Two pieces on Christianity Today’s website this week are worthy of comment. The first, “Despair Not,” reminds us that “there is something worse than misery and death.” The author Stephen L. Carter interacts with C.S. Lewis’ famous book, The Screwtape Letters, to show that “the terrible tragedies that befall the world work to Satan’s benefit only if we despair. Suffering, as Screwtape reminds his nephew, often strengthens faith. Better to keep people alive, he says, long enough for faith to be worn away. The death of a believer is the last thing the Devil wants.”

Read more on Death and Despair, Life and Hope…

Hunter Baker, blogging at his new home on the American Spectator Blog (recently added to our blogroll), responds to a post by James G. Poulos, which emphasizes President Bush’s “proposed emphasis on math and science education, to the patent detriment of the humanities.”

Read more on Federal Funding for the Humanities…

My piece on the debate over chimera research and the relevance of your worldview to the debate appears today at BreakPoint, “A Monster Created in Man’s Image.”

Drawing on the work of C.S. Lewis, and among the questions and conclusions included, I write, “Chimera research may indeed have some potential benefits, but we cannot ignore the question of potential costs. What toll does such research take on the dignity of human beings? Must we destroy the human person in order to save it? As a society, we need to question whether our technological reach has exceeded our moral grasp.”

Read more on Debating the Ethics of Chimeras…

The clash between scientists and moralists that Jordan highlights below is displayed also in reaction to the recent comments by Cardinal Alfonso Trujillo of the Pontifical Council for the Family concerning excommunication of those involved in embryonic stem cell research.

Read more on Vatican and Stem Cells…

Here’s a link to the introduction to Frederick Crews’ new book, Follies of the Wise, which includes the following statement:

Having made a large intellectual misstep in younger days, I am aware that rationality isn’t an endowment but an achievement that can come undone at any moment. And that is just why it is prudent, in my opinion, to distrust sacrosanct authorities, whether academic or psychiatric or ecclesiastic, and to put one’s faith instead in objective procedures that can place a check on our never sated appetite for self-deception.

This follows his description of the purpose of his book, to lay out the two sides in an “intellectual clash”:

Read more on Follies of the Wise…

This Live Science article, “How Children Learn About God and Science,” by Robert Roy Britt, summarizes a new survey of scientific studies about the way children learn. It seems that an interesting conclusion has surfaced from these studies: “Among things they can’t see, from germs to God, children seem to be more confident in the information they get about invisible scientific objects than about things in the spiritual realm.”

Read more on Doubt and Certainty about Spiritual Realities…

Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic probably differs with us Acton folks on a lot of issues. But his review of Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell in the New York Times deserves some praise from all those who recognize metaphysical reality. Dennett’s book is simply another reductionist account of the world from an ostensibly “hard thinking” scientist, but Wieseltier’s article goes beyond a critique of the book. It is, more broadly, an eloquent debunking of materialism and defense of religion—not of any particular religion or of all expressions of religion, to be sure, but of a religious sensibility.

Read more on Putting the Smackdown on Materialism…

George H. Taylor, the State Climatologist for Oregon, writes at TCS Daily, “A Consensus About Consensus.” The article is worth reading. It shows that scientific consensus is often overrated, both in terms of its existence and in terms of its relevance.

Read more on Concerns about Consensus…

A few others have addressed this issue in previous posts, but I wanted to jump in with my two cents.

Yesterday’s New York Times notes that a group of evangelical leaders have entered the debate over climate change:

Read more on ‘With God’s help, we can stop global warming’…

One aspect of the evangelical involvement in debates over global warming and climate change that has intriqued me has been what I deem to be a rather large blind spot about the relation of religious conservatives to science.

Read more on A Love/Hate Relationship with Science…