What's New Friday Oct 3, 2008

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 3 Oct 08   Washington, DC

1.  FAITH:  I THINK IT’S TIME WE HAD ANOTHER TALK.
It was almost a year ago that we discussed different meanings of the 
word "faith" http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN07/wn113007.html .  
Dictionaries list at least two meanings of "faith": total confidence based 
on scientific evidence, and spiritual conviction regardless of the 
evidence.  In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an 
advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy.    
Operationally, the scientific and religious uses of faith are thus exactly 
opposite.  We used the Templeton Prize to illustrate the problem 
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN08/wn071108.html .  Three months ago, 
however, John Templeton died, prompting an editorial in Nature on 
the "Templeton Legacy."  Noting that Templeton had poured more than $1.5 
billion into "research at the interface of science and spirituality," 
Nature concluded that concerns of scientists over conflating science and 
religion are "unwarranted."  Translation:  money is money.  To quote John 
Templeton, "So we are encouraging people to start using the same methods 
of science that have been so productive in other areas, in order to 
discover spiritual realities."  An atom smasher maybe? I have no 
doubt "spiritual realities" will be discovered, as long as the Templeton 
Prize remains larger than the Nobel.  

2.  CREATIONISM:  THE NOBEL IS SMALLER, BUT IT WEIGHS MORE.  
It often seems that creationism is a peculiarly American affliction, but 
in the UK last month it infected, of all places, the Royal Society.  
Michael Reiss, the Royal Society’s director of education, appeared to 
endorse the teaching of creationism - worse, Reiss, a biologist, is also 
an ordained priest in the Church of England.   This outraged Richard 
Roberts, 1993 Nobel prize for gene splicing; he was joined by Harry Kroto, 
1996 Nobel prize in Chemistry, and John Sulston, 2002 Nobel prize in 
Medicine, in demanding that Reiss step down or be fired.  Reiss resigned, 
and there is now discussion of a rules change to make sure clergy cannot 
fill such positions.  That won't rule me out.  For those who of us who are 
neither Nobelists nor billionaires, however, what are our options? 

3.  SUPERSTITION:  BELIEF IN THE AGE OF SCIENCE.
The circulation of Nature is larger than that of What’s New by Bob Park – 
by a few orders of magnitude.  Moreover, I am highly unlikely to be chosen 
for the Templeton Prize.  In desperation, I wrote a book, Superstition: 
Belief in the Age of Science.  Published by Princeton University Press, 
the book explains why superstitious convictions persist long after they 
are shown to be ill-founded.  Like everything else on our planet, the 
explanation involves evolution, and the book discusses the continuing 
evolution of Homo sapiens.  The book is reviewed in the October issue of 
Nature Physics by Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and 
author of Why People Believe Weird Things. 

4.  LHC:  IF IT WASN’T A BLACK HOLE, WHAT SHUT IT DOWN?
A federal judge in Honolulu dismissed the lawsuit seeking to stop 
operation of the giant collider, not because the science fiction writer 
who filed the suit was a few neurons short of a full compliment, but 
because CERN is not in Honolulu.  Meanwhile, the LHC will be officially 
inaugurated on 21 Oct 08.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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