Faith and science, with credibility

Francis Collins, former Director of the Human Genome Project, has a new project: the BioLogos Foundation.  It seeks to explore issues at the nexus of faith and science but from a positive standpoint.  While this endeavour will probably come under fire rather quickly from fundamentalists (both the religious and the atheist varieties), Collins speaks with a level of credibility that you don’t find with people like the young earthers or Richard Dawkins.

Demons in the details

This Rock Answers Angels & Demons’ False Charges – Catholic Answers Forums.

In which Carl Olson exposes some of the phony claims (regarding both fact and purpose) in Dan Brown’s next shovelful.

The phoniest aspect, in my mind, is Brown’s protestation that he wants peaceful coexistence between faith and science even while making all sorts of false accusations and vicious stereotypes against Christians.  He is a cheap propagandist who whines when  his revisions are examined critically, and those in the media who promote his work are helping promote slander and hatemongering.

When answers to questions are predetermined

Report: Democrats Refuse to Allow Skeptic to Testify Alongside Gore At Congressional Hearing | Climate Depot.

Hardly a marginal scientist by the look of it.  I also predict that Congress, like MSNBC, will pretend to know nothing about the Manhattan Declaration.

Pluralism in the toilet?

FOXNews.com – Groups Spar Over Massachusetts Transgender ‘Bathroom Bill’ – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News.

Yet another example of how the rights and security of the majority must yield to the demands of a small minority to have their feelings about their identity affirmed.

Perhaps, as Fr. Neuhaus feared, America’s experiment in democratic pluralism is failing.

Raising the Bar on public input

The public comment period will end 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, April 9, thirty days after President Obama formally announced his intention to rescind the Health and Human Services (HHS) regulations in the Federal Register. A source within the HHS has told CatholicAnew.com that a handful of comments received after the cutoff may be considered.

via Last Chance to Ask Obama Administration to Retain Conscience Protections for Pro-Life Doctors | Catholic Exchange.

The requirements for sending comments ensure that pretty much only legal scholars can provide input.  So when only a few thousand (and that’s optimistic) comments are received, opposition to the measure can be dismissed as a fringe position.  Then it will be open season on health care providers who refuse on the basis of conscience to perform abortions.  Perhaps they think that after a few of us are made examples of, most will cave.  And what a display of pragmatism-over-ideology this will be in addressing the chronic shortage of health care providers!

This is Obama’s idea of putting aside partisan differences and being the voice of the people rather than of special interests?  But I guess this is what the USA gets for electing a President on the basis of feel-good slogans, or for its blind acceptance of the two-party approach to politics where the only choices are Bad and Worse.

Go back to your homes, citizens

An Italian scientist predicted a major earthquake around L’Aquila weeks before disaster struck the city on Monday, killing dozens of people, but was reported to authorities for spreading panic among the population…

[T]he head of the National Geophysics Institute dismissed Giuliani’s predictions.”It is useful to underline that it is not in any way possible to predict an earthquake,” it said, adding that the agency saw no reason for alarm but was nonetheless effecting “continuous monitoring and attention”.

via Reuters AlertNet – Italy muzzled scientist who foresaw quake.

The relationship between definitive pronouncements and science has always been a rocky one, especially when the definitive pronouncements are made by scientists.

Which reminds me… Are eggs good for you or bad for you this week?  I can never keep that straight.

Values clarification

Commenting on the keep-the-Times alive movement, [New York Times executive editor Bill] Keller said: “Saving the New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause.”

via Michael Calderone’s Blog: Keller: Times will be ‘left standing after the deluge’ – POLITICO.com.

Riiiiight.   Because the careers of a handful of American leftists is worth as much as the lives of several hundred thousand Africans…