Around the Blogosphere

Here are some snippets from around the blogosphere…

At Thoughts In A Haystack, John Pieret suggests that the Discovery Institute is yet again acting in a way that belies what it publicly denies, namely that Intelligent Design is religious in nature. There is also a post about the Guillermo Gonzalez tenure case on Further Thoughts. The Austringer suggests that the Discovery Institute’s new help belongs in the “with friends like these” category.

Genomicron shares that the full text of a recent book on evolution (Evolution: Education and Outreach) is available online (hat tip: Pharyngula). Also, an article in Discover apparently makes progress on a big question some of us have: if evolution is true, why am I not more handsome?

Tim Jones at remote central has a post about a forthcoming paper by Lawrence Krauss and James Dent that discusses the implications of dark energy for the fate of the universe. Some had apparently understood him to be claiming that observing the universe not only collapses the wave function in the quantum realm, but may actually shorten its lifespan. He denies this, and says that the forthcoming paper is simply about the implications of what has been observed, and not a causal effect of observation. In other astronomy news, a star cluster has been observed moving through the galaxy at inexplicably fast speed, according to an article in NewScientist.

The Lead tells about a letter from Muslim scholars to Christians and a letter written by Christian scholars in reply. ThinkChristian shares a link to a provocative photo comparison of what people in different societies spend on food, and eat, each week.

The Bad Idea Blog responds to A Guy In The Pew about the ‘war on Christmas’. Apparently there is war over the war on Christmas. I will not comment, lest I start a war about the war over the war on Christmas. Millinerd shares an excerpt from The New Republic on egotism in religion and atheism. There is also apparently a First Church of Atheism. Notes From Off Center has a discussion of faith and atheism/naturalism.

Peter J. Leithart has several posts about Hegel’s understanding of the Trinity. On Faith has a number of posts on religion in relation to our society’s obsession with sex. And of course, USA Today had a piece recently on religious blogging.