I thought the first couple of paragraphs of Joshua Rothman’s interview with Patricia Churchland were more interesting than anything in The Moral Landscape. That sounds very rude, but it’s not meant to – it’s just that TML was fundamentally uninteresting to me because it sidestepped everything that’s genuinely interesting about humans and morality. Churchland, on the other hand, zoomed right in on it.

 She starts by explaining what’s most clearly known about how morality works in the brain. We know, she argues, that human moral behavior is rooted in the brain’s “circuitry for caring”—ancient biological circuitry that we share with other mammals. (When wolves care about their offspring, what happens in their brains and bodies is remarkably similar to

I didn’t know there was a myth that Oliver North told the Iran-Contra investigation and in particular Al Gore (!) that the reason he had such a pricey security system was because he was afraid of “the most evil man in the world” and that that man was Osama bin Laden.

(Actually maybe I did know it, once upon a time. It sounds very faintly familiar now – I may have caught a whiff or a glimpse of it at some point. But if so, the knowledge didn’t stick.)

I was told it yesterday. I was driving an acquaintance back from the airport, and he told me it. He told me it as something he saw – he saw Al … Read the rest

The Ian Ramsey Centre via the Wayback Machine.

It has an epigraph.

Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but both look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect. Freeman Dyson 

Not really; not really; not exactly; not in the sense implied; not really; not at all.

The Centre also sponsors regional conferences to encourage new networks for examining connections between theology and the sciences; and through its international workshops it enhances the quality of

Here we go again. Via Jerry – we learn of a CNN report on a “huge” new study that tells us religion is everywhere. (You don’t say.)

What the CNN report does not tell us, however, is that the “huge” new study was funded by the Templeton Foundation. CNN doesn’t bother to mention Templeton. It doesn’t bother to mention that Roger Trigg is at the Ian Ramsey Centre, which is Templeton up to its eyeballs.

Interestingly, perhaps, I can’t find the IRC’s history on its site or elsewhere (and I have to rush away soon, so can’t dig harder). I know I found it in the past, and I’m pretty sure it was on its site, on the About … Read the rest

Jerry has a post (how does he do it while on the road admiring the beauties of Banff?) about a reader who reports on one path out of theism, from the literal kind to “the ground of all being” to the gleaming port of gnu atheism. I seized the opportunity to ask this reader what that meant to her/him, explaining that I always wonder what people mean by it. The answer was both informative and amusing.

When I was in the “ground of all being” stage, I thought of it as a representation of some mystical spiritual energy which imbued the universe with intelligence and purpose. Looking back, they were basically filler words to represent a concept I didn’t want

One good thing, Rosenau’s goofy “I haven’t heard the Lindsay-Mooney podcast but I know PZ (who has heard it) is rong about it anyway” post elicited some good comments (along with a whole lot of bad ones from the usual suspects, especially the indefatigable McCarthy). From PZ for instance.

Your problem, Josh, is a total inability to appreciate any approach beyond your own. There is no surprising inconsistency in my views; all along the Gnus have been saying we need a multiplicity of approaches, so I can simultaneously endorse someone advocating a softer approach while favoring a hard core strategy myself.

My approach works for some people — actually, it works very, very well for a lot of people.