science and religion

A conversation with Brook Wilensky-Lanford, author of Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden.

The week in religion…

What happens when a breakthrough in technology leaves religious scholars without much to go on?

In a recent BBC documentary, Secrets of the Superbrands, presenter Alex Riley attended the opening of a London Apple store and noted the “evangelical frenzy” of the Apple fans lining the block.

Forget the war on drugs. As Jimmy Carter recently argued in the New York Times, it is time to call off this wasted effort.

A new study concludes that the brains of born-again Christians are smaller than those of other affiliations or non-believers. Welcome back to the 19th century.

Both the good and bad in our species come from our primate background, says primatologist Frans de Waal, author of The Age of Empathy.

The University of Notre Dame had cause for its anxiety leading up to last week’s big debate between the New Atheist polemicist Sam Harris and the evangelical philosopher William Lane Craig. It’s said that all publicity is good publicity, but one needn’t strain too hard to find an exception—least of all in the history of God debates.

Something is clearly up (or down) with religious affiliation, but reading that data calls for the art for interpretation, not mathematical modeling. That’s what makes this story far more interesting—and far less funny.

The top films for 2010—especially those up for this Sunday’s awards—leave most of the species-specific questions behind. Instead this year’s crop reflects anxieties (as well as promises) about who we are and who we might be becoming in and as humans, in our own skins—never mind the “prawns” or “Na’vi.” Questions provoked by this year’s films include those concerning the nature of our selves in connection and collision with our families, our larger social institutional entanglements, and our own bodies. The other key theme, effecting each of the others, had to do with the ways new media technology is inserting itself into our intimate lives, and changing our identities, both public and private.