Ten United States seminaries across several denominations will receive a combined US$1.5 million in grants to include science in their studies. The grants were announced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Funding has come from the John Templeton Foundation, in an effort to bridge gaps between science and faith. Catholic institutions to Read more
Posts Tagged ‘Science’
The science-religion divide and the Vatican astronomer
Tuesday, October 7th, 2014
Are science and religion fundamentally at odds? Many well-known astronomers and astrophysicists think so, including Stephen Hawking, who in a recent interview said, “Before we understood science, it was natural to believe that God created the universe, but now science offers a more convincing explanation… I’m an atheist.” Other astronomers see no fundamental incompatibility between Read more
God and science — the elephant in the laboratory
Friday, September 19th, 2014
Some say they were pursued by the Hound of Heaven, a Grace that would not take leave, not in the “nights”or “down the days,” the “arches of the years” or the “labyrinthine ways.” That poetry never much resonated with me. The first time I heard it I wondered, “At what rate did he travel, this hound?” Poetry is hard for literalists to Read more
India’s quest to end world hunger
Friday, June 20th, 2014
It may not make his family wealthy, but Devran Mankar is still grateful for the pearl millet variety called Dhanshakti (meaning “prosperity and strength”) he has recently begun growing in his small field in the state of Maharashtra, in western India. “Since eating this pearl millet, the children are rarely ill,” raves Mankar, a slim man Read more
Suspended between life and death
Friday, May 30th, 2014
Doctors will try to save the lives of 10 patients with knife or gunshot wounds by placing them in suspended animation, buying time to fix their injuries Neither dead or alive, knife-wound or gunshot victims will be cooled down and placed in suspended animation later this month, as a groundbreaking emergency technique is tested out for Read more
From sci-fi to fact and its moral implications
Friday, February 28th, 2014
3D-printed organs – quick explanation: this essentially entails filling an old inkjet printer with human tissue, which then gets ‘printed’, layer by layer, to form a 3D object. Last year, we implanted the first bioengineered blood vessel, and it won’t be long before we’ll be able to print a liver for anyone who needs one. Because Read more
Babies know right from wrong
Friday, November 22nd, 2013
Several years ago, an energetic young mother, Tia, was out and about with her infant Aimee when disaster struck: a group of men, accompanied by vicious dogs, surrounded the pair, snatched up Aimee, and brutalised Tia. They left her helpless and without her daughter. Aimee was eventually rescued. But Tia was too battered to look Read more
The science behind power naps, and why they’re so damn good for you
Friday, October 11th, 2013
The stigma against napping is finally starting to wane — and for good reason. Taking a timeout to sleep during the day does much more than just give us a quick energy boost. It also confers some serious cognitive and health advantages as well. Here’s what the latest science tells us. Unlike 85% of all Read more
A universe from nothing?
Friday, August 16th, 2013
Most things sound convincing when Morgan Freeman says them. The host of Through the Wormhole and the voice of God himself recently told told Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show that the Higgs Boson “explains everything – creation.” “Oh oh”, replies Ferguson, “that’s not going to be popular.” The “science puts God out of a job” Read more
Challenging God as nothing at all
Tuesday, October 9th, 2012
Rainbows are a universal sign of hope, although they only exist in the eyes of the people who see them and sometimes in their photographs. How intriguing then that biblical storytellers saw this trick of light as the sign of God’s promise. Talking about the God that was nowhere to be seen before science discovered the unsettling Read more