In this issue
Stem Cell Research Divides Christians in United States
Are God and the Big Bang still at odds?
Opposites find some middle ground in new book

Stem cell research divides Christians in United States
There is little agreement in churches when it comes to stem cell research and U.S. scientists now say they are uneasy about moving forward as new laws on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research are challenged.

On Capitol Hill, Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker told fellow senators that the issue of stem cell research was a matter of conscience for him as “millions of Americans” are deeply troubled by the idea that their taxpayer dollars may be used to destroy another human life when there are other proven techniques that are available.

A federal judge in August ordered the U.S. government to temporarily stop paying for research while a lawsuit moved forward. Filed by two researchers who opposed embryonic stem cell research on religious and ethical grounds, the lawsuit alleges that it is against the law for the U.S. National Institutes of Health to fund the research. The legal action and confusion follow President Obama’s lifting of the ban on embryonic stem cell research more than a year ago.

Dr. Francis Collins, National Institutes of Health director, told Congress that as a person of faith he believed that the use of human embryos destined to be thrown away by fertility clinics was an ethical choice. Dr. Collins has a longstanding interest in the interface between science and faith, and has written about this in The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press, 2006), which spent many weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. He is the author of a new book on personalized medicine, The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine (HarperCollins, 2010).

As some scientists are cautiously stopping research until all the legal issues are settled, the Catholic Church maintains its position that because such research involves the destruction of human embryos it is related to abortion, euthanasia and other attacks on innocent life.

Meanwhile in a new book by scholars affiliated with the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Christians have plenty of reasons to support stem cell research. Sacred Cells?: Why Christians Should Support Stem Cell Research was released in paperback last month and is a collaborative effort of Ted Peters of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary; Gaymon Bennett of Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and Karen Lebacqz of the Pacific School of Religion.

The book documents the ethical frameworks used in approaching the stem cell debate in addition to providing a brief overview of the science behind it. It also outlines the possibilities that embryonic stem cell experimentation offers. As the stem cell research debate begins anew after its beginnings more than 10 years ago, a fresh look at this issue from both the ethical and the scientific perspective is not a bad idea.

Another public discussion of the issue will be taking place at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, on October 28 as part of a series of public talks on biomedical ethics sponsored by the Albertus Magnus Society. Irina Calin-Jageman, assistant professor of biology at Dominican, will focus on questions regarding the origin of stem cells, the applications for stem cell therapy and the ethical implications of stem cell harvesting.

Are God and the Big Bang still at odds?
As Stephen Hawking recently began promoting his new book, his assertion that the universe doesn’t need a God or gods in its formation has brought the religion and science topic once again to foreground of theologians and scientists minds.

Hawking’s latest book “The Grand Design” was at one point the No. 1 book on Amazon and has received much hype via Twitter. According the New York Times review of the book, the book seeks to answer the question of “How did the universe begin?” and led Hawking to say the universe’s creation doesn’t “require the intervention of some supernatural being or god.” The reviewer makes the apt point that books on religious conflict are easier to argue about than those that parse the finer points of quantum physics.

In an interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer earlier this year, the legendary physicist Stephen Hawking concluded that science will win out against religion because “it works.”

Hawking told Sawyer, “What could define God [is thinking of God] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God.... When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible."

Folks approaching creation’s origins from a religious perspective would differ with Hawking’s assertions.

For example, The Clergy Letter project, which began as a letter writing campaign to teach evolution in one Wisconsin school district, would disagree with such cut and dry assumptions. The Christian Clergy version of this letter has received more than 12,000 signatures so far and highlights where a growing majority of Christians see as the relationship between faith and science headed.

The letter’s final line says it all: “We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.”

Opposites find some middle ground in new book
A new book due to be released in November promises to serve a tricky sub-section of America these days – the middle. Steve Paulson, who is executive director of Wisconsin Public Radio’s nationally syndicated program “To the Best of Our Knowledge,” has put together a book of 21 interviews of personalities ranging from the left and right of the religion and science spectrum.

Atoms and Eden: Conversations on Religion and Science (Oxford University Press) includes interviews of public intellectuals that are seldom found in one book. Paulson writes about Richard Dawkins, Karen Armstrong, E.O. Wilson, Sam Harris, Elaine Pagels, Francis Collins, Daniel Dennett, Jane Goodall, Paul Davies and Steven Weinberg. The interviewees are Christian, Buddhist, Jewish and Muslim as well as agnostic and atheist groups that are represented. According to publishers, the book also reaches across a variety of scientific disciplines including evolutionary biology, quantum physics, cosmology and neuroscience.

The majority of the interviews originally appeared on Salon.com and Paulson plans to present a companion series to the book on National Public Radio this fall. The book made its public debut at the Wisconsin Book Festival in Madison in early October.