In This Issue
Nanotechnology: manipulation or innovation? Researcher explores religious mindsets
New Templeton Grant broadens survey of scientists on religion and science
Four state legislatures challenge evolution in schools
Oxford and Cambridge partnership to focus on "philosophy of cosmology"
Nanotechnology: manipulation or innovation? Researcher explores religious mindsets
Nanotechnology or the study of manipulating matter on the atomic and molecular scale is something that rarely captures the attention of theologians. A newly published study, however, looks at the various ways religious communities may consider nanotechnology.
Chris Toumey, a cultural anthropologist at the University of South Carolina NanoCenter, decided to research seven religious groups as most thought given to nanotechnology's role in society has been approached from the viewpoint of ethicists.
His paper states that it is worth knowing what religious voices have to say about the new technology as a way to anticipate additional religious reactions in the future. The paper, “Seven Religious Reactions to Nanotechnology,” presents seven case studies of religious reactions from a variety of global groups.
He collected four documents from religious organizations that deliver official institutional positions, namely: a major American Lutheran denomination; the Catholic Bishops Conferences of the European Community; a coalition of German Protestants; and a Muslim think-tank in the United Arab Emirates. The remaining three groups are: Jewish group focused on technology; a group of Catholics and Protestants who oppose transhumanism; and a pair of focus groups in England and in the U.S.
The views of nanotechnology seem to be mostly negative in nature. Toumey found that many religious persons worry that nanotechnology will contribute to re-defining human nature in ways that are amoral or dangerous. He says this is a sense that "transhumanist" values are the enemy of religious values and that nanomedicine is part of a transhumanist agenda.
Secondly he found that religious persons worry that the control of nanotechnology by irresponsible entities will lead to adverse consequences such as inequality or injustice.
Toumey writes, “The question of whether nanotech is tantamount to transhumanism is part of a broader question of whether science should be able to change human nature. Both of these themes express a worry that science is beyond political or moral control.” (For one Lutheran theologian's approach to transhumanism see Hefner's reflections published
here in
Covalence.)
In the long run, the question remains whether religious voices will participate in the conversation taking place in nanotechnology and its long range implications. The conversation is just beginning.
New Templeton Grant broadens survey of scientists on religion and science
A first-ever multi-national study of how scientists view religion and science is to be funded by a $2 million grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, according to Rice University researchers.
The survey will be conducted in six countries and will include approximately 10,000 biologists and physicists. The idea is to question scientists with very different approaches to the relationship between religious and state institutions, different levels of religiosity and different levels of scientific infrastructure in their home countries.
The research will be conducted by Elaine Ecklund, who has already completed a similar project now published in a book, Science Vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think.
Ecklund is director of the Rice Social Sciences Research Institute's Religion and Public Life Program and a Rice Scholar at the Baker Institute for Public Policy. She will collaborate with two other scholars: Kirstin Matthews, a fellow in science and technology policy at the Baker Institute; and Steven Lewis, the C.V. Starr Transnational China Fellow at the Baker Institute.
Besides the US, scientists at differing points in the careers at top universities and research institutes in the United Kingdom, Turkey, Italy, France and China will be surveyed. Researchers plan to conduct follow-up qualitative interviews with 600 of these scientists. The study aims to determine how scientists in different national contexts understand the relationship of science and religion. They also will look at how religion and spirituality influence these scientists' research agendas, daily interactions with students and ethical decisions and discussions.
The project will likely produce a book aimed at a general audience to advance the conversation beyond those in the scientific community, according to Rice University.
Four state legislatures challenge evolution in schools
According to the National Center for Science Education, six legislative bills dealing with evolution have been introduced in 2012, with legislatures in New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Missouri and Indiana considering bills against the teaching of evolution in the public school system.
In Oklahoma, the Senate bill does not push for teaching of intelligent design or promoting a certain belief system, but allows for open discussion of scientific theories and directs teachers to teach certain material and allowing supplemental material to be taught. If the bill were to become law, it would require the Oklahoma State Board of Education to assist teachers and administrators to promote “critical thinking, logical analysis, open and objective discussion of scientific theories including, but not limited to, evolution, the origin of life, global warming, and human cloning.”
Local school districts in Indiana would have been required to teach “various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science,” should a Senate bill there be enacted. In the late 1980s, teaching of creationism in the schools was struck down by the Supreme Court. Numerous newspaper editorials across the state have been highly critical of the proposed bill. Late last month, the bill was passed in the state Senate Education Committee, but in early February failed to garner the support to move farther.
The focus is back on intelligent design being taught alongside evolution in Missouri. The legislator who proposed the House bill has been quoted as saying, “The jury is still out on evolution.” Previous versions of this bill were introduced and died in 2004, according the NCSE.
Two bills were filed early this year in the New Hampshire legislature. One would charge the state board of education to require teachers to instruct pupils that proper scientific inquiry results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis, no matter how firmly it appears to be established. The second bill would require evolution to be taught in the public schools as a theory, including the theorists' political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism.
Evolution, a topic to be tackled in a future issue of Covalence, has divided many in the religious community. In fact, a recent survey done by Michael Dowd of the Clergy Letter Project, shows that an overwhelming majority of clergy (85% of those surveyed) from various faith communities do support biologists' view that evolution is a supported by scientific evidence.
Oxford and Cambridge partnership to focus on "philosophy of cosmology"
A new field of study is being created following a John Templeton Foundation grant for the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, in partnership with US schools, to establish philosophy of cosmology as a new branch of philosophy of physics.
Researchers in physics and philosophy Simon Saunders, Joe Silk and David Wallace at Oxford University and John Barrow and Jeremy Butterfield at Cambridge, are to join researchers at US universities including Columbia University, Yale University and New York University.
Also participating in the Templeton funded study is John Barrow, who co-wrote with Frank Tipler the book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. A major component of the Oxford-Cambridge project, like that of the US cluster led by Barry Loewer at Rutgers University, is to establish a community of scholars able to engage with foundational questions in cosmology. In addition Joe Silk at Oxford, and Barrow at Cambridge, will host a series of lecture courses, to be given by eminent figures in cosmology. These will be filmed and archived on a website dedicated to providing research materials and teaching resources in cosmology.
The three-year project will culminate in an international conference. The goals of the initiative are to isolate and clarify the outstanding conceptual problems in the foundations of cosmology (a discipline that deals with the study of the universe); to seed and stimulate future research; and to define philosophy of cosmology as a new field in its own right.
An example of a problem to be studied is making sense of the anthropic principle, which holds that the laws of nature and the parameters of the universe have taken on values that are consistent for conditions for life as we know it rather than a set of values that would not be consistent with life on Earth. Oxford's Saunders asks, for instance, if we knew the structure and story of the universe from beginning to end, what should we expect to see from our particular corner of it? He says, that the problem isn't restricted to the distribution of stars or galaxies; it could extend to the values of supposedly fundamental constants, such as the cosmological constant — or dark energy, as it is known.
Covalence, February 2012