Sam Harris: Illustrated (Science v Religion)

Faith and Foolishness

Every two years the National Science Foundation produces a report, Science and Engineering Indicators, designed to probe the public’s understanding of science concepts. And every two years we relearn the sad fact that U.S. adults are less willing to accept evolution and the big bang as factual than adults in other industrial countries.

Except for this time. Was there suddenly a quantum leap in U.S. science literacy? Sadly, no. Rather the National Science Board, which oversees the foundation, chose to leave the section that discussed these issues out of the 2010 edition, claiming the questions were “flawed indicators of scientific knowledge because responses conflated knowledge and beliefs.” In short, if their religious beliefs require respondents to discard scientific facts, the board doesn’t think it appropriate to expose that truth.

The section does exist, however, and Science magazine obtained it. When presented with the statement “human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,” just 45 percent of respondents indicated “true.” Compare this figure with the affirmative percentages in Japan (78), Europe (70), China (69) and South Korea (64). Only 33 percent of Americans agreed that “the universe began with a big explosion.”

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Laurie Santos: A monkey economy as irrational as ours

Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in "monkeynomics" shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too.

About Laurie Santos
Laurie Santos studies primate psychology and monkeynomics -- testing problems in human psychology on primates, who (not so surprisingly) have many of the same predictable irrationalities we do.

41 countries that did not support making water a human right

Every year, 3.5 million people die of water-borne illness. Diarrhea is the second largest cause of death among children under five. Lack of access to potable water kills more children than AIDS, malaria and smallpox combined. Worldwide, approximately 1 in 8 people lack potable water.

In just one day, more than 200 million hours of women’s time is consumed by collecting and transporting water for domestic use.

The situation of lack of sanitation is far worse, for it affects 2.6 billion people, or 40% of the global population.

These are the 41 countries that abstained in the July 28 UN General Assembly vote on Bolivia’s resolution to recognise access to water and sanitation as basic human rights. Rather than honestly vote “no”, they abstained to avoid being labelled as opponents of access to water, but many made statements that reveal their hostility to the very idea of recognising water as a human right.

Among others:

• Canada complained that the resolution “appeared to determine that there was indeed a right without setting out its scope”.
• The UK said “there was no sufficient legal basis for declaring or recognising water or sanitation as freestanding human rights, nor was there evidence that they existed in customary law”.
• The United States said “there was no ‘right to water and sanitation’ in an international legal sense, as described by the resolution”.
• Australia “had reservations about declaring new human rights in a General Assembly resolution”.

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TED: Sheena Iyengar on the art of choosing

Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -- and how we feel about the choices we make. At TEDGlobal, she talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions.

About Sheena Iyengar
Sheena Iyengar studies how people choose (and what makes us think we're good at it).

Plankton decline across oceans as waters warm

The amount of phytoplankton - tiny marine plants - in the top layers of the oceans has declined markedly over the last century, research suggests.

Writing in the journal Nature, scientists say the decline appears to be linked to rising water temperatures.

They made their finding by looking at records of the transparency of sea water, which is affected by the plants.

The decline - about 1% per year - could be ecologically significant as plankton sit at the base of marine food chains.

This is the first study to attempt a comprehensive global look at plankton changes over such a long time scale.

"What we think is happening is that the oceans are becoming more stratified as the water warms," said research leader Daniel Boyce from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

"The plants need sunlight from above and nutrients from below; and as it becomes more stratified, that limits the availability of nutrients," he told BBC News.

Phytoplankton are typically eaten by zooplankton - tiny marine animals - which themselves are prey for small fish and other animals.

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God in the classroom

"Do you believe in God, sir?" I imagine that this is a question that science teachers, like me, get asked far more often than, say, English or Geography teachers. I usually answer with a simple "no, I don't", but I recently answered this question by saying "what do you think?" to which the student replied he thought I was probably an atheist because I was a "scientist". He was right about me being an atheist, but I was an atheist long before I was any kind of "scientist".

My student needn't have been right – not all scientists or science teachers are atheists. I've worked alongside religious science teachers and some of the greatest contributions to the science have been made by people who believed in a god. There are some people who would say that there is no conflict between science and religion but young people brought up in religious homes are not necessarily taught this and a few will even have been taught to believe the opposite. I know that some of my own students are struggling to reconcile what they see as contradictory approaches to understanding the world. I suspect it's particularly difficult for those who enjoy science, and are good at it, but come from particularly religious families.

I'm a physics teacher and you might think that I get away without too much of this sort of conflict in my lessons. You might think it's mostly the biology teachers, the ones who have to teach the theory of evolution, who have to deal with the awkward situation of teaching something that flatly contradicts the religious beliefs of some of their students. But it's not. And it shouldn't be. The truth is that all science teachers must deal with the fact that, if they are teaching science properly, their lessons will necessarily challenge the religious beliefs of some of their students.

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