Templeton tactics

This is an interesting tidbit. The Templeton Foundation is a private foundation which provides support for thinkers who try to integrate contemporary science with traditional religion. It’s an enormously wealthy foundation which awards the biggest cash prize in the world, for anything (bigger than the Nobel). It’s always seemed a little fishy to me, since some of the awardees seem to me to be plenty smart but hardly the greatest intellects around.

Anyway, the link is to Dawkins’ blog, which recounts some of the correspondence between a journalist and Dennett and A.C. Grayling about being paid attendees of a Templeton conference. The main question is whether you do more harm than good in engaging in public dialogue with those whose views you think are silly.

Science of Spirituality

NPR’s Barbara Bradley Hagerty is coming to Logan on July 17.  She will be discussing her new book, Fingerprints of  God: In Search of the Science of Spirituality.  She will be on the Access Utah radio program that morning from 9:00-10:00am, then she will talk about her book at the Cache Valley Center for the Arts ballroom (upstairs) from 4:00-600pm.  All are welcome, should be interesting.

Brain reading

My brother alerted me to a “60-minutes” segment that aired last night about reading content from brains. (It’s the second story, just after the first commercial break.) The first part of the report is sort of interesting. A scientist has been brain imaging a bunch of people, asking them to think about certain objects, and recording the results. Then he takes a new person, asks her to think about certain objects (without telling the computer), and lets the computer guess what they were thinking (in a limited form; you ask the computer “Was it a barn or a screwdriver?”). The computer was right 100%. That’s pretty impressive, and scary when you think about possible consequences.

Those consequences emerge in the second part of the story, when the possibility is raised (through another line of research) of analyzing a suspect’s brain to determine if they had special knowledge of where/how a particular crime was committed. It’s there that the 5th-amendment right against self-incrimination collides with the state’s right to gather evidence (such as DNA samples).