Health Care Can Benefit From Religion’s Assets
Science has made huge strides and the killers of the past—diarrhea, malaria, respiratory illnesses, all most lethal to small children—should be history. They are not. World leaders, including Barack Obama, have made poignant statements in recent weeks about the imperative to act on these large global health challenges. But many in scientific and public health circles seem to be wearing blinkers when it comes to the role that religious health assets could play, both locally and globally, in mounting more effective programs. (Katherine Marshall, Georgetown/On Faith, Newsweek/The Washington Post)

Why Religious Believers Won’t Drop Their Beliefs
Carlo Strenger: It is of no use to think, contrary to the evidence, that most religious people just believe in belief. The majority actually believes what they say they do, and their actions are guided by these beliefs—often to the detriment of an area like the Middle East. Living with this knowledge, uncomfortable as it may be, is required of those who think science should be used to determine questions of fact. (guardian.co.uk)

Culture Wars Won’t End
Issues change far more rapidly than principles and peoples. This is a nation with an enduring religious strain, a brief history and an image constantly remade with immigration. It’s principles that define the American idea. And for this reason, contests over those principles will continue to define our politics. (David Paul Kuhn, RealClearPolitics)

Witnessing “De-Baptism”
In a type of mock ceremony that’s now been performed in at least four states, a robed “priest” used a hairdryer marked “reason” in an apparent bid to blow away the waters of baptism once and for all. Several dozen participants then fed on a “de-sacrament” (crackers with peanut butter) and received certificates assuring they had “freely renounced a previous mistake, and accepted Reason over Superstition.”

Science Meets Religion at German Evangelical Institute for the Archeology of the Holy Land
The German institute, known as DEI, has always taken the perspective that faith cannot be proven. It sees itself as a bridge between science and religion, experts and nonexperts, and Europe and the Middle East. “The bridge between theology on the one hand—that is, the texts that tell us something about the past—and archaeology on the other, which tells us something completely different from the time period,” said Dieter Vieweger, DEI’s director. (Elena Griepentrog and Sean Sinico, Deutsche Welle)

Q&A
Alan Boss
In recent years, he has consulted with scientists for NASA’s Kepler space telescope on their mission of finding planets outside our solar system that might be hospitable to life. Mr. Boss, a 58-year-old astronomer and theoretical astrophysicist, was in New York City recently to promote his new book, The Crowded Universe: the Search for Living Planets, about the scientific hunt for extraterrestrial life. (Claudia Dreifus, The New York Times)