Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion

Denis Alexander

• Ian Barbour (state of the debate between science and religion) When Science Meets Religion, Introduction and Chapter 1, pages 1–38.
• Denis Alexander, Rebuilding the Matrix, Chapter 1, Why Do We Believe What We Believe? Where Do Our Beliefs About Science and Faith Come From?, pages 12–31, Chapter 3, God’s Funeral, Science Triumphant?, pages 46–63, and Chapter 14, Science with a Human Face, pages 458–472.
• Beyond Belief: Science, Faith, and Ethical Challenges, by Denis Alexander is very useful—plus it is a short and relatively easy read.

John Barrow

• Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, How to Build a Solar System, pages 9–18, and The Mighty Atom, pages 133–148.

Russell Stannard

• Russell Stannard, from The God Experiment: Can Science Prove the Existence of God, Chapter 9, How it all began, pages 113–136, and Human origin, pages 137–154.

John Polkinghorne

• John Polkinghorne, from Faith in the Living God, Chapter Faith in God the Creator, pages 9–23.
• Hope as a human phenomenon: Peter Burgers’s A Rumor of Angels.
• American Psychological Society’s Psychological Observer (October, Volume 18, Number 10) It Didn’t Bother Descarte, by Scott Sokol:

  Although my time in seminary might prove an interesting subject for discussion in this forum, I’ve chosen instead to write a bit about my experiences teaching at Hebrew College, a transdenominational graduate institution that trains Jewish educators, rabbis, and cantors. I maintain a bifurcated portfolio at HC, serving as both the dean of the Cantor-Educator Program and the director of the program in Jewish special education. In the latter program, I teach a number of courses similar to those I once taught at Massachusetts General Hospital, including cognitive assessment and psycholinguistics. A major difference, however, is that in my current setting I am free and indeed encouraged to season my lectures with religious and moral teaching. One might think that doing so would detract from scientific rigor or perhaps argue that religion and science are somehow inimical. My own sense is that if it didn’t bother Descartes (himself a devout Catholic), it shouldn’t bother me or my students. Empiricism and faith can happily coexist, and indeed may strengthen one another. Perhaps a couple of examples will be instructive… When I lecture about special education policy, class discussion is not limited to historical or sociological concerns, but moves seamlessly into the theological. I cite God as the prototypical special educator in his relationship with Moses, the greatest of the Jewish prophets. When Moses argues with God that he is not up to the task of leading the children of Israel out of Egypt due to his language impairment, God responds: Who placed the lips upon man or who makes one mute or deaf, seeing or blind. None but myself, God. Now go and I will be with your lips, teaching you how to speak.

Richard Dawkins

• The lead article from the American Psychological Society’s Psychological Observer (October, Volume 18, Number 10), Science and Religion Should Not Be Adversaries, by Alan I. Leshner. APS Fellow and Charter Member Alan Leschner is CEO of AAAS and executive publisher of Science. Here’s an excerpt:

  It is vitally important, though, that we not fall into the trap of allowing anyone to pit science against religious beliefs. For most people, science and religion can and do co-exist quite comfortably. Many scientists are religious, and followers of most religions have no major conflicts with modern scientific thought. It is, as always, the zealots at the extremes who cause most of the problems. Some biblical literalists are threatened by the answers being provided by modern science. And there is a group of “evangelical atheists” who believe science can or has disproved the existence of a god. From my perspective, both are equally wrong-headed.

• Ian Barbour, When Science Meets Religion, pages 93–99

Margaret Boden

• Margaret Boden, The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms. The Introduction, In a Nutshell, pages 1–10.

Ron Cole-Turner (human genetics, stem cell research)

• Lee Silver, Remaking Eden
• Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, by Andrew Newberg, Eugene G. D’Aquili, Vince Rause Short book—very useful for the psychological lectures.
• Ron Cole-Turner, Essays in Human Cloning: Religious Responses, essay entitled At the Beginning, pages 119–130.
• Current state of stem cell debate–Science magazine articles, References 1. W. S. Hwang et al., Science 308, 1777 (2005). 2. W. S. Hwang et al., Science 303, 1669 (2004). 21 December 2005; accepted 21 December 2005
• For a link to the Editorial Expression of Concern on the Science Express Web site, go to: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1124185v1.pdf

Fraser Watts

• Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, by Andrew Md Newberg, Eugene G. D’Aquili, Vince Rause
• Current Directions in Psychological Science, Volume 14, Number 2, Buddhist and Psychological Perspectives on Emotions and Well-Being, by Paul Ekinan, Richard J. Davidson, Matthieu Ricard, and B. Alan Wallace.
• Health Psychology, 2000, Volume 19, Number 3, pages 211–222, Religious Involvement and Mortality: A Meta-Analytic Review, by Michael E. McCullough, William T. Hoyt, David B. Larson, Karold G. Koeng, Carl Thoresen
• The Lancet, Volume 366, Number 9481, July 16: Music, Imagery, Touch, and Prayer as Adjuncts to Interventional Cardiac Care: The Monitoring and Actualisation of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) II Randomised Study. The article is by Mitchell W Krucoff, Suzanne W Crater, Dianne Gallup, James C Blankenship, Michael Cuffe, Mimi Guarneri, Richard A Krieger, Vib R Kshettry, Kenneth Morris, Mehmet Oz, Augusto Pichard, Michael H Sketch Jr, Harold G Koenig, Daniel Mark, and Kerry L Lee.

  Here’s how the article begins:

  In 2001, the US National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine defined frontier medicine as those therapies for which there is no plausible biomedical explanation. Examples cited included bioelectromagnetic therapy, biofield and energy healing, homoeopathy, and therapeutic prayer or spiritual healing. Although these therapies are used extensively by the general population, few high-quality data are available to elucidate the mechanisms underlying these approaches or to prove their safety or effectiveness. Epidemiological findings clearly suggest that mood, hostility, depression, and spiritual affiliation are all associated with cardiovascular outcomes, but the effect of frontier therapies on disease natural histories remains undefined.

  We examined the effect of these therapies on patients with coronary-artery disease. Patients undergoing cardiac catheterisation with a view to percutaneous coronary intervention are informed about risks, including death, and are awake during the procedure. With predictable periods of distress, noetic therapies might be useful to induce vasodilation, to slow the heart rate, to calm the mind, or to promote healing through undefined mechanisms. Noetic interventions, defined as therapies for which the method of administration does not use a tangible drug or medical device were explored in the MANTRA I pilot study, in which there was a measurable reduction in preprocedure distress8 that might affect clinical outcomes. Limitations of the pilot study included limited power, enrollment of exclusively male patients at a single centre, and the inability to assess combinations of several noetic modalities. The MANTRA II study was designed to address these limitations.

  According to the article,

  371 patients were assigned prayer and 377 no prayer; 374 were assigned MIT therapy and 374 no MIT therapy. The factorial distribution was: standard care only, 192; prayer only, 182; MIT therapy only, 185; and both prayer and MIT therapy, 189. No significant difference was found for the primary composite endpoint in any treatment comparison. Mortality at 6 months was lower with MIT therapy than with no MIT therapy (hazard ratio 0·35 (95% CI 0·150·82, p=0·016)…

  Neither masked prayer nor MIT therapy significantly improved clinical outcome after elective catheterisation or percutaneous coronary intervention.

  Here’s an excerpt from the discussion section:

  In MANTRA II, we studied two noetic strategies in patients undergoing coronary revascularisation: an unmasked bedside combination of music, imagery, and touch, and a double-masked, off-site array of combined congregational prayers. Neither therapy alone or combined showed any measurable treatment effect on the primary composite endpoint of major adverse cardiovascular events at the index hospital, readmission, and 6-month death or readmission.

Kevin Dutton

• American Psychological Society’s Psychological Observer, October, Volume 18, Number 10, Worse than Creationism: Evolution, Neuroscience, and the Responsibility of Psychologists, by Paul Bloom:

  There are two important cases where common sense leads to popular beliefs that scientists tell us are demonstrably false. The first concerns the origins of species. A poll conducted in July found that 42 percent of the respondents believe that living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. Many of the rest said that evolution occurred, but was guided by a supreme being. Only 26 percent claimed to believe in natural selection. My own sense is that such a poll actually overestimates scientific literacy. Many people who say that they believe in natural selection do so only because this is what educated people are supposed to say. If pressed, they often have no idea what the theory actually is, frequently confusing it with the notion that some mysterious force drives species to be increasingly complex and better adapted to their environments… A dualist world-view, for example, makes it sensible to draw sharp lines with regard to abortion and animal rights, differentiating creatures on the basis of whether or not they have souls. It also makes possible a distinction between actions caused by a person and those caused by a brain, leading to the excuse we can call—to use Michael Gazzaniga’s nice phrase—My brain made me do it. The problem is that dualism is mistaken. Science tells us that the brain is the source of mental life.

  While there is no accepted theory as to how a physical thing can give rise to conscious experience (and some scholars are skeptical that we will ever have such a theory) it is clear that Cartesian dualism is wrong, as wrong as creationism. Psychologists have not been shy about reporting theories and results to the general public, but we have been mostly silent about this foundational discovery about mental life. Our reticence is understandable. The scientific conception of the mind will not be received cheerfully; dualism is common sense, it is intimately linked to religion, and it is the foundation of the very comforting belief that there is an afterlife. But we should talk about it anyway, in part for intellectual reasons and in part because it matters for law and policy—debates over issues such as abortion and legal responsibility should be informed by what scientists know about the mind. Such issues are too important to leave entirely in the hands of lawyers, politicians, and theologians.