A couple of brief items to follow up previous items in either News or Notes and Comment or both – she said pompously. My point isn’t to be pompous, it’s just to say that these items refer back to previous items as opposed to being new ones, just in case anyone wants to, you know, get a broad overview of er um –

Anyway. There is a long, detailed post by Chris Mooney on his blog, about Bush’s science advisor John Marburger and his response to the charges by the Union of Concerned Scientists that Bush administration has systematically distorted science. Mooney writes for The American Prospect and the Washington Post about these issues, so his blog is an excellent … Read the rest

So is diversity maybe not such a hot idea after all? Always depending on what we mean by ‘diversity’ of course, and it can be very difficult to figure out exactly what people do mean by it. As is so often the case with fuzzy woolly words and ideas – which is exactly why they’re called fuzzy-woolly, obviously. But then are they called fuzzy-wooly enough? I’m not sure. I’m not sure it does get pointed out enough that people tend not to specify what they mean when they use the words, but rather, just use them to project an air of righonitude, of conspicuous virtue, of ostentatious morality. That’s understandable. Shock-jocks and Limbaugh-O’Reilly types like to sneer and mock, … Read the rest

I might change or expand one sentence in the Science and Religion In Focus, because I’ve had some email and blog comments on it. It is a tad assertive. ‘The side that has it wrong, that ignores evidence and logic and just believes, never shuts up.’

Mind you, I think it’s true, but I can see why it needs justification. But the fact is religion does have a special epistemic status, which surely even believers are aware of if they’re honest about it. Believers are not usually embarrassed to talk of belief or faith in their religion – to talk of religious belief or faith – as opposed to knowledge. They must realize there’s a difference between ‘faith’ and knowledge, … Read the rest

Something more from that article by Paul Davies in the Atlantic, which answers a question I’ve been wondering about for a longish time.

Even if Homo sapiens as such may not be the unique focus of God’s attention, the broader class of all humanlike beings in the universe might be. This is the basic idea espoused by the philosopher Michael Ruse, an ardent Darwinian and an agnostic sympathetic to Christianity. He sees the incremental progress of natural evolution as God’s chosen mode of creation, and the history of life as a ladder that leads inexorably from microbes to man.

The question that’s been puzzling me is about Michael Ruse, because some of his work that I’ve read sounds quite … Read the rest