TOP 100 SCIENCE SITES
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| Global Update: Tuberculosis: Automated Test for Drug-Resistant TB Gives Results in Hours, Not Weeks Research indicates the test is 98 percent accurate when compared with positive results from the old method — examination of sputum by a trained microscopist. feeds.nytimes.com |
Brain region linked to introspection By LAURAN NEERGAARD 2010-09-16T18:03:58ZWASHINGTON (AP) -- Just how confident are you that you made the right decision? New research has uncovered a part of the brain that's larger in people who seem particularly introspective.... hosted.ap.org |
Giant penguins with no tux? Fossil feathers say so By LAURAN NEERGAARD 2010-09-30T21:12:25ZWASHINGTON (AP) -- Some ancient penguins may have been twice as big as today's Emperor penguin but they lacked the dashing tuxedo. Researchers unearthed remains of a nearly 5-foot-tall penguin that roamed what is now Peru about 36 million years ago, and they also discovered fossilized feathers that show back then, the flightless bird was a more motley mix of reddish-brown and gray.... hosted.ap.org |
Better to be hated for the right reasons than ignored | Stephen Bullivant It is a lukewarm Christianity that invites, and typically receives, an indifferent responseIs God disappearing?Last month, Cardinal Walter Kasper opined – among other things – that "an aggressive new atheism has spread through Britain". Buoyant sales of The God Delusion aside, there's no real evidence to support this. Yet religious groups have no cause to feel smug either. Kasper's "aggressive new atheists" and Dawkins's "dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads" hold one thing in common: pro or contra, they take religion very seriously. In contemporary Britain, as elsewhere in western Europe, this puts them both squarely in the minority. And as the Church of England's new report makes clear, nowhere is this more true than among the young. Indifference and apathy, in religion as in so much else, are the hallmarks of today's youth.Such findings are not, it has to be said, terribly surprising. Across all age brackets, declining rates of religious practice, belief and interest have long been documented. So used to this have church leaders become that they have taken to grasping the slimmest glimmers of hope. For example, the statistician Peter Brierley's 2006 Pulling Out of the Nosedive: A Contemporary Picture of Churchgoing – published the same year as The God Delusion – was widely greeted with relief. Yet Brierley's figures (a record low) neither showed that British church attendance was rising, nor that it was stable. Instead, for the first time in decades, the rate of decline was decreasing: "We are coming out of the nosedive, but no U-turn is yet in sight – we are still dropping." Some comfort.Hope is, of course, a specifically theological virtue. Indeed, as Pope Benedict XVI has quoted from St Paul: "In hope we were saved." But Christians are, or should be, realists: a faith whose God gets nailed to a cross is hardly one of infantile wishful thinking. The churches must then face up to these kinds of statistics and ask themselves just what has gone wrong. The indifference of young people is particularly troubling, since it is precisely these to whom vast resources of time, money and effort are devoted year on year. Faith schools, after school clubs, sacramental preparation, sports teams, pilgrimages, youth liturgies, retreats, school and university chaplaincies, "Theology on Tap" sessions – without denying the genuinely great work that goes on under all these banners – clearly many of them are missing their mark, and by a very wide margin. If "you will know them by their fruits", then perhaps it's finally time to reach for the pruning shears.Still – looking on the bright side – surely it's better to be ignored than hated; better to be indifference-inducing than aggression-inspiring? My friend and colleague Lois Lee, in her perceptive commentary on The Faith of Generation Y report, encouragingly suggests: "… it may well be that, as the number of believers continues to decline, some form of indifference is the best hope the church has for maintaining this cultural appeal. Hostility can certainly present a more insurmountable barrier than indifference."Given the recent hostility, some of it justified, arrayed against their church, Catholics especially might be tempted to agree. Yet as a young Catholic myself, I remain mindful of the angel's terrifying words in Revelation: "I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth." It is a lukewarm Christianity – one that asks (and expects) little of its members, and assumes that what young people want is a bad cover version of secular culture, only with worse songs – that invites, and typically receives, an indifferent response. But this was not the Christianity of Jesus or the apostles.Of course, young, committed Catholics – who no doubt have their equivalents in other denominations – are very much in the minority. (The Faith of the Generation Y report, whose interviewees numbered 300 or so, can be forgiven for missing them.) But make no mistake, theirs is a creative minority. And they are taking seriously John Paul II's call: "May God make you too, dear young people, the saints of the third millennium!" Even though a "vague Christianity" may no longer be the default position of most, or even many, Britons, they will see to it that "the memory of Christianity" does not "attenuate and disappear". Certainly, they will make sure that they are very difficult simply to ignore.ChristianityReligionAtheismRichard DawkinsStephen Bullivantguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Essay: Why Sisterly Chats Make People Happier The key to why having sisters makes people happier — men as well as women — may lie not in the kind of talk they exchange but in the fact of talk. feeds.nytimes.com |