I’ve been teaching a relatively non-mathematical liberal-artsy freshman physics course in the spring semester the last few years. It’s great fun, and one of the reasons is that I find out how differently someone like me — who has been thoroughly brainwashed by being a science-type for 20 years — thinks when compared someone who … Religion in odd places

Like the Department of Homeland Security, the American Red Cross has also decided to start supporting “faith-based” approaches to disaster relief. Included in their changes of policy in the face of problems that occurred in recent hurricane relief efforts, they will now be providing financial support to churches, as reported in the New York Times: … Red Cross adopting support for “faith-based” approaches

Students are confused by creation “science” teaching according to the Royal Society in the UK. True, and as long as we’re speaking about the obvious let me add that pigs still can’t fly.

Pat Robertson has a new book out and you know what that means: asking about the sex lives of women he just met. Rita Braver of CBS News interviewed Robertson on April 9 (the transcript is available here). First, Robertson tells a whopper about a woman who was “stone cold dead” and raised back to … Pat Robertson: Stone Cold Fresh

Every so so often I like to visit the web site of The Raelian Movement, just so I can remind myself that rejecting God is perfectly compatible with all sorts of craziness. It’s too bad they don’t advertise themselves as the “world’s largest Atheist, non-profit, UFO-related organisation” on their web site anymore, but at least … Raelians

For those of us interested in ancient Christianity, the National Geographic Society has announced a new manuscript find. Those don’t happen everyday (or even every decade) so it’s pretty exciting news. The text is of the gospel genre, written in Coptic around 300 CE like those found at Nag Hammadi, and is entitled Gospel of … Gospel of Judas Found

According to a story published in today’s New York Times, scientists have discovered a “missing link” between fish and land mammals. The transitional fossils are “so clearly an intermediate ‘link between fishes and land vertebrates,’ they said, that it‘might in time become as much an evolutionary icon as the proto-bird Archaeopteryx,’ which bridged the gap … Transitional Fossil Announced

Due to a Guardian op-ed attacking Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, some disagreements between Dennett and Michael Ruse have become more public. Ruse thinks the more atheistic commentators on Darwinian evolution, such as Dennett and Dawkins, are (a) intellectually mistaken, and (b) unwittingly helping creationists politically. Dennett has briefly replied to the charge. Now, generally … Dennett-Ruse squabble

The “Science Times” section of the New York Times today has a note on an oceanographer, Doron Nof, who proposes to explain Jesus’ walking on water with his standing on a bit of ice. I wonder, when I occasionally see something like this, if the 19th century practice of finding rational explanations for Biblical miracles … Biblical Miracle in NYT

Interesting article by Kevin Phillips in the Washington Post today, “How the GOP Became God’s Own Party.” And he has a book out, naturally — yet another one I’ll have to add to my reading pile. Actually, I don’t hugely care about religion per se. I’m interested mainly in supernatural fact claims, since they make … God’s Own Party