“The Vatican said it was launching the channel to broaden Benedict’s audience while also giving the Holy See better control over the papal image online.”

Nice to know his Holiness is as worried about his online reputation as the rest of us. The channel will be updated daily and include clips of papal news items, with content produced by the Vatican’s television station, CTV (not to be confused with the other CTV, which produces plenty of non-Pope-approved material). The clips will be broadcast in Italian, German, English, and Spanish.

To top off his technological embrace, Benedict also gave social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace his official blessing, calling them a “gift to humanity” in their ability to foster friendships and connections.

Of course, all this Internet love doesn’t come without a caveat:

But Benedict also warned that virtual socializing had its risks, saying “obsessive” online networking could isolate people from real social interaction and broaden the digital divide by further marginalizing people.

Not to mention lead to all sorts of dangerous addictions.

Related:
Disco: Vatican Science: Pope Blames Male Infertility on…the Pill
Disco: They Tried to Make Us Go to Web Surfing Rehab But We Said LOL
RB: One Religion that’s Actually Embracing Science: Buddhism

Image: Courtesy of www.vatican.va

More than 30 Tibetan monks, plus a handful of nuns, will be collaborating with a team from San Francisco’s Exploratorium (”the museum of art, science and human perception”) to build exotic machines to create patterns from sunlight using cardboard, dowels, reflective sheets of mylar and electronic components.

If all goes to plan, the monks will return to their monasteries and start spreading the joys of scientific exploration among other followers of their religion.

The project is the latest reflection of the monks’ spiritual leader’s fascination with science. In the Dalai Lama’s 2005 book The Universe in a Single Atom, the Nobel peace laureate argued that science and spiritual inquiry have much to learn from one other.

According to an Exploratorium press release, the Dalai Lama has been exploring how cosmology, neuroscience, and other fields interrelate with Buddhism since childhood (His Holiness does tend to be precocious). Now he’s setting his monks on an “ambitious” mission to “share not only in the traditions of Buddhism, but…also in Western scientific inquiry and evidence on the physical plane” with a goal of “shap[ing] these already highly educated monks into science leaders.”

Now if we could just get the Pope to follow suit…

Related:
RB: Karl Giberson Wants God and Science to Just Get Along
RB: This Week’s God-Science Face-Off: Rick Warren v. Sam Harris
RB: God 0, Atheism 2: Hitchens Eats Another Religious Figure for Lunch
RB: Annual Creationism Conference Takes “Scientific” Approach

• Happy Friday! Half the world’s population could face a global-warming-induced food crisis by 2100, according to a new study.

• And then there’s the floods…

• Need proof that evolution’s more than just a “theory”? Look no further.

• The fruit flies are back! And this time, it’s not just Palin dissing them.

• “Dear Obama: Please bring me cap and trade legislation this year.” A wish list from environmentalists.

• The U.S. isn’t the only tech sector getting slammed by the downturn.

• And now for a lesson in brutal honesty: How much does racism really bother you?

Mashing scientific evidence into a pulpy soup of agenda-laden misinformation seems to be a common theme for the modern GOP. The latest (and arguably most egregious) example is outgoing EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, whose reign has been dominated by a poverty of factual information, with hard science routinely twisted to suit political designs.

In a scathing profile in the Philadelphia Enquirer (via ThinkProgress), writers John Shiffman and John Sullivan delve into the cult of mediocrity that dominated Johnson’s time at the agency. The piece is filled with forehead-slappers like the following:

Perhaps one of the best insights into Johnson’s vision for EPA can be found in written testimony he submitted to a Senate committee this year. In the document, Johnson laid out his top 11 goals.

No. 1 was clean energy, particularly approving drilling for “thousands of new oil and gas wells” on tribal and federal lands. No. 2 was homeland security.

Environmental enforcement and sound science ranked ninth and 10th.

And that’s not even the worst of it:

Johnson approved pesticide testing on human subjects, lowered the monetary value of a human life by $1 million, reduced air pollution reporting requirements for corporate farms, and altered a chemical risk-assessment program that has slowed analysis to a crawl.

To top it all off, Johnson is described as using the following reasoning against his critics:

He believes in the Bush agenda and, like his boss, said his resolve is fueled by his deep Christian beliefs.

It is a faith he developed early in life. Johnson’s strongest association outside the EPA is his relationship with his alma mater, Taylor University, one of the nation’s oldest evangelical colleges…

Johnson majored in biology. At Taylor, that includes discussion of creationism.

When asked to articulate his view on the creationism/science debate, Johnson responded with the following:

It’s not a clean-cut division. If you have studied at all creationism vs. evolution, there’s theistic or God-controlled evolution and there’s variations on all those themes.

Sure, there are variations. Unfortunately, none of them are grounded in actual fact. But then, neither are Johnson’s policies.

Related:
RB: Is Bobby Kennedy Really the “Anti-Science” Choice for EPA Head?
RB: Global Warming Denial in the Senate: The Latest Chapter
RB: Rant of the Day: Hitchens Slams Palin on Science

It’s always interesting when technology and religion/culture collide like Mac trucks. The BBC reports that Muxlim Pal, the first virtual world aimed at the Muslim community, is now live in Beta, and will officially launch in 2009.

The site, aimed at “Muslims in Western nations,” is based on the standard virtual world model popularized by The Sims and the eponymous Second Life. Each player gets an avatar that can be fitted with a number of inventory and wardrobe options including hijabs. Avatars can earn and spend currency, though the creators haven’t set up any of the money-making systems pervasive in Second Life. Each avatar multiple “meters” governing its “happiness, fitness, knowledge and spirituality that change when the character carries out tasks in the social world.”

Mohamed El-Fatatry, the founder of the parent site, Muxlim.com, stresses that the focus of the site is not religion itself—of the 26 different content categories on the site, only one is religion. Rather, the focus is on creating a space for Muslim culture in the virtual realm:

“We are not a religious site, we are a site that is focused on the lifestyle… This is for anyone who is remotely interested in the Muslim culture and the Muslim lifestyle.”

The English-only virtual world is equipped with a beach bar, arena, and shopping areas, and each user is given a private room to decorate. As for content, it’s no bacchanalian Second Life: Any content portraying violence, drugs, sexual references or profanity can be flagged by users and quickly removed.

Related:
RB: People Are Racist in the Virtual World, Too

• The New York Times advises us to approach the Thanksgiving meal “the way a CEO might.” Uhh, not even sure where to start on that one.

• Some good news this holiday: Cancer diagnoses are on the decline.

• The newest in medical technology: A barcode chip that tests your blood for disease.

• The latest in climate change research: A shrimp on a treadmill. Seriously.

• You know it’s bad out there when gaming companies are seeing their stock take a hit.

• And to top it off, the financial crisis hits Google. It’s official: No one is immune.

• Sketchy study finds that more people believe in aliens and ghosts than God. Or perhaps they just think God is an alien?

• And here’s a fun idea in the obesity era: health waivers for Thanksgiving dinner guests. More casserole, anyone?

Karl Giberson, physics professor, author, and P.Z. Myers nemesis, thinks—perhaps rightfully—that there’s no reason you can’t have it all: knowledge and understanding of evolution, belief in God, and adherence to Christianity. Planting his feet in such a roiling middle ground puts him in a unique position that warrants discussion. Enter the Templeton Foundation, self-appointed adjudicator of the God-science debate. In Monday night’s event at the Harvard Club in New York, the organization brought Giberson together with resident agnostic Michael Shermer, an author and the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine.

In a rather tepid exchange (though after Hitchens, a fistfight would seem tame), the two men danced around what’s wrong with creationism, why religion may be more than a result of evolutionary psychology, and whether there’s a “reason” to believe in God.

Shermer got things rolling with a question about why evolution and Christianity—which, he said, is “about God’s relationship to Christ”—are so consistently combined in American culture. “The U.S. has always been very religious and very entrepreneurial,” Giberson responded. “And assaulting religion turned out to be successful entrepreneurially.” True enough, though a fundamentally weak point when you consider that promoting religion has been just as—if not more—profitable.

On the issue of “what’s wrong with creationists,” Giberson criticized the group for “spin[ning] the Creation story into pseudo-science” and “elevat[ing] Genesis beyond what is appropriate.” His objection to this approach wasn’t so much that it was contradictory to all scientific evidence, but rather that it “rob[bed Genesis] of everything that is interesting.” Of die-hard young creationists, who Shermer diplomatically singled out as “not dumb” and “not ignorant,” Giberson dismissed them as overcommitted to Biblical literalism: “They have all these reasons for making the Bible supernatural…They want to be able to read the Bible as if it was written very recently.”

Another benefit of religion, he proposed, is that it fills in the moral gaps Darwinism leaves behind: “Darwin doesn’t give you statements of morality.” In fact, he argues, “morals are conflicting with science,” on issues like procreation—pure Darwinism supports the idea of promiscuous sex, for example.

As to why he believes in God, Giberson offered the following:

“Part of me wants to go with the…argument that it makes the world so much more interesting. I’d rather have the mysteries that come with belief in God. I’m not convinced religion can be all explained away as evidence of evolutionary psychology…[Religion] suggests a possible solution for the deepest mysteries science hasn’t been able to solve.”

Maybe so—but it also does its darndest to undermine those “mysteries” science has already nailed.

Related:
RB: God 0, Atheism 2: Hitchens Eats Another Religious Figure for Lunch
RB: This Week’s God-Science Face-Off: Rick Warren v. Sam Harris
RB: Rant of the Day: Hitchens Slams Palin on Science

The British government recently appointed a new minister of science, and he’s quite a character. Aside from being a millionaire with a PhD in robotics who left his position in the Ministry of Defense (a body that has been known to house interesting sorts) to race sports cars, Lord Paul Drayson of Kensington is also, he says, a wee bit psychic. In a recent interview with the U.K. Times, he professed to have “an uncanny ability ‘like a sixth sense’ to know and predict some events instinctively.”

Drayson returned to the government last month, when he was given a cabinet seat and made the Minister of State for the newly-created Committee for Science and Innovation. While his background has long combined science and business—he was the co-founder of PowderJect Pharmaceuticals, one of the country’s biggest suppliers of vaccines and other drugs—it hasn’t been without scandal. In 2002, when Drayson was still running the company, it recalled its supply of a tuberculosis vaccine after it failed to meet “end of shelf life” specifications. The recall came amid whispers that the company had secured large vaccine contracts with the government because Drayson was a generous donor to the party in power.

In the interview this week, Drayson clarifies that he’s not claiming “extra-sensory” or paranormal powers; rather, his future-seeing talents are more the “hyper-instinctual” variety, circa Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, a book Drayson admires:

“Gladwell’s book is about the ability of the human being to know something, but not to know why they know it” [said Drayson]. “This struck a chord with me, because in my life there have been some things that I’ve known and I don’t know why.”

Drayson described the ability as “like a sixth sense” and said it could be linked to the way humans have evolved.

Given the subsequent criticism of the book, including but not limited to claims that its thesis is completely bass-ackward wrong, it may be wise for the new science minister to expand his reading list. Or maybe he can turn his preternatural instincts to solving Britain’s huge public misconceptions of climate change—and, for that matter, vaccines.

Related:
RB: Forget Al-Qaeda; Apparently It’s the Aliens We Need to Worry About

Humans have been historically eager to kill each other. Throughout history, we’ve thought up all sorts of nutty reasons to slaughter our fellow man that had nothing to do with immediate survival of the fittest. We tend to chalk all these wars up to cultural differences fed by a species-wide need to be ideologically right (and impose that right-ness on others), along with a knack for weapons discovery culminating in a technology boom that’s constantly supplying bigger and better ways to off each other. Add governments to the mix, and you’ve got a big steaming pile of questionably necessary interspecies violence.

So it’s a little—but not a lot—surprising that the growing scientific consensus is that war not only dates back to the origins of humankind, but has also played “an integral role” in or species’ evolution. According to this theory, which emerged during a recent conference at the University of Oregon, the war “instinct” was present in our common ancestor with chimps, and has been a “significant selection pressure on the human species,” as evolutionary psychologist Mark Van Vugt put it.

His and his colleagues’ reasoning goes something like this: Evidence exists to show that war and humans have been friends since the beginning (fossils of early humans show wounds consistent with combat injuries). As such, we would have evolved “psychological adaptations to a warlike lifestyle.” To this end, researchers have presented “the strongest evidence yet that males—whose larger and more muscular bodies make them better suited for fighting—have evolved a tendency towards aggression outside the group but cooperation within it.”

In other words, men have evolved to be team players within their own clans, and be warriors with everyone else—much like the behavior observed in chimpanzees, who regularly engage in short bursts of intergroup violence to weaken neighboring groups of males.

So should we resign ourselves to a future of ever-escalating violence due to our Darwinist predisposition for war? Not necessarily, says John Tooby, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who insists on looking at the bright side:

“The interesting thing about war is we’re focused on the harm it does… But it requires a super-high level of cooperation [within military organizations].”

Fair enough. Now if we could just figure out how to apply that trait to government.

Related:
RB: Over a Year After YouTube Ban, Military Launches “TroopTube”
RB: How Green Is My Army?

A few weeks ago, we recounted a debate between atheist posterchild Christopher Hitchens and Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, a prominent physicist and theologian. In the wake of around 20 requests for visual proof of what went down, we also promised to post a video of the debate once it became available. Cut to today, when, via the Templeton Foundation, you can watch the event in its entirety here.

Related:
God 0, Atheism 2: Hitchens Eats Another Religious Figure for Lunch

Additional Coverage of the Debate:

Newsweek
The Daily News
Vanity Fair
The National Review Online

This week, Newsweek joins the rising tide of forums holding the “God Challenge”: pit a religious figure (generally of the Christian persuasion) against a hardcore atheist, and let them battle it out over the existence of God. This week’s contestants are mega-preacher Rick Warren, of California’s Saddleback Church, and Sam Harris, philosopher and author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, with editor Jon Meacham acting as referee.

The conversation, for the most part, sticks to the general formula: Is there a God, what evidence do we have either way, should the Bible be interpreted literally, does prayer really “work.” No surprise, the points and counterpoints meet with the same language barrier that dominates nearly all of these attempts to “translate” religion into rational terms, and vice versa.

Harris, for his part, is no stranger to debates like these, and holds his own through questions about the existence of secular morality and the ability to be spiritual without believing a doctrine. He does, however, fall into the paternalistic “I know better than you” trap that can’t help but alienate the billions of humans who do believe in God. Telling people they’re stupider than you is simply never a winning strategy.

Meanwhile, Warren makes a few interesting points about personal responsibility and divine justice. But he sets himself up as easy prey with exchanges like the following:

WARREN: One of the great evidences of God is answered prayer. I have a friend, a Canadian friend, who has an immigration issue. He’s an intern at this church, and so I said, “God, I need you to help me with this,” as I went out for my evening walk. As I was walking I met a woman. She said, “I’m an immigration attorney; I’d be happy to take this case.” Now, if that happened once in my life I’d say, “That is a coincidence.” If it happened tens of thousands of times, that is not a coincidence.

There must have been times in your ministry when you’ve prayed for someone to be delivered from disease who is not—say, a little girl with cancer.

WARREN: Oh, absolutely.

So, parse that. God gave you an immigration attorney, but God killed a little girl.

WARREN: Well, I do believe in the goodness of God, and I do believe that he knows better than I do. God sometimes says yes, God sometimes says no and God sometimes says wait. I’ve had to learn the difference between no and not yet. The issue here really does come down to surrender. A lot of atheists hide behind rationalism; when you start probing, you find their reactions are quite emotional. In fact, I’ve never met an atheist who wasn’t angry.

Which is essentially saying that sometimes you can control fate by “praying” to God, and sometimes you can’t, but the act of surrendering control should only happen once you realize all those fervent prayers aren’t being answered. That humans foolishly try to control nearly every aspect of life is a germane point—just look at the headlines to see how utterly out of control things are, despite our best efforts otherwise. But rather than explore this human tendency, and how religion alleviates/causes it, Warren heads straight for the defend-your-position-by-attacking-your-opponent tactic so reminiscent of modern political campaigns. Which, as we’ve seen, aren’t exactly the paths to agreement and rational discourse.

The L.A. Times has a source who claims to have spoken directly to Palin about dinosaurs in 1997, when she was mayor of Wasilla. Stephen Braun reports that the notoriously soundbite-ready VP nominee told Philip Munger, a music teacher at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, that “dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time” 6,000 years ago—an statement that’s so horribly incorrect on so many levels, yet still all too common in creationist lore. Munger said Palin insisted that “she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks.” Were these pictures on display here by any chance?

Granted, Munger is no fan of the photogenic governor: He writes the actively anti-Palin blog ProgressiveAlaska, and has appeared on ultra-liberal Air America radio to speak out against her. Still, unless yet another blogger digs up evidence that he’s lying, there’s no proof that their exchange is a myth. And, of course, all this could be cleared up by a simple Q&A with Palin herself—if such a thing was possible.

Image: Flickr/williac

Are you there God, and if so, will you please provide an emissary that can go head-to-head with Christopher Hitchens without getting spectacularly flayed?

That was the pertinent issue during yesterday’s “Big Questions conversation” at the Pierre Hotel, hosted by On Faith and the John Templeton Foundation. The luncheon pitted Hitchens, the anti-theist poster child, against Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, a physicist, theologian, and author of God at the Ritz: Attraction to Infinity.

Given the pro-God squad’s spectacular failure the last time it staged a debate like this, the buzz among the predominantly male and heavily tweeded crowd was, “Will Albacete bring his A game against a man known for his periodic disembowling of religious delegates?”

The answer, unfortunately, was a resounding no. While the monsignor presented a charismatic and sympathetic figure—his Isaac Hayes-esque vocal resonance was worth the trip alone—his arguments, if one could call them that, didn’t make it past a freshmen theology class.

Albacete’s strategy seemed to be to dance around his opponent—never has “I agree with you completely” been so frequently uttered by a Catholic priest to a hardcore atheist—and rely on his ecclesiastical gravitas to give credence to his chief points: that science and religion can co-exist; that human beings are biological creatures defined by faith; that religion and faith are separate entities; and that science has not provided sufficient proof that God doesn’t exist to squelch the belief that He does.

All of which could be sound claims if argued effectively, with cogent reasoning and specific examples to counter the obvious holes that Hitchens wasted no time presenting: The burden of proof rests on deists, not atheists, to prove there is a God; no scientific evidence exists to support the assertion that Jesus Christ was the son of God, or even existed; and the tenets of organized religion are nothing more than the “delusions” of humankind needed to sustain our desire for pageantry and meaning.

Rather than hit these atheist talking points head on, the Monsignor sputtered and evaded his way through the hour, clinging to an agenda focused on capitulation short of outright renunciation of belief. Religion, he admitted, has done “a lot” of harm, but “science has been [just] as misused.” When Hitchens accused Albacete of flippancy concerning the pain Christianity has caused despite the total lack of existential evidence, the priest responded: “I have seen evidence in my experience that Jesus Christ existed.” Excellent! An original point! So what was this evidence? Too bad we never found out—either he had no answer, or was unwilling to share.

It’s unfortunate that Albacete brought so little from his distinguished career and thoughtful writings, which demonstrate a commitment to open-minded discussion of an issue that has brought humanity to an impasse. Instead he seemed intent on emerging from the Upper East Side with his dignity intact, as well as besting the king of one-liners in a soundbite contest. A few highlights:

“To me, faith is the problem…it’s like trying to explain to your uncomprehending family why you’ve fallen in love with so and so.”

“You could substitute for Christ the Great Lizard, for all I care.”

“When I was looking [to woo] my women, I did not send them equations.”

“As I try to live a decent life…something extraordinary enters my life and moves me the way nothing ever has before. Was it what I drank? Was it the pizza? Was it what I’d been smoking? Most of the time, it is!”

So there you have it: It might be God, or it might be bad pizza. Lets hope the next champion of God (an imam perhaps?) that battles Hitchens is armed with a slightly more compelling response.

This post has been appended to reflect that Hitchens is an anti-theist rather than an anti-deist.

Enter conceptual artist Jonathon Keats (relationship to the other John Keats unknown) who has created the “Atheon,” a new installation at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley. The project involves posting NASA images of the universe’s early years in the 14-foot-high cathedral-style windows on the second floor, so passersby can view them while listening to an accompanying song on their cell phones. According to the museum’s Web site, Keats’s work is meant to “call[] forth the fusion of science and religion by building a temple for scientific worship.” We can’t wait to see what Karl and P.Z. have to say about this one.

Things are looking up for STDs these days. On the side of the newly-revitalized Christian right, you have abstinence doctrines strangling sex education and disease prevention efforts in schools (and celebrating the teen pregnancies that result). On the left, you have the “demystification” of non-lethal diseases like chlamydia, gonorrhea and HPV, sending the message that unprotected sex (and the infections that result) are “really no big deal.” Mix them together, and you’ve got a spike in U.S. infection rates, after years on the decline.

Granted, given that diseases like chlamydia and gonorrhea can be cured with antibiotics, and non-curables like herpes controlled with medication, it’s worth asking: Why are non-lethal STDs so dangerous?

Well, for one, because they can leave your body with permanent and serious damage.

And secondly, because they increase your risk of contracting far worse diseases, like HIV. We’ve known this for a while, and now a new study by Flemish researcher Teunis Geijtenbeek at the VU University Medical Center has figured out why. Using model replicas of human skin and vaginal cells, he found that gonorrhea, syphilis, and chlamydia, as well as yeast and bacterial vaginal infections, caused a change in Langerhans cells (LCs), which capture HIV. In disease-free skin, the LCs captured HIV but didn’t efficiently transmit the virus to T cells, thereby decreasing the chances of infection. But if the LCs were “activated by inflammatory stimuli” from an STD or other infection listed above, they became far better at capturing and passing on HIV.

Just how big was the HIV transmission increase? Geijtenbeek told DISCOVER that, while his results showed at least a tenfold rise, “the epidemiological data suggest that [the] chance of infection is increased ten- to one hundred-fold.” The risk jump lasts from the time of infection through the end of treatment.

And as for the argument that “HIV is no big deal these days“—if you seriously believe that, then there’s not much else to say. Just be sure to take those meds for the rest of your likely-shortened life—and have fun with those side effects.