'Bout time somebody sorted this out

Oxford to Study Faith in God:

University of Oxford researchers will spend nearly $4 million to study why mankind embraces God. The grant to the Ian Ramsey Center [sic] for Science and Religion will bring anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other academics together for three years to study whether belief in a divine being is a basic part of mankind's makeup.

Here is a summary of the project from the Ramsey Centre. In addition to the areas listed above, there will also be a psychologist on the team, but how come there are no neuroscientists? Evolutionary biologists? It seems like these fields would be kind of relevant.

Why research and teaching functions should probably be separated out at the university level.

How we know Einstein maybe wouldn't have made such a great science prof:

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.

Campus police blow off threats to CU biology professors

The situation: the University of Colorado biology department has been receiving threats from a middle-eastern religious fundamentalist for teaching evolutionary theory. One letter reads, "EBIO (evolutionary biology) professors are terrorists against America and intellectual and spiritual child abusers of their young and impressionable students..." and an email sent today says that "every true Christian should be ready and willing to take up arms to kill the enemies of Christian society.”

Although they've identified a suspect, the campus police dismiss the seriousness of the threats; here's CU police commander Brad Wiesley: "Just because you feel threatened, it's not necessarily a crime. It's not directed against a specific person, John and Jane Doe. It's more along a line of ideology - if you believe this, we think you're wrong, kind of thing.”

The suspect is an Israeli Christian fundamentalist -- is it cynical to suggest that if he were a middle-eastern Islamic fundamentalist, trying to mobilize religious zealots against an American university, the response would probably be a bit different?