In the 1950s, after much wrangling on issues related to national defense and other expedient matters, President Eisenhower set up the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), a group of distinguished scientists that was to provide non-partisan scientific advice to presidents. The president wanted a body of advisors in the White House who were answerable to [...]
These days I usually steer clear of creationists. The reason is that I know that I am not going to change any “pure” creationist’s mind in a couple of hours. Creationists almost by definition have closed minds. They start with a religious premise that is assumed to be true and then try to weave evidence [...]
While acrimonious spats continue to happen over science and religion in the United States, one of the saddest side effects of these in my opinion is the increasing tendency for some people to regard science as “just another point of view”. This is apparent in the way athesists for example are regarded as a group [...]