One myth-besotted CNN paragraph preoccupied Mollie at GetReligion.
She was addressing the story of South Bend, Indiana Roman Catholic Bishop John D’Arcy's boycott of the Notre Dame graduation ceremonies at which President Barack Obama will be honored.
Let her help you substitute legislative fact for fiction and filter spin out of science here.
Organizers said they want an intellectually rigorous conference on science, theology and philosophy to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species."
As a result, there is no place for intelligent design in the five-day conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University. The Rev. Marc Leclerc, the conference director and a professor of philosophy of nature at the Gregorian explained:
We think that it's not a scientific perspective, nor a theological or philosophical one. This makes a dialogue very difficult, maybe impossible.
The Discovery Institute complains mightily that it was shut out because the gathering is funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Although it was by all accounts a no-strings-attached grant.
But protest, contention and litigation are commonplaces of intelligent design advocacy in this country. Not, one might infer, the ingredients of constructive, multi-way dialog (even putting aside the philosophy/theology of the notion).
Cheryl Bridges Johns of the Church of God Theological Seminary on creation care and reconnecting to the natural world:
“I believe that we can re-enchant the world,” she said. “As a person of faith, I believe I can live an enchanted life of faith, a spirited life, where I see, sometimes as the ancient Celts, that the veil between this world and the world that is to come getting very, very thin in certain places. And sometimes I see that in nature and it’s a glorious expression of that which is to come.
So creation care and caring for creation, to me, means that we become enchanted, we become re-enchanted,” Johns continued. “We can be great scientists and wonder. We can be astute physicians and wonder. We can be wonderful people, who are teachers and lawyers and pastors, and wonder, can’t we?”
There's more.
Waiting for death alone and unafraid.
Thanks to GetReligion for this one.
Pastordan at the Street Prophets blog says "I sincerely doubt" the absolute number of atheists counted by the latest American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) is soaring.
We will find out when it is released on March 8. Meanwhile, although free-thinker-inclined Epiphenon uses some data that leaked out to make a different case, pastordan says:
What seems more likely is that "weak" Christians - those who are not affiliated very tightly if at all - feel more comfortable identifying as such. That's the number that's doubled since '91.
It is interesting that the rate of growth in self-disaffiliations, skeptcisim or whatever mixture of sentiments it is, has slowed. Yet the percent who self-identify as atheists or agnostics has grown dramatically.
All of which typically has no simple, synoptic demographic meaning. The data, like the human behavior it attempts to measure, is always complex, messy. But since '91 it hasn't indicated a revival, of any kind.
More like a slow falling away and acceptance of the attendant labels.
Bible Belt is an often satirically intended term for the geographical concentration of Americans who tell pollsters religion is relatively important in their daily lives.
Unresolved competition among some 15 urban centers for "buckle" not withstanding, you might not want to wear this one for the same reasons that socially responsible habitation here is a problem-solving process.
Leading in poverty, AIDS infection rate, divorce rate, obesity, illiteracy, poverty, infant mortality, death penalty executions and some other unfortunate indexes of social wellbeing, the region calls those who can, and have a conscience. to help the others. Materially and toward the acquisition of revenue-generating skills.
Seen in worldwide perspective, the moniker takes on a different shading. USA Today reported, using Gallup data:
Baptists in Tuscaloosa and Muslims in Tehran might not seem to have much in common, but Alabama and Iran do agree on one thing: the importance of religion.
Nearly identical percentages of people in both locations — 82% of Alabamians and 83% of Iranians — say religion is an important part of their daily lives.
Yet no Bible Belt state matches the fervor of the most religious countries — those with 98% or more answering that religion is an important part of their daily lives: Egypt, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Congo.
Even the commonplace assumption that most of those questioned are fundamentalist Bible thumbers who echo the politics of Southern Baptist Convention Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission chief Richard Land are upon close examination false, assuming the recorded denominational diversity is real.
Bible Belt was always and remains a false generalization for a complex phenomenon, one too often used to mislead and manipulate us.
A 20-year-old requirement that high school science classes discuss the so-called weaknesses in the theory of evolution, was dropped in a preliminary vote Thursday by the Texas State Board of Education.
The formal vote is scheduled today.
The Board was swayed, according to both the Dallas Morning News and Houston Chronicle, by the advice of a panel of science educators.
"We're not talking about faith. We're not talking about religion," said board member Mary Helen Berlanga, D-Corpus Christi. "We're talking about science. We need to stay with our experts and respect what they have requested us to do."
Kathy Miller, president of the watchdog group Texas Freedom Network (which live-blogs the debate here), has argued that the word weaknesses "has become a code word in the culture wars to attack evolution and promote creationism."
The key issues are explored at Teach them Science, a Web site devoted to the issue. It is maintained by the Center for Inquiry and the Clergy Letter Project. Or, alternatively, the New York Times offers a balanced but ultimately less detailed overview.
Other curriculum votes are scheduled for March, so the heated, two-decade debate is by no means over.
The final decision is of overarching importance because the size of the Texas textbook market gives it sweeping, national impact on the way school science textbooks in general are written.
Djerassi outlined the "horror scenario" that occurred because of the population imbalance, for which his invention was partly to blame. He said that in most of Europe there was now "no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction". He said: "This divide in Catholic Austria, a country which has on average 1.4 children per family, is now complete."
He described families who had decided against reproduction as "wanting to enjoy their schnitzels while leaving the rest of the world to get on with it".
The fall in the birth rate, he said, was an "epidemic" far worse - but given less attention - than obesity. Young Austrians, he said, were committing national suicide if they failed to procreate. And if it were not possible to reverse the population decline they would have to understand the necessity of an "intelligent immigration policy".
Roman Catholic leaders called the statement a "confession" and manufactured from it a bit of what gynaecologist and member of the New York Academy of Science, professor Gian Benedetto Melis, called science fiction.
Roman Catholic doctors alleged the pill had brought "devastating ecological effects" by releasing into the environment "tons of hormones" that somehow impaired male fertility.
Using pseudoscience in an attempt to justify the ways of religion to man tends to drive the rational from the sanctuary.
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