Atheist Faithiest

Faithiest. Accommodationist. One har har perjorative and one mildly insulting. I guess put me squarely in the accommodationist camp. As if we unbelievers have a choice. I'm talking about the controversy raging  in the science blogs between those who consider religion the enemy of science and maintain that a person cannot justify holding religious and scientific methodologies in the same cranium ( the True Unbelievers) amd the Accommodationists (yay) who believe it is possible to be religious and a good scientist and, more importantly, that is necessary to reach out to people of faith and explain that it is possible to maintain their faith and accept the results of scientific inquiry, particularly regarding evolution. Of course, this ain't possible with a Young Earth Creationist. But they're setting up their own separate but unequal systems of "education" and "science". On the True Unbeliever side we have bloggers like Jerry Coyne, PZ Myers, Abbie Smith and Larry Moran on the Accommodationist side we have Josh Rosenau and John Wilkins. In the middle we have openly religious scientists like Ken Miller and Francis Collins, taking hostile fire from the Creationists and friendly fire from some of the science bloggers. Now Miller and Collins are big boys and I'm sure they were aware that they were going to take some shit for coming out with their weird fusion of science and religion. But that's their philosophy, not their science. As far as I can tell, no one in either camp has faulted them on their scientific work. I became aware of the controversy when ERV wrote a post slamming the appointment of Collins to head the NIH. The objections seem to stem from his professed evangelical faith and fear of what he might do rather than looking at what he has actually done. This smacks of ferreting out any sign of belief, even if it doesn't appear to influence the work. We have the spectacle of the True Unbelievers sniffing out any sign of belief, even in other unbelievers. Remind you of any other particular group? As Wilkins says (and, ahem, I have said) it is silly to argue whether a person can be religious and a scientist at the same time. We have thousands of examples that this can happen. The only points worth arguing are which questions can be tested and belong to science.

You Would

Admit it. A little blush, a lot of Nair, a push up bra and a bikini wax or two. C'mon, you know you would. I'm not the only one.

4.4 million year old Ardi or Ardipithicus ramidus drives another nail in the coffin of Intelligent Design creationism. The Ark is getting pretty crowded. What is interesting to me is that some of the chimp like characteristics that we have always assumed belonged to the common ancestor may have evolved in chimps after the split. If that translates to behavior we may be less ape like than is generally believed. You can get the real skinny at John Hawks Weblog and Laelaps. If you prefer your science faux with a dash of stupidity here's Casey Luskin's take on the whole thing. The release of this information was 15 years in the making. About the same amount of time the Discovery Institute has been in existence. Hmmm. Fifteen years, multiple papers from one team of scientists for just one fossil on the one hand and absolutely nothing worthwhile out of the echo chamber that is the Discovery Institute on the other.