Science

Via Newsvine, from an article of the same title by Mike Pflanz in the Telegraph:

Powerful evangelical churches are pressing Kenya's national museum to sideline its world-famous collection of hominid bones pointing to man's evolution from ape to human. Leaders of the country's six-million-strong Pentecostal congregation want Dr Richard Leakey's ground-breaking finds relegated to a back room instead of being given their usual prime billing... "The Christian community here is very uncomfortable that Leakey and his group want their theories presented as fact," said Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, the head of Christ is the Answer Ministries, the largest Pentecostal church in Kenya. "Our doctrine is not that we evolved from apes, and we have grave concerns that the museum wants to enhance the prominence of something presented as fact which is just one theory."

From an article of the same title by Stephanie Simon in the LA Times:

Dr. Francis Collins has mapped the human genome and embraced Christ. He sees no conflict, but there are skeptics on both sides... A scientist and a believer. A born-again Christian and director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, a federal project with 550 employees, a $480 million annual budget and a mandate to explore every twist of the DNA that makes us who we are. The synthesis has brought Collins much joy and intellectual satisfaction. But he's frustrated, too, that he's perceived as such an oddity. In his new book, "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief," Collins expresses his dismay at what he calls "the chasm between science and faith." Evolution versus intelligent design. Darwin versus God. Embryonic stem-cell research versus the sanctity of human life. "We act as though there's a battle going on," Collins said. "An irreconcilable conflict." He feels no such conflict. He believes in evolution and in the resurrection. He wears a silver ring with a raised cross and works at a dining-room table painted with the double-helix of DNA... He urges his fellow scientists to give up the arrogant assumption that the only questions worth asking are those science can answer. He entreats his fellow believers to recognize it's not blasphemous to learn about the world... Polls routinely show that about half of all Americans believe God created man, fully formed, within the last 10,000 years, as the Bible recounts. The vast majority of scientists find that ludicrous, but their account of man evolving from primordial muck does not resonate broadly, especially with Christians who believe in a personal God, deeply concerned about each human life... Some Christians accuse Collins of denying the foundation of faith when he calls the Biblical creation account an allegory. "Not accepting the history in Genesis undermines the entire gospel," said Ken Ham, president of a ministry called Answers in Genesis, which promotes creationism. "The Bible says from dust we come and to dust we return. We don't return to an ape-man when we die." From the other camp, some scientists ridicule Collins' effort to find a place for God in the scientific framework. "I could just as well say that there are 70 pink elephants revolving around the Earth," said Herbert A. Hauptman, a Nobel laureate in chemistry. Science and faith "are simply incompatible," he added. "There's no getting around it."... Collins considers evolution irrefutable; he has no doubt that all life emerged from a common ancestor over millions of years. But he began to ask himself whether God could have set this amazing process in motion: Maybe it all appears random from Earth - as though man's existence is due to an improbable series of lucky breaks - but from God's perspective, perhaps evolution is a logical, even elegant, way to populate the planet. Maybe God intended mutations in DNA over the millennia to lead to the emergence of Homo sapiens. Once man arrived, maybe God set him apart from the other creatures by endowing him with knowledge of right and wrong, a sense of altruism and a yearning for spiritual nourishment. Collins knew he could never prove any of these ideas, but that no longer troubled him the way it once had. Science could reel back time 14 billion years to postulate a Big Bang that created the universe. But it could not explain what came before that singular moment - or how the energy that fueled the cosmic explosion came to be. Science clearly had limits. So it seemed unfair to Collins to reject the divine simply because God's existence could not be proved. That argument frustrates Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg. Yes, he said, science does have limits. But attributing the unknown to God doesn't advance human knowledge or serve a useful purpose, except to give believers a "warm, fuzzy, reassuring feeling."... Polls have found that 40% of scientists believe, as Collins does, in a God who actively communicates with man. Among elite biologists, however, the figure is much lower, about 5%... Creationists have e-mailed denunciations, labeling him a false prophet. Advocates of intelligent design call him illogical for holding that God designed the universe and perhaps even the first molecules of DNA, but not complex structures like the human eye (which Collins says must have come about through evolution, though biologists haven't yet figured out exactly how that's possible). The harsh words have stung - and eaten up his time; he wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to try to answer every e-mail after his morning ritual of reading the Bible and the Washington Post. Still, Collins said he's encouraged to be part of a broader movement to explore harmonies between science and faith.

From an article in the LA Times by Karen Kaplan:

Scientists have created human embryonic stem cells using a technique that does not require the destruction of embryos - a development that could break the political roadblock over the highly touted but controversial research. The method, described today in the journal Nature, involves taking a normal 3-day-old embryo with eight to 10 cells and removing a single cell, which is then biochemically coaxed into producing embryonic stem cells. The original embryo, despite missing one cell, is unharmed, thus avoiding concerns about destroying life. Fertility clinics have been removing cells from embryos created in vitro since 1990 to screen them for genetic diseases and chromosomal abnormalities. Doctors estimate at least 2,500 children alive today had a cell or two removed when they were days-old embryos. The Bush administration, which has restricted federal support for human embryonic stem cell research to prevent taxpayers from funding the destruction of embryos, said it was too soon to say whether the new approach could solve the issue's ethical dilemma.

There are similar articles in the NY TImes and The Washington Post.

In response to a comment about global warming, I looked up the data for CO2 emissions from the US and China over the last 25 years and made the plots below. The data are from the Energy Information Administration's "Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government" on the web here. The data represent emissions of CO2 from the consumption and flaring of fossil fuels. The first plot shows that since 1980, the U.S. has released 2 times as much carbon dioxide as China has.

The second shows that the contrast is even greater per capita (per person): each year since 1980 the U.S. has released between 4 and 10 times as much CO2 per person as China.

The third plot shows that there is reason to be cocerned about China. Though in recent years the U.S. has continued to emit more CO2 than China, China's emissions are accelerating drastically and will eclipse ours.

When we were in NYC, we went to see Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and found it to be generally convincing and disturbing. Andrew Sullivan pretty much thought the same but had some criticism for Gore that I think was well-deserved:

I finally saw the Gore movie yesterday. It's thoroughly persuasive about the reality of global warming and the contribution of carbon dioxide emissions to it. I'd recommend it strongly to anyone. Its blindspots were, however, obvious. No mention is made anywhere of the fact that Al Gore was a very powerful vice-president for eight years in a critical period for this issue. His fulminations against others' indifference would have been a little more credible if he'd at least addressed and explained his own failure to do anything when he was able to. It's also striking that Gore could have used the movie to argue for a serious increase in the gas tax - and he didn't. The movie's final recommendations - recycle! write your congressman! ride a bike! reset your thermostat! - were truly lame after the alarm of the rest of the movie. I think a serious gas tax and a tough increase in mandatory fuel economy standards in the U.S. are essential to prompting the technological breakthroughs that alone can ameliorate this. And yet Gore balked. Just like he did when he was in power.

An MIT professor's more substantial criticism is here. In the end, I would acknowledge that much more has to be learned before what is commonly believed by scientists about humanity's role in global warming can be proven. However, it's also clear that most scientists believe, despite the lack of complete proof, that humans are affecting our environment for the worse, and I tend to believe that it's better to be safe than sorry in cases like this.