he talks about the importance of scientific and intellectual thinking, his most bold assertion (for Muslim countries) is tucked in his concluding paragraph:

Just as important, the practice of religion must be a matter of choice for the individual, not enforced by the state. This leaves secular humanism, based on common sense and the principles of logic and reason, as our only reasonable choice for governance and progress. Being scientists, we understand this easily. The task is to persuade those who do not.

Complete freedom of religion and secular humanism for Muslim countries! Amen. Hey...even US can use some secular humanism.
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Consitent with Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict seems to be fine with evolution:

Pope Benedict XVI said the debate raging in some countries — particularly the United States and his native Germany — between creationism and evolution was an “absurdity,” saying that evolution can coexist with faith.

The pontiff, speaking as he was concluding his holiday in northern Italy, also said that while there is much scientific proof to support evolution, the theory could not exclude a role by God.

“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the pope said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”

He said evolution did not answer all the questions: “Above all it does not answer the great philosophical question, ‘Where does everything come from?’”

This is a fair question until we actually find out.

So it appears that the Pope has not fallen for Intelligent Design. Its not completely clear from the news story, but I think he is endorsing Theistic evolution - that evolution is guided by God. Fair enough, as long as he does not include supernatural as an explanation for any physical/biological phenomenon. His statement that "the theory could not exclude a role by God" is a bit ambiguous, but I'm assuming that he is talking about providing meaning behind evolution.

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I will write about the Science & Religion conference at Lancaster University in the next couple of days. In the mean time here is an interesting study that claims that altruism may be linked with religious themes - independent of actual beliefs. Introduction of civic concepts (like jury, contract, police) also has a similar impact that results in increased cooperation.

To investigate how belief in supernatural agents might influence cooperation, Shariff and his colleague Ara Norenzayan used a word game to stealthily introduce religious concepts to their subjects.

Participants had to unscramble five-word sentences, dropping an extraneous word from each to create a grammatical four-word sentence. For example, "felt she eradicate spirit the" would become "she felt the spirit," and "dessert divine was fork the" could become "the dessert was divine." A control group unscrambled sentences made up of non-spiritual words.

After this exercise, the participants played an economic decision-making game. Each player was given $10 to share with an anonymous recipient.

Participants primed with religious concepts gave their partner an average of $4.22, compared with only $1.84 in the control group. But those who declared themselves religious before the study were no more generous than non-believers.

"The effect of the religious prime was both large and surprising, especially considering that during exit interviews the participants were unaware of having been religiously primed," says Shariff.

A second study introduced a third group, primed with words associated with civic responsibility such as "jury", contract", and "police." This group behaved almost identically to that primed with religious concepts.

And on the reasons for this correlation:

But why such priming makes people more charitable is unclear. "The fact that primes to civic institutions also produced more charitable behaviour gives some clues," he says. "Perhaps religion and these civic institutions have certain functions or effects in common."

Whether religion and civic responsibilities are equally effective spurs to cooperation remains to be seen. "We can't compare the relative strengths of religion and civics, or draw tight analogies to real-world situations," says Shariff. "What we can do is identify that both concepts have substantial effects on prosocial behaviour."

The Nature story doesn't mention the number of participants in the study and followup studies will be interesting. Read the full story here.


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A few months ago, French schools and universities had received Harun Yahya's Atlas of Creation. Now this pseudoscientific work is hitting the US free of cost - check out this article in today's Science Times. This is timely for me as I just gave a public talk in Lahore that touched on Harun Yahya's Creationism, and next week I will be talking about the rise of Islamic Creationism at the Science & Religion conference at Lancaster University. Too bad, I'm not a biologist, otherwise I would have received a free copy of this Atlas.

I loved the response in the article of evolutionary biologist, Kevin Padian, about why universities in the US have had a much calmer response to Harun Yahya compared to France:

“In our country we are used to nonsense like this,” said Kevin Padian, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who, like colleagues there, found a copy in his mailbox.

He said people who had received copies were “just astounded at its size and production values and equally astonished at what a load of crap it is.

“If he sees a picture of an old fossil crab or something, he says, ‘See, it looks just like a regular crab, there’s no evolution,’ ” Dr. Padian said. “Extinction does not seem to bother him. He does not really have any sense of what we know about how things change through time.”

Too bad so much money is being spent on promoting this kind of work:

While they said they were unimpressed with the book’s content, recipients marveled at its apparent cost. “If you went into a bookstore and saw a book like this, it would be at least $100,” said Dr. Miller, an author of conventional biology texts. “The production costs alone are astronomical. We are talking millions of dollars.”

And then there’s postage. Dr. Padian said his copy was shipped by a company called SDS Worldwide, which has an office in Illinois. Calls and e-mail messages to the company were not returned, but Dr. Padian said he spoke to someone there who told him SDS had received a cargo-container-size shipment of books, “with everything prepaid and labeled. It just went all over the country.”

And here is a plug for an excellent new book by Taner Edis: An Illusion of Harmony: Science & Religion in Islam. I have just finished reading it and its perhaps the best book on the subject since Pervez Hoodbhoy's Muslims and Science.

Support for creationism is also widespread among Muslims, said Dr. Edis, whose book “An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam” was published by Prometheus Books this spring.

“Taken at face value, the Koran is a creationist text,” he said, adding that it would be difficult to find a scholar of Islam “who is going to be gung-ho about Darwin.”

Perhaps as a result, he said, Mr. Yahya’s books and other publications have won him attention in Islamic areas. “This is a guy with some influence,” Dr. Edis said, “unfortunately for mainstream science.”

There may be some positive signs. Couple of years ago, bookstores in Islamabad were full of Harun Yahya books. In fact, many had special sections featuring his books. However, now its relatively hard to find his books. I fact, Saeed Book Bank - one of the most prominent bookstores in Islamabad, had no English copies of his books in stock. Similarly, I found out that there were questions on evolution in 10th grade exams. So either his popularity has gone down a bit in Pakistan or this is the calm before the storm.

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Should religion be given any respect at all? Lawrence Krauss & Richard Dawkins have published an exchange in the latest issue of Scientific American: Should Science Speak to Faith?

If you have more time, please read the much better extended version here.

The extended version has this key exchange about whether one can prove or disprove God's existence through science and how to best approach this subject with people who believe. I think Krauss understands that beliefs are not simply related to evidence and not everyone takes an academic approach to religion. Thus, while Dawkins' statistical arguments are valid in an academic sense, they may not have much impact on believers other than to further antagonize them against science and this usually results in a breakdown of communication. I think Sagan made an effort to understand where the believers are coming from, and thus despite his open atheism, he had respect across the board. Krauss, here, is making a similar effort.

Krauss: You have cogently argued in The God Delusion that religion is bad science. I would argue, however, that this is particularly inappropriate, and in fact falls into the same trap fallen into by those who push Intelligent Design in science classrooms, as well as those who fund Templeton Foundation grants that attempt to foster scientific evidence for God. I have framed this issue in language that hearkens back to Carl Sagan, who said that absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. Would a world without God necessarily look any different than the world we live in? Most scientists would say no, and thus claim we do not need the God Hypothesis to explain anything about nature. On the other hand one might also ask: Would a world with a God necessarily look any different than the world we live in? People of faith would argue no, and in so doing feel vindicated in their faith. The problem is that both groups are correct, and nothing either can say is likely to influence the other.

Dawkins: I have several times said that a universe with a God would be a very different kind of universe from one without. You have translated this into operational terms, and consequently arrived at the legitimate question of whether the two kinds of universe would look different. Not be different (my question) but look different (your question, where 'look different' can presumably mean any difference, detectable in any way by any of our sense organs or scientific instruments). I agree that yours is an important question, and I agree with you that it might be surprisingly hard to detect, by observation or experiment, whether we live in a god-free universe or a god-endowed one. Nevertheless, I still maintain that there is a cogent sense in which a scientist can discuss the question. There still is a sense in which we can have an interesting and illuminating scientific discussion about whether X is the case, even if we can't demonstrate it one way or the other by observation or experiment. How can I argue this and still claim to be doing science?

In The God Delusion, I made the distinction between two kinds of agnosticism. Permanent Agnosticism in Principle (PAP) is exemplified by that philosophical chestnut, "Do you see red the way I see red, or might your red be my green or some completely different hue (‘sky-blue-pink’) that I cannot imagine?" Temporary agnosticism in practice (TAP) refers to things that we cannot (or cannot yet) know in practice but nevertheless have a true scientific reality in a way that the 'sky-blue-pink' conundrum does not. Bertrand Russell's hypothetical orbiting teapot might be an example. Some people think the question of God’s existence is equivalent to ‘sky-blue-pink’ (PAP), and they wrongly deduce that his existence and non-existence are equiprobable alternatives. I think we should be TAP agnostic about God, and I certainly don’t think the odds are 50/50.
Statements such as 'There are (or are not) intelligent aliens elsewhere in the universe’ are clearly TAP statements insofar as we are talking about the observable universe this side of our event horizon. At any time, a flying saucer or a radio transmission could clinch the matter in one direction (it can never be clinched in the other). What, though, of statements about the existence of intelligent aliens in those parts of the universe that are beyond our event horizon, where the galaxies are receding from us so fast that information from them can never in principle reach us because of the finite speed of light? In this case, at least according to the physicists I have read, the aliens would forever be undetectable by any means whatever. On the face of it, therefore, we would have to be PAP agnostic about them, not just TAP agnostic.
Yet I would resent it as a scientist, not just as a person, if you tried to rule out any scientific discussion of aliens beyond our event horizon, on the grounds that it is beyond the reach of empirical test (PAP). Suppose we take the Drake equation for calculating the odds of alien intelligences existing, and apply it to the whole universe rather than just our galaxy. Clearly it will yield very different results depending on whether we hold to a finite or infinite model of the universe. Those two models of the universe are discriminable by empirical evidence, and that empirical evidence would therefore have some bearing on the probability of alien life existing somewhere in the universe. Hence the probability of alien life is a question of TAP rather than PAP agnosticism, even though direct empirical experience of the aliens might be impossible. It is not obvious to me that gods are beyond such probability estimates, any more than aliens are. And a probability estimate is the limit of my aspiration.

Krauss: First, I have to say that I have nothing against trying to think about phenomena that might never be directly measurable. I do this all the time in my work in cosmology, where I consider the possibilities of other causally disconnected universes. Of course I do this to see if I can resolve outstanding puzzles in the physics of our universe. If this approach turns out not to work, then I find the issue less interesting. I also agree with you that probabilities are important, but I think your example of the Drake equation is quite relevant here, but perhaps not in the way you intended. First of all, the Drake Equation is really applied locally, within our galaxy. If the probabilities turn out to be small that there is more than one intelligent life form in our galaxy, I think most astrophysicists will not be particularly interested in worrying about the civilizations that might exist in other galaxies but which will be forever removed from us. But more important is that fact that the probabilities associated with the Drake equation are almost all so poorly known that the equation really hasn’t driven much useful research. Varying each of the conditional probabilities in the equations by an order of magnitude or so, one can derive results that either argue strongly in favor of extraterrestrial intelligence, or strongly against it. The proof is likely to come from empirical searches. As bad as this is, I would argue it is far worse when attempting to quantify probabilities for the existence of divine intelligence or purpose in the universe.
Indeed, I have argued that questions of purpose in the universe are generally not a part of science, and the best example I know is that of Georges Lemaître, the Belgian priest who was also a physicist, and the first person to realize that Einstein’s General Relativity implied there was a Big Bang origin to our universe (a claim initially much derided by Einstein). Following this realization Pope Pius XII issued a statement that said science had proved Genesis. Lemaître responded appropriately. He wrote to the Pope and urged him to stop saying that. The theory in question was a scientific theory whose predictions could be tested. What religious implications one took from the theory depended upon one’s metaphysical leanings. One could take it to validate Genesis, by implying that the Universe had a beginning—a revolutionary scientific claim at the time. But one could equally well take it to imply that there is no need for a God, that the laws of physics are all that are required to understand the universe right back to the beginning. The point is that the science is accurate in describing how the universe works, independent of the metaphysical implications one derives from it. The same is of course true for evolution, which happened and is happening, whether or not one chooses to believe in God.

Dawkins: Of course Lemaître was very wise (although I must add that I am left wondering why he remained a priest at all). As for the option that his physics might or might not be taken to support Genesis, why is it even an interesting question? There never was reason to expect that the writings of an unknown scribe, probably less than a millennium ago in Babylon, might have any special insight into the origin of the universe. If Genesis happened to get something right, why would that be anything but a trivial accident?

Krauss: Well, the key point that you are neglecting here is that there is a reason to believe it might capture some truth about the universe, but only if you believe in God. Presumably Lemaître did. Getting back to the issue I raised earlier, I do not mean to say, of course, that science could never provide positive evidence of design or purpose. If, for example, tonight the stars suddenly lined up in the sky and spelled out ‘I am Here,’ most astronomers would be willing to consider a supernatural cause. However, the absence of such evidence of design—in spite of what the con artists and misguided pseudoscientists who presently claim that living systems currently provide such evidence—does not logically rule out the possibility that our universe, and life within it, has some purpose.

Dawkins: I am perennially baffled as to why anybody thinks it is an important point that you can't logically rule out some possibility. There is an infinite number of possibilities that we can't logically rule out but which we nevertheless don't take seriously because we have no positive reason to do so. This was the original point of Russell's teapot.

Krauss: My point is that if you cannot rule out some possibilities, probably best not to dwell on them, other than saying that they may be unlikely. You have argued, and I agree, that the complete absence of direct empirical evidence for God does suggest that the existence of divine intelligence is unlikely. However I think that is as far as one can go.

Dawkins: How much farther could one want to go? Unlikely is unlikely is unlikely. It is not the same as impossible, but science is replete with estimates of likelihoods that fall short of the demonstrably impossible. Global warming is highly likely to be happening and caused by human activities, but the alternative cannot be ruled out. It is very probable, but not certain, that the dinosaurs were killed by a large object colliding with Earth. It is almost but not totally certain that humans are closer cousins to chimpanzees than to gorillas. Just about everything we know in biology is supported by statistical evidence and is not totally certain. If you agree with me that the existence of divine intelligence is statistically unlikely, that is all I would claim. But I would claim that this low estimate of likelihood that we both agree upon is a scientific estimate, not something that is in principle immune to scientific discussion.

Krauss: Yes, but I don’t think the likeliness of God can be quantified in the same ways as dinosaurs, or global warming, and therefore it doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of time trying. Why work so hard when inevitably it is too slippery a subject, and has been for some time? In this regard, arguing that detailed probabilistic arguments that have been used to suggest that life is a rare phenomenon imply at the same time mathematical support for the non-existence of God is something that I don’t buy, since I cannot see how one can use physical arguments to restrict the possible existence of something that, by definition, supercedes the laws of physics.

Dawkins: Theologians resort to this definitional argument as their only defense against the statistical argument that we both accept. But why should we allow them this remarkably convenient get-out? Why should theologians be allowed to call the shots and immunize God against scientific scrutiny by a sort of definitional prophylactic injection? Suppose I were to say that the bolide that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was hurled by Zeus. The data (iridium layer in the rocks, crater in Yucatan, etc.) is equally compatible with both the Zeus theory and the meteorite theory. Theologians of the Olympian school are at liberty to interpret the scientific data in terms of Zeus (and theologians of the Valhallan school are at liberty to interpret the same data as manifestations of Thor's hammer). Those theological concerns are by definition beyond the reach of science. You don't really believe that, Lawrence. So why allow Judaeo-Christian theologians to get away with evading the statistics issue in declaring, by definitional fiat, that their God is beyond the laws of physics?

Krauss: A valid point, but I think what most sensible theologians really argue is that the ‘intentions’ of God are beyond the laws of physics. Namely, if one could determine in detail the origin of the bolide that killed the dinosaurs, and demonstrate that it was in fact kicked out of its orbit around the Sun by the gravitational perturbation of the planet Jupiter, would this then demonstrate that there was no God, Zeus or otherwise? No, because God could have intended that life would evolve in an environment of random and rare catastrophes, that would help drive evolution forward.

Dawkins: That is strictly true, but I really do mean strictly. Why do you keep bending over backwards to be nice to superfluous and highly unparsimonious add-ons to science, when you would kick them out of the window if they were not protected by the label, “Religion. Handle with kid gloves for fear of giving offense”?
Krauss: For me it a matter of ignoring the add-ons rather than being nice to them, because I don’t see any debate as being fruitful. In a more general sense, arguing that religion is bad science merely invites those who want to introduce religion into science classes to continue harder to try and do so. But I believe it is essential to intellectually separate science and religion. It may be true that faith is not based upon reason, but this fact would only make it bad science if the claims of faith were in general falsifiable. As long as the tenets of faith go beyond reason, i.e. go beyond issues that can be settled by evidence or lack of evidence, faith lies in the realm of human activity that has little to do with reason. Going back to my earlier point, if this realm was restricted to religion alone one might have a good argument for trying to squelch religion. But, like it or not, it is a central facet of much of what it means to be a human. All of us share some characteristics with Lewis Carroll’s Queen, who believed six impossible things before breakfast each day. For most people religion is one way of making sense of an irrational world, a world that is not fair, in which human justice is an afterthought.

Read the full version here
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Postings on the blog will probably be slow until July 30th. I'm visiting family in Pakistan these days and then I will be at Science & Religion conference at Lancaster University (Jul 22-26). I will see if I can send updates from the conference - there are some excellent speakers scheduled to speak there.

I just got to Islamabad yesterday, and I'm glad the whole saga of Red Mosque is pretty much over now. I hope there is not too much excitement on that front soon.

And here is a lecture announcement. I will be giving a talk in Lahore on Saturday, July 14th, at 6p.m. at Aiwan-e-Iqbal. It is organized by Khwarzimic Science Society. The title of the lecture is From Galileo to Darwin: The Story of Science-Religion Interactions and you can find more information here. This is the first time I am explicitly dealing with the topic of science & religion in a popular setting in Pakistan. So it will be interesting to see audience composition (religious conservatives or more secular) and their reactions.
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I had posted few reviews of Behe's book, The Edge of Evolution, here and here. One of the most detailed review was by Jerry Coyne. Wonders of internet: here is an online exchange between the two over Coyne's review.
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A graduate university in Saudi Arabia has been launched with a $10 billion endowment! This is the 6th largest endowment in the world - well above such universities as MIT, Columbia, Cornell, etc. (check out the list here). According to Science (June 8):

The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), which is scheduled to open in the fall of 2009, will have a $10 billion endowment--the sixth largest in the world. Although the university won't open for more than 2 years, officials said this week that they will prime the pump by awarding some 500 undergraduate scholarships this year and next to students around the world, with the understanding that the recipients will form KAUST's inaugural classes. They are also launching a $100-million-a-year global research partnership program to fund work by scientists who agree to become affiliated with the new university.

But how free will it be from government interference and how much critical thinking will be allowed on campus? At least on the face of it, they are trying to keep it outside government's influence (but under Aramco??):

The project, which includes constructing a surrounding city of 15,000, was given to Saudi Aramco, the government-owned oil giant, and is being overseen by the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources. But once completed, the university will be financially and administratively independent of the Saudi government, says Al-Nasr, who's on leave from his post as vice president for engineering at Saudi Aramco.

"KAUST will have its own governing board of trustees as well as its own endowment," he explains. Government officials also decided to place it outside the purview of the ministry of higher education. "The kingdom is in the midst of reassessing its entire system of higher education," Al-Nasr explains. "So it would not make sense to try to build KAUST within the existing bureaucracy."

Ok...we'll have to wait and see how these things shape up.

The university will be organized around multidisciplinary research institutes. The initial ones will encompass energy and the environment, biosciences and engineering, materials science and engineering, and applied mathematics and computational science. Accordingly, the first round of global partnerships will lure faculty members by tackling challenges such as desalination, carbon capture and hydrogen-rich fuels, and computational linguistics.

But with $10 billion endowment, I would hope that they go beyond these applied fields. Yes, engineers are necessary, but for substantive development, you also have to spend money on pure science research (yes, on astronomy too). I know this is a science and technology university, but real change will only come if universities in Saudi Arabia start including humanities and social sciences and provide an intellectual environment where all kinds of ideas can be openly discussed.

For the time being, lets hope KAUST has a positive impact on Saudi education. You can check out its website here. And if nothing else it will have a spectacular setting:

The campus site is in a unique coastal location near the fishing village of Thuwal, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Jiddah. The total area is more than 36 million square meters, including a unique coral-reef ecosystem that will be preserved by the University as a marine sanctuary, and will be a focus for research.

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If you are not satisfied by three detailed reviews of Michael Behe's new Intelligent Design book, the Edge of Evolution, then perhaps Richard Dawkins can satisfy you with an oratory knock-out punch:

I had expected to be as irritated by Michael Behe’s second book as by his first. I had not expected to feel sorry for him. The first — “Darwin’s Black Box” (1996), which purported to make the scientific case for “intelligent design” — was enlivened by a spark of conviction, however misguided. The second is the book of a man who has given up. Trapped along a false path of his own rather unintelligent design, Behe has left himself no escape. Poster boy of creationists everywhere, he has cut himself adrift from the world of real science. And real science, in the shape of his own department of biological sciences at Lehigh University, has publicly disowned him, via a remarkable disclaimer on its Web site: “While we respect Prof. Behe’s right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally and should not be regarded as scientific.” As the Chicago geneticist Jerry Coyne wrote recently, in a devastating review of Behe’s work in The New Republic, it would be hard to find a precedent.

Read the full review here.
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