Chris Mooney is still at it, telling ‘scientists’ what they must do. They must learn to ‘communicate’ better. They must also learn to reassure trembling theists better. They keep not doing that, and Chris Mooney is getting pretty tired of the way they don’t listen to him.

…at its core, the objection to evolution isn’t about science at all, but about perceived threats to faith and moral values. The only way to defuse the conflict is to assuage these fundamental fears. Yet this drags many scientists out of their comfort zone: They’re not priests or theologians and don’t know how to sound like them. Many refuse to try; others go to the opposite extreme of advocating vociferous and confrontational

The BBC is disgusting at times. It had to report on this al-Shabab guy trying to kill Kurt Westergaard so therefore it had to make sure you didn’t get the wrong idea and think it, the BBC, didn’t think Kurt Westergaard deserved it, at least a little bit. That would never do. So it includes a sidebar of ‘analysis’ which ends with this even-handed bit of slime:

Moderate Muslims in Denmark have condemned the attack on Kurt Westergaard, but they still believe his drawing was sacrilegious.

Muslim nations are attempting to outlaw what they call the defamation of their religion.

Mr Westergaard came out of hiding last Spring, saying he wanted to defend freedom of expression.

Some independent religious scholars

Oooh look, I get to be on a list. Usually when there’s a list, I don’t get to be on it, which is probably perfectly sensible because there are better people to be on it, except when one looks closely at the list one notices that everyone on it is of just one gender, and it happens to be not the one that I am of which, and at that point one begins to wonder, is there a secret invisible subliminal hidden sub rosa unconscious criterion for being on the list that the maker of the list would probably not admit to but that nevertheless somehow just made it be that only people of one gender were good … Read the rest

Mark Vernon is playing the same old hurdy-gurdy.

The Oxford church historian tells of a ‘wise old Dominican friar’ who informed him that God is not the answer. Rather, God is the question…First you’ve got to ask what you mean by the word ‘God’. And there is a quick answer: we don’t know what we mean by the word ‘God’. God is a mystery. ‘The word “God” is a label for something we do not know’…

A mystery is different from a problem; a problem can be solved, science does that, science does it well, but a mystery is different. And God is one of those. Aquinas said God can’t even be said to exist. Talk about mysterious!

That’s