John Templeton dies aged 95

John Templeton, founder of the annual Templeton Prize, died yesterday aged 95. A well-known businessman and philanthropist, in 1987 he founded the John Templeton Foundation to provide funding for those researching the Universe's "big questions".

The Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities has been awarded every year since 1972 and operates on the premise that there is no inherent conflict between science and religion, going as it does to the person who best exemplifies "trying various ways for discoveries and breakthroughs to expand human perceptions of divinity and to help in the acceleration of divine creativity." The prize money, which currently stands at £795,000, is regularly adjusted to ensure it remains higher than the amounts awarded for Nobel Prizes.

In his attempt to bring religion and science together, Templeton attracted much criticism, most notably from Richard Dawkins who, in The God Delusion, describes his prize as "a very large sum of money given ... usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion".

Brain in Brighton

Susan Greenfield is a neuroscientist, Vice president of the rationalist Association (that's us) and a Baroness no less. She has a new book out called ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century which continues her explorations into the brain and the latest scientific thinking about it. She will be discussing the book at the Brighton Festival this Sunday, in a session chaired by our own Laurie Taylor. More details here. Read Bill Thompson's review of ID from the latest issue of New Humanist.

Darwin's private papers now freely available online

For anyone interested in Charles Darwin (which I'm assuming is a lot of you), the Darwin Online project have just now made his entire private papers (around 20,000 items) freely available on the internet.

I spoke to the project director John van Wyhe earlier this week, who told me he thinks the availability of this archive means "we might be on the verge of a new revolution in the study and appreciation of the work of Charles Darwin." Read my interview to find out what's in the archive (letters, original notes, experiments, news clippings, photos, Emma Darwin's recipe book, and so much more) and discover links to some of the best bits.

Charlie Brooker on the pseudoscience infiltrating our schools

Not for the first time on this blog, I'd like to salute Charlie Brooker, who in this week's instalment of his Guardian column trains his sights on Brain Gym – a series of exercises said to make children perform better at school, but which are widely regarded by experts as being based on little other than pseudoscience (it features an exercise called the "energy yawn", for example).

Watching a feature on Newsnight, Brooker was shocked to learn that Brain Gym ("educational kinesiology") is being widely used in British schools, having been endorsed by the government, despite the fact that it's been discredited by the British Neuroscience Association, the Physiological Society and the charity Sense About Science.

If you haven't heard about Brain Gym before it's worth reading Brooker's column just for that, but what we really love is his ability to eloquently sum up the concerns of rationalists regarding the prevalence of nonsense in modern society:

"Because we, the adults, don't just gleefully pull the wool over our own eyes - we knit permanent blindfolds. We've decided we hate facts. Hate, hate, hate them. Everywhere you look, we're down on our knees, gleefully lapping up neckful after neckful of steaming, cloddish bullshit in all its forms. From crackpot conspiracy theories to fairytale nutritional advice, from alternative medicine to energy yawns - we just can't get enough of that musky, mudlike taste. Brain Gym is just one small tile in an immense and frightening mosaic of fantasy."

Aaronovitch and Toynbee on religion and the Embryology Bill

The big news from our perspective over the Easter weekend has been the repeated calls from pulpits across the land to give MPs a free vote on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

We're becoming all too used to these attacks on science from religious leaders, who twist the facts and use ridiculous hyperbole to try and convince their congregations that cutting-edge scientific research that could eventually save millions of lives is somehow morally abhorrent. Take Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien, for example, who describes research involving human-animal hybrid embryos as "monstrous", "grotesque", "hideous" and of "Frankenstein proportions".

I can find no better way to dismiss this than to quote Polly Toynbee in today's Guardian:

"Whatever the religious claims, the human fertilisation and embryology bill is not in some special moral category of its own. It allows scientists to use the outer empty shell of animal eggs, for lack of spare human eggs, in which to implant purely human DNA for 14 days, to derive stem cell lines which model a particular disease to be studied in the lab. The UK pioneers stem-cell research into Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, motor neurone disease and muscular dystrophy, as well as cancer, diabetes, strokes and infertility. Contrary to the cardinals' wilfully ignorant campaign of misinformation, no animal hybrid, no monstrous Island of Doctor Moreau chimeras loom. Forget spurious "thin end of the wedge" arguments: no further step can be taken without another act of parliament."

Not that Easter Sunday congregations were informed of any of this. Anyone listening to the likes of O'Brien who didn't have any other knowledge of embryology might have come away thinking the law could lead to the creation of a race of half-human/half-cow devil-worshipping entities ready to bring about the destruction of God's people. According to O'Brien, the idea that embryo research might lead to the curing of diseases is merely an "excuse" used by scientists to ensure they get the right to pursue their sinister activities. And it wasn't just Catholics getting in on the act. The Anglican Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright, managed these words of wisdom from his pulpit: "Gender-bending was so last century; we now do species bending".

It's this sensationalist, misleading and distasteful tone that has irked David Aaronovitch, who in today's Times presents a fantastic case for why we must stand up to religious attempts to interfere in science and government legislation:

"Like most of the Godless (or Godfree), I have no desire to proselytise for atheism or to persuade people out of religions that may offer them comfort and companionship. But there is a growing shrillness and unpleasantness - yes, an unscrupulousness - about the way that some of the top faithful increasingly choose to conduct their arguments. This needs to be combated because, for all their talk of conscience, what Dr Wright and Cardinal O'Brien really seem to want is to tell the rest of us how to live."

Here's hoping the Government stands firm, rejects calls for a free vote and ensures the Embryology Bill passes because, as Toynbee points out "trying to make things better in the human here and now trumps imposing needless suffering on the sick for perverse doctrinal reasons."

Update: Well, scratch what I said above. Gordon Brown has just announced that he will allow Labour MPs a free vote on "controversial" elements of the bill. Which means that pressure from the Catholic Church has led to a situation where a piece of legislation vital to medical research might be rejected by a 21st century British parliament. We can only hope the religious lobby isn't strong enough to make this happen, but if you read Toynbee's Guardian piece, we can't be too sure of that. I suppose we can look forward to more political pronouncements in Sunday sermons, as religious leaders will clearly have realised they're on to something.

Dawkins goes undercover at screening of Expelled

This is fantastic. Writing on his blog Pharyngula, the American biologist and outspoken atheist PZ Myers reports how he was prevented from entering a Minneapolis screening of Creationist propaganda documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. He was queueing up for what sounds like some kind of press screening when he was instructed by a security guard that one of the film's producers had let it be known that he must not be allowed into the film, and must leave the premises at once.

But the authorities didn't notice that PZ's wife and his guest were still in the queue, and they proceeded unhindered into the cinema. And this wasn't any ordinary guest. It was none other than Professor Richard Dawkins, going undercover to watch the very documentary he was last year misled into appearing in.

This story has grown pretty big on the internet over the Easter weekend, even making it into the NY Times. There's a huge list of web links here for anyone who wants to read more.

It's a great story on so many levels, with the irony of PZ being expelled from Expelled probably leading the field. After the screening Dawkins and PZ made a video discussing the incident:

Tripping on Mount Sinai

New research by an Israeli academic suggests Moses and the Israelites may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant when they received the Ten Commandments. Benny Shanon of Jerusalem's Hebrew University says two plants in the Sinai desert have similar properties to plants used by Amazonian tribes to create the hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca.

In the new issue of British philosophy journal Time and Mind, Shannon, who is a professor of cogntive psychology, writes "The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an altered state of awareness. In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings."

Explaining his findings on Israeli radio, Shannon sought to justify his findings: "As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either. Or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics."

If it's all the same to you Professor Shannon, we think we'll stick with the myth explanation.

Farewell David Attenborough (sort of...)

Tonight the last instalment of David Attenborough's wonderful series Life in Cold Blood is broadcast on BBC1.

In some respects it's a farewell, as the great man will no longer be making programmes on location. However, it's not all doom and gloom as he will still be making documentaries (including an upcoming series on Darwin, which is clearly something to look forward to). He just wont be travelling the world to film them, which is a bit of shame given that it's been suggested that Attenborough is the most well-travelled individual in human history.

Anyway, this seemed like a good opportunity to remind you all to read Laurie Taylor's interview with Attenborough from our January/February issue...

Florida legislators prepare to rein in teaching of evolution

Three leading Florida state legislators are preparing to challenge new state science education standards which will make the teaching of evolution compulsory for the first time in Florida's history.

The standards, set to be approved by Florida's Board of Education on 19 February, will ensure all middle and high school students are taught about evolution and natural selection in science classes. Three Republican legislators are unhappy with these guidelines, as they believe evolution should be explicitly referred to as a "theory" and not fact. One of the three, state Senator Stephen Wise, believes creationism should be taught alongside evolution. State Representative Marti Coley, who believes in intelligent design, told the Miami Herald that evolution "is technically a theory. Let's present it for what it is."

The three, who also include future state House Speaker Dean Cannon, have said they will be willing to use the powers of the state Legislature, which can override the Board of Education, to ensure the word "theory" is inserted into the standards.

The standards have been exercising creationists ever since they were proposed last October. One Florida Department of Education employee even sent round an email calling on fellow Christians to oppose the guidelines, as they would be "a COMPLETE contradiction of what we Teach them at home."

This religious challenge to science education has alarmed the man who carried out the review of Florida's standards. Professor Joseph Travis, dean of Florida State University's Arts and Sciences College, told the Herald: "If you use the word theory to imply that scientists think evolution is just a hypothesis and is not real, that gives an incorrect impression."

Texas may sanction creationism "degree"

Buried in the middle of a story about attendances at Kentucky's Creation Museum is something even more shocking – the state of Texas may be about to approve an online master's degree in science education provided by the Texas-based Institute for Creation Research. The "degree", which has already been given preliminary approval by a Texas state advisory group, is now awaiting the final go-ahead from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Needless to say, bona fide scientists are unimpressed with this development. Alfred Gilman, dean of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center told the Dallas Morning News: "The latest round of so-called creation science truly scares me and all of my colleagues here at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Approval of this sort of nonsense as science in Texas will have a significant negative impact on our ability to attract the best minds to the state. How can Texas simultaneously launch a war on cancer and approve educational platforms that submit that the universe is 10,000 years old?"

As for museum attendances, well, who ever said Americans weren't interested in science? According to the Baptist Press, in its first eight months Kentucky's creation museum has surpassed all expectations, drawing in 300,000 visitors eager to be taught how the Earth is just thousands of years old and how dinosaurs once roamed the land alongside men.

Apparently all the media attention the "museum" received – hardly any of it complimentary – helped raise its profile and attract thousands more visitors than expected. Based on this, one could certainly present a case for just ignoring these people in future in order to avoid giving them and their nonsensical ideas any free publicity. However, as far as we're concerned we find them far too amusing to stop.

The Pope's at it again...

Benedict XVI seems to be on a mission to rile scientists at the moment, at least if his latest comments on the "seductive" powers of science are anything to go by.

Addressing a meeting of academics sponsored by the Paris Academy of Sciences and Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope warned that “in an age when scientific developments attract and seduce with the possibilities they offer, it's more important than ever to educate our contemporaries' consciences so that science does not become the criteria for goodness.”

He added that research is required "into anthropology, philosophy and theology" in order to discover “man's own mystery, because no science can say who man is, where he comes from or where he is going”.

Apparently this is because "man is not the fruit of chance or a bundle of convergences, determinisms or physical and chemical reactions."

Perhaps someone ought to have a quiet word with him?

Hitchens debates Intelligent Design at Stanford University

Rationalist heavyweight Christopher Hitchens took on prominent Intelligent Design proponent Jay Richards in a debate at Stanford University on Sunday. It was hardly a fair contest pitching the Hitch against Richards, whose links with the ridiculous Discovery Institute preclude him from being taken seriously by pretty much anyone, and if reports are anything to go by it seems the atheist champion didn't take long to floor the arguments in favour of ID.

Informed by chair Ben Stein, who narrates the upcoming ID "documentary" Expelled, that each speaker would have 14 minutes for opening remarks, Hitchens remarked "I can't imagine it'll take me 14 minutes to demolish intelligent design, as I refuse to call it."

Round one to the Hitch. And after Richards had reeled off the regular "scientific" arguments for design, our man decided to weigh in with a killer question:

Hitchens: “Do you believe Jesus Christ was born of a virgin? Do you believe he was resurrected from the dead?”

Richards: "Yes"

Hitchens: “I rest my case. This is an honest guy, who has just made it very clear [that] science has nothing to do with his world view.”

Nice. Let's hope a video of this appears on YouTube before long – I can assure you we'll post it on here when it does.

Islam's scientific golden age

Today's Daily Telegraph has a nice piece by Jim Al-Khalili on the forgotten scientific geniuses from the early centuries of Islam. It looks at how, while Christian Europe languished in what some historians view as the "Dark Ages", the Islamic world, with Baghdad at its centre, became the driving force behind advances in philosophy, astronomy, medicine and mathematics.

One figure mentioned is abu Uthman al-Jahith who, between 781-869AD may have preceded Darwin in speculating that environment influences the development of species. In his Book of Animals al-Jahith wrote: "Animals engage in a struggle for existence; for resources, to avoid being eaten and to breed. Environmental factors influence organisms to develop new characteristics to ensure survival, thus transforming into new species. Animals that survive to breed can pass on their successful characteristics to offspring."

The article tells how this period of Islamic scientific discovery began around 813 when the caliph of Baghdad, al-Ma'mun was instructed by Aristiotle, in a dream, to "seek knowledge and enlightenment", and offers possible explanations for why this golden age drew to a close from the 13th century onwards.

This reminds me of an article we had this time last year by Abdelwahab Meddeb, who wondered why the openness and intellectual dynamism of the early years of Islam did not end up influencing the politics and culture of the Islamic world in the same way the Enlightenment did centuries later in Europe.

Galileo and the popes

The Guardian's Science Podcast has started a new feature: Thought from the Pod will be a regular slot based on the Thought for the Day model only with reason in place of the spurious religious wittering. The first one is on this week's, and features New Humanist editor Caspar Melville talking about what the current Pope's attitude to Galileo tells us about the strained relationship between religion and science.

Creationists to start an "academic" journal

Guardian science correspondent James Randerson reports on his blog how the creationist nutters at Answers in Genesis have set up the Answers Research Journal, "a professional peer-reviewed technical journal for the publication of interdisciplinary scientific and other relevant research from the perspective of the recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework."

They've clearly identified a gap in the market, as there can't be many other academic journals providing "scientists and students the results of cutting-edge research that demonstrates the validity of the young-earth model, the global Flood, the non-evolutionary origin of 'created kinds', and other evidences that are consistent with the biblical account of origins."

If you're wondering what's in store for readers of the Answers Research Journal, James has picked his favourite piece of "research" from the inaugural issue, which details the origins of HIV: "Since the corruption of creation, the corrupted retrovirus, HIV, and various leukemia viruses turn off the entire immune system, leaving the body open to devastating infections. These examples may provide clues to the origin of viruses and how some may have been created during Creation Week by design and how some have been corrupted as a result of the Fall."

Glad they've cleared that up.

Italian scientists protest against visit from Pope

Academics at a leading Italian university are protesting against a planned visit from the Pope due to his views on the 1633 trial of Galileo for heresy. The great astronomer was convicted and made to renounce his acceptance of the Copernican system, that is, the outrageous view that the Earth orbits the Sun.

In 1990 Pope Benedict, or Cardinal Ratzinger as he was then known, declared that "At the time of Galileo the Church remained much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself. The process against Galileo was reasonable and just."

Tutors and students at Rome's Sapienza University are refusing to forgive the Pontiff for these words, with 61 scientists signing a letter to the university rector stating that Thursday's planned Papal visit is "incongruous" and that his views on Galileo "offend and humiliate us".

The protestors are also unhappy that the visit, during which the Pope will deliver a speech to open the university's academic year, would undermine "the secular nature of science" and the institution's acceptance "students of every belief and ideology".

In addition to the scientists' letter, students have organised four days of protest against the visit, which will include hosting an "anti-clerical meal of bread, pork and wine" and greeting Benedict with loud pop music and banners reading "Knowledge needs neither fathers nor priests".

This isn't the first time the Pope has clashed with academics. Just last week he ordered the removal of an astronomical observatory from his summer residence in order to make more room for receiving diplomats, and in 2006 he sacked the Vatican's chief astronomer, George Coyne, after he criticised the Pope's support for Intelligent Design.

Podcasting Darwin

This is me on the Guardian Science Podcast talking about the cover story of the current issue - Dinner With Darwin. Have a listen. There's also interesting stuff about probability, GM Food and an innovative website which nags you into being more green (with the wonderful tagline "changing the world one lazy-assed mouse click at a time"). Presented by the Guardian science team Alok Jha and James Randerson, nice chaps both. Hopefully more collaboration to come.

Religion-free morality

Time magazine's latest cover story tackles the question of what makes humans moral – and refreshingly there's not a religious explanation in sight. The piece, by Time senior writer Jeffrey Kluger, looks for answers in biology, anthropology and sociology to the question of why humans adhere to, or in many cases break, moral codes.

The only appearance from religion is in reference to the practice of shunning in order to enforce group morals: "Religious believers as diverse as Roman Catholics, Mennonites and Jehovah's Witnesses have practiced their own forms of shunning—though the banishments may go by names like excommunication or disfellowshipping".

It's an excellent article that doesn't even bother wasting time on the notion that we may have gained our morality from supernatural sources, or for that matter the idea that the only reason humans have acted morally throughout history is because they were told to do so by priests, Popes, clerics, holy books and so on.

Of course, it's not an article that would please religious readers. The GetReligion blog (slogan: "The press... just doesn't get religion") can't believe that a reputable publication like Time would cover morality without resorting to religious explanations: "To think that science ever could explain the why speaks of a curious certainty that science can solve life’s deepest mysteries through chemistry and brain waves and sociobiology. To publish an article that not only makes such triumphalist claims for science, but fails even to acknowledge millennia of religious thinking about these mysteries, is one of the most ridiculous stunts in journalism this year".

To the power of ten

I remember seeing this on TV when I was a kid and it blew my mind, still does. What I didn't know then was that it was made by Charles and Ray Eames, the famous designers. So trippy. So seventies. So cool, man.

The 'mental' in fundamentalism

A fascinating piece in Tikkun magazine argues that the inability to do "divergent" thinking - the kind of non-linear creative thinking which, in Salman Rushdie's phrase "allows newness to enter the world" - might be down to the lack of development of the sophisticated frontal lobe area of the brain. They cite some interesting evidence and ask some good questions like: "Do extremism and an unconditional adherence to religious dogma result from a failure of a portion of the frontal lobe to develop, or fully developed, to activate?" Shades of biological essentialism in the conclusion that fundamentalism has a biological explanation, perhaps, but ... it makes ya think (with the frontal lobes, obviously).