Before his plane even touched the ground, Pope Benedict XVI sparked a controversy on his first trip to Africa by denouncing the use of condoms and saying they even exacerbate the AIDS crisis. Despite insisting that the church is in the forefront of the battle against AIDS in Africa [AP], during his flight to Cameroon the Pope told reporters that AIDS is “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem” [BBC]. Instead, the solution lies in a “spiritual and human awakening” and “friendship for those who suffer” [AFP].
The seven-day pilgrimage is Benedict’s first trip as pontiff to Africa, the fastest-growing region for the Roman Catholic Church [AP]. But the Vatican’s controversial policy on condoms continues to be tested on a continent where AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since the 1980s [Reuters]. With an estimated 22 million people currently infected on the continent, Africa is home to approximately 67 percent of the world’s population living with AIDS, and claimed a full three-quarters of all AIDS deaths in 2007.
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French physicist Bernard d’Espagnat has won the annual Templeton Prize with its purse of $1.4 million; the prize is often given to scientists who find common ground between religion and science. Professor d’Espagnat, 87, worked with great luminaries of quantum physics but went on to address the philosophical questions that the field poses [BBC News].
Physicists may be more open to seeing a higher power behind the great mysteries of the universe than scientists in other disciplines: Including Dr. d’Espagnat, five of the past 10 Templeton winners have been physicists or have had strong connections to the discipline [The Christian Science Monitor].
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A top official at Turkey’s science agency reportedly forced the editors of its science magazine to remove a cover story on the life and work of Charles Darwin in what appears to be a sign of the Turkish government’s official discomfort with the theory of evolution.
The article was stripped from the March issue of the widely read popular-science magazine Bilim ve Teknik (Science and Technology) just before it went to press. The magazine, which is published by Turkey’s research funding and science management organization, TÜBİTAK, also switched a planned cover picture of Darwin for an illustration relating to global warming [Nature News]. The editor of the magazine says she was removed from her post over the incident, but has declined to comment further as she’s still an employee of TUBITAK.
The March issue of the magazine, which was intented to celebrate Darwin’s 200th birthday, reached newsstands a week late and 16 pages short. Once the behind-the-scenes machinations became known, academics reacted with outrage. Turkish writer Ender Helvacıoğlu from Science and Future magazine called on the science community to react against this incident and pressure the government, who has the last word appointing the council’s scientific committee. “This intervention can’t be regarded as solely censorship. It connotes the states rejection of science” [Bianet], he wrote. Today a group of university professors were expected to gather at the science council’s headquarters to call for the resignation of the official who ordered the article removed.
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Researchers have peeked inside the brains of religious people responding to statements about God, and found that there’s no discrete part of the brain that handles religious beliefs–there’s no “God spot,” as other neuroscientists have suggested. The new study found that the neural activity in the subjects’ brains corresponded to brain networks known to have other, nonreligious functions…. “There is nothing segregated or conserved or special about religious beliefs, compared to other belief systems,” [lead researcher Jordan] Grafman said. The networks activated by religious beliefs overlap with those that mediate political beliefs and moral beliefs, he said [The New York Times].
The test subjects were read different types of statements dealing with God and religion while their brains were scanned with an fMRI machine, which measures blood flow to different parts of the brain. The scans showed that religious thoughts “light up” the areas of our brain which have evolved most recently, such as those involved in imagination, memory and “theory of mind” – the recognition that other people and living things can have their own thoughts and intentions [New Scientist].
Some researchers have hypothesized that religious beliefs are a byproduct of the neural networks used in theory of mind, suggesting that humans first evolved to imagine what other people are feeling, even people who aren’t present — and from there it was a short step to positing supernatural beings [Wired].
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Some religious leaders may take issue with Charles Darwin and what he represents, but the Vatican has announced that it is officially on board with evolution. A leading official declared yesterday that Darwin’s theory of evolution was compatible with Christian faith, and could even be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. “In fact, what we mean by evolution is the world as created by God,” said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi [Times Online]. Both St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas recognized that life changes slowly over time, Ravasi said, and that was a step towards comprehending evolution.
The Vatican’s effort to show that science is not incompatible with religion will culminate in a conference on evolution next month, organized to mark the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s landmark publication, On the Origin of Species. The Vatican has backed away slightly from its original proposal to completely ban discussion of intelligent design at the event, which organizers called “poor theology and poor science”. [Instead,] Intelligent Design would be discussed at the fringes of the conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, but merely as a “cultural phenomenon”, rather than a scientific or theological issue, organisers said [Times Online].
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Health care workers who have a moral or religious objection to a medical procedure can’t be punished or discriminated against if they refuse to perform it, according to a sweeping new rule (pdf) announced by the Bush administration yesterday. The right-to-refuse rule includes abortion, but [the department of Health and Human Services] said it extends to other aspects of health care where moral concerns could arise, including birth control, emergency contraception, in vitro fertilization, stem cell research or assisted suicide. The rule will take effect the day before President George W. Bush leaves office [Baltimore Sun]. If a hospital, clinic, pharmacy, health plan, or any other medical establishment refuses to follow the new law it will forfeit all federal funding.
The rule has been eagerly anticipated by anti-abortion activists, but has raised furious objections from family planning groups and much of the medical establishment (groups such as the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association opposed the regulation). Officials at hospitals and clinics predicted the regulation will cause widespread disruptions, forcing family planning centers and fertility clinics, for example, to hire employees even if they oppose abortions or in vitro fertilization procedures that can destroy embryos. “It is going to cause chaos among providers across the country,” said Cecile Richards of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The regulation could also make it difficult for states to enforce laws such as those requiring hospitals to offer rape victims the morning-after pill, experts said [Washington Post].
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The Vatican has issued new ethical guidelines in response to the biomedical advances of the last 20 years, and has come down hard on assisted reproduction technologies and genetic engineering. The document, Dignitas Personae (which translates as “human dignity”), reaffirm the church’s opposition to in vitro fertilization. It also tells Catholics that the church also doesn’t condone “adopting” leftover fertilized embryos from fertility clinics, and frowns upon the genetic testing of embryos before implantation, which could lead to the embryo being discarded. The Vatican says these techniques violate the principles that every human life — even an embryo — is sacred, and that babies should be conceived only through intercourse by a married couple [The New York Times].
These instructions stem from two fundamental theological principles: that life begins at conception and that the origin of human life is the “fruit of marriage.” … The document now makes clear that the morning-after pill, RU-486, and intrauterine devices (IUDs), which either intercept the embryo before implantation or eliminate it after implantation, “fall within the sin of abortion” [Scientific American]. The guidelines may come as a surprise to many Catholics who don’t realize that the church takes such a strict stance on medical technologies like in vitro fertilization that are often seen as routine and beneficial.
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The battle that has raged over creationism and evolution in the United States is likely to spread to the Islamic world, a scholar of science and religion argues in a new essay. But author Salman Hameed writes that the opening of a new front in the battle gives scientists an opportunity to reframe the debate. Better education, the spread of Internet access and news about U.S. controversies over evolution are provoking some Muslims worldwide to start to ask whether Islam is compatible with evolutionary theory, Hameed said. “Now is the time that these ideas are going to be solidified. We can shape it. There are positive ways to shape these ideas in which we can avert a mass rejection of evolution,” Hameed said [LiveScience].
The most fundamentalist form of creationism in the United States is based on a literal reading of the Bible, which implies that the earth and all its creatures were created by God in their present form over the course of six days; creationists say this narrative is in direct conflict with the idea that organisms slowly evolved over billions of years. However, Hameed notes that the Koran may be more compatible with evolutionary theory. One of the big evolution problems from the US creationist perspective is the age of the Earth. Logically speaking, if you believe in a 6000 or 10,000 year-old Earth, then you have to reject evolution. In the Muslim countries, young Earth creationism is nonexistent. The Koran is very vague about creation stories, specifically regarding the creation of the universe. If you accept an old Earth, then it makes it relatively easier to accept evolution [New Scientist].
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In a dusty cave in Israel, archaeologists have unearthed a 12,000-year-old grave that they say may be the resting spot of one of the earliest known shamans. The grave contains the artfully arranged bones of a roughly 45-year-old woman as well as a collection of animal and human body parts, including a complete human foot, 50 tortoise shells, and bones from a wild boar, an eagle, and a leopard.
“What was unusual here was there were so many different parts of different animals that were unusual, that were clearly put there on purpose,” said researcher Natalie Munro…. This care along with the animal parts point to the grave belonging to both an important member of the society and possibly a healer called a shaman…. Such healers mediate between the human and spirit worlds, often summoning the help of animal spirits along their quests, according to the researchers [LiveScience].
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Almost 150 years since Charles Darwin published his ideas in The Origin of Species, a senior Anglican clergyman has written that the Church of England owes Darwin an apology for misunderstanding his theories of evolution. The church official, Reverend Malcolm Brown, was writing Monday on a church Web site launched to mark Darwin’s bicentenary next year. The Church of England says his statement reflects its position but does not constitute an official apology [AP].
The apology may be a bit late, but Brown wrote that it’s both relevant and necessary, as some religious groups continue to scoff at evolution. “Charles Darwin – 200 years from your birth (1809) the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still,” he wrote on the Church of England website. “We try to practise the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends” [The Independent].
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