Friday, November 14, 2008
Last year's House pig out at the expense of the COMPETES Act decimated
science funding. There will be an effort to repair the funding damage in
the Spring but now science is competing with the economic tsunami. There
are executive orders, however, that can be rescinded or modified at the
stroke of a pen. It all calls for an early appointment of the science
advisor.
The city of Pleasant Grove, Utah has a Ten Commandments monument in its
public park. The Summumu religion is suing the city for the right to
erect a monument bearing its sacred principles, called the "Seven
Aphorisms," beside the Ten Commandments. The case has reached the United
States Supreme Court. The Court should not be surprised; in 2005 on a
complaint by a destitute homeless man, it ruled that a monument on the
grounds of the Texas state capitol could stand because it "conveyed a
historic and social meaning rather than an intrusive religious
endorsement." On the same day, however, on a complaint by trial lawyers,
the court ordered displays of the Ten Commandments removed from court
house walls lest they influence jurors. Arguments in the Summumu appeal
were heard on Wednesday and a decision is expected in the spring. It's an
opportunity for the court to do what it lacked the courage to do in 2005:
forbid all religious displays on public property.
The Faith Forum, a U.N. conference on religious tolerance this week, was a
personal initiative of Saudi King Abdullah. He's not exactly a champion
of women's rights, but to demonstrate his credentials in the field of
tolerance he agreed to dine in the same room with the Israeli President;
of course, not at the same table. Elsewhere, a Catholic priest faces
excommunication for his part in an ordination ceremony for a, gasp,
woman. I suggest a world law patterned after the "establishment clause"
of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It
reflected the dominant concern of the colonists who came to these shores
to escape government-imposed religion. This single phrase sets the U.S.
apart from every other country in the world. It is the American gift.
Many scientists think of the modern Catholic Church as enlightened on the
question of evolution, but that's because they compare it to the
intelligent design movement. A conference at the Vatican this week
provided a little reality therapy. The first talk was by Cardinal
Shoenborn who wrote a 2005 NY Times op-ed backing intelligent design,
(WN 8 Jul 05) . This week's meeting
was closed to the press but John Abelson, quoted in yesterday's Science,
said Schoenborn believes God did his stuff during gaps in the fossil
record. When another fossil is found in the gap, of course, it creates
two gaps.
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