Being Religious May Not Make Your Heart Healthier
A number of studies over the past two decades have shown that religious people tend to be healthier. But a new study suggests that when it comes to heart disease and clogged arteries, attending religious services or having spiritual experiences may not protect against heart attacks and strokes. (Dr. Ivan Oransky, Reuters)

Sociologists Find Religion
As a new study has found, there has been a significant increase over the last 25 or so years not only in the quantity of work done by sociologists on religion, but also in how religion is treated in those studies. No longer is it assumed to be only a reflection of some other socioeconomic trend, but increasingly it is treated as the factor that may be central to understanding a given group of people. (Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed)

“Directed Panspermia”
“We have a moral obligation to plan for the propagation of life, and even the transfer of human life to other solar systems which can be transformed via microbial activity, thereby preparing these worlds to develop and sustain complex life,” Michael Mautner, a research professor of chemistry at Virginia Commonwealth University, explained. “Securing that future for life can give our human existence a cosmic purpose.” (Lisa Zyga, PhysOrg.com)

Must “Good Jews” Believe in God?
Barbara Kay: If only perceived as a religion, Judaism would make no sense without a belief in God. However, if perceived as the sum of their anthropological, cultural, and historical parts—religion, race, culture, peoplehood, etc.—the Jews may be seen as a kind of anthropological eco-system: organically self-perpetuating and self-sustaining. In that case, belief in God would have had to be the driving principle for the original tribal start-up process, but once evolved into a mature system, belief may or may not be important to individual members with no loss of vigor to the system. (Holy Post, National Post)

Bestowing Meaning on Discoveries
Far from being irreconcilably opposed, science and myth are indissolubly married to each other. This is because the propositions of science are made up of facts that entail meanings. The first can be established with certainty and known, whereas the second can only be surmised and imagined. Thus scientists attribute astonishingly different meanings to the same sets of facts. (Thomas Jackson, guardian.co.uk)

California Science Instructor Accused of Teaching Religious Views
An instructor at a public community college in Fresno has been presenting his religious views on homosexuality, abortion, and global warming as fact to students in an introductory health science class, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged. (Lisa Leff, Associated Press)