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anonymous

Good religion needs good science | Church of England - 0 views

www.cofe.anglican.org/...malcolmbrown.html

science religion

shared by anonymous on 23 Oct 08 - Cached
  • In science, hypotheses are meant to be constantly tested. Subsequent generations have built on Darwin’s work but have not significantly undermined his fundamental theory of natural selection. There is nothing here that contradicts Christian teaching. Jesus himself invited people to observe the world around them and to reason from what they saw to an understanding of the nature of God (Matthew 6: 25–33).
  • Darwin’s meticulous application of the principles of evidence-based research was not the problem. His theory caused offence because it challenged the view that God had created human beings as an entirely different kind of creation to the rest of the animal world.
  • It is hard to avoid the thought that the reaction against Darwin was largely based on what we would now call the 'yuk factor' (an emotional not an intellectual response) when he proposed a lineage from apes to humans.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Some Christian movements still make opposition to evolutionary theories a litmus test of faithfulness and – the other side of the coin – many believe Darwin’s theories to have fatally undermined religious belief and therefore reject any accommodation of one by the other.
  • At a university in Kansas, I asked a biology professor how he coped with teaching Darwin’s theories to students whose churches insisted that evolution was heresy and whose schools taught creationism. “No problem,” he replied, “the kids know that if they want a good job they need a degree, and if they want a degree they have to work with evolution theory. Creationism is for church, as far as they’re concerned. Here, they’re Darwinists.”
  • But he was also pointing to young lives which could not be lived with integrity – the very opposite of how Christians are called to live. There is no integrity to be found either in rejecting Darwin’s ideas wholesale or in elevating them into the kind of grand theory which reduces humanity to the sum of our evolutionary urges.
  • Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still.
anonymous

A Synthetic Tree Grows at Cornell | Wired Science from Wired.com - 0 views

blog.wired.com/...a-synthetic-tre.html

science

shared by anonymous on 17 Sep 08 - Cached
  • Scientists have made the world's first synthetic tree: a palm-sized duplication of the elegant process by which trees drink. Known as "transpiration," the hydration process appears to require no biological energy.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Sep 08
       
      Life? Or elaborate machine?
anonymous

Gandhi Pills? Psychiatrist Argues for Moral Performance Enhancers - 0 views

blog.wired.com/...gandhi-pills-ps.html

morality

shared by anonymous on 17 Sep 08 - Cached
  • What do you think? Do you already use some substance -- say, marijuana or a prescription painkiller -- not for how it makes you feel, but how it influences your behavior toward other people? Do you consider this "moral pharmacology"? 
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Sep 08
       
      Yes, I would.
  • "Within many clinical encounters, there may already be a subtle form of moral assistance going on, albeit one we do not choose to describe in these terms," writes Sean Spence of the University of Sheffield in the British Journal of Psychiatry."
  • Spence suggests is that science should be searching for drugs to make people more "humane" not just smarter. 
anonymous

Biologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life - 0 views

blog.wired.com/...biologists-on-t.html

science

shared by anonymous on 17 Sep 08 - Cached
  • Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn't anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe. 
  • The replication isn't wholly autonomous, so it's not quite artificial life yet, but it is as close as anyone has ever come to turning chemicals into biological organisms.
  • Though where selective pressure will lead the new form of life is impossible to know
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Sep 08
       
      Does this statement scare anybody else?!
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Protocell researchers are trying to design a completely novel form of life that humans have never seen and that may never have existed.
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