Whether he knows it or not, Brownback's forthright declarations, denying any possibility that empirical matters of fact might differ from those assumed by his creed, amount to nothing less than a rejection of the whole institution of science. Who is "we", and where did "our" conviction and certainty come from? Would Brownback believe these "spiritual truths" if he hadn't been taught them as a child, or brought up in the United States instead of China?

According to Brownback, we should reject scientific findings if they conflict with our faith, but accept them if they're compatible. But the scientific evidence says that humans are big-brained, highly conscious apes that began evolving on the African savannah four million years ago. Are we supposed to reject this as "atheistic theology" (an oxymoron if there ever was one)?

JERRY COYNE is a professor in the department of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, where he works on diverse areas of evolutionary genetics. He is the author (with H. Allen Orr) of Speciation.

Jerry Coyne's Edge Bio Page 

The developmental data suggest that resistance to science will arise in children when scientific claims clash with early emerging, intuitive expectations. This resistance will persist through adulthood if the scientific claims are contested within a society, and will be especially strong if there is a non-scientific alternative that is rooted in common sense and championed by people who are taken as reliable and trustworthy. This is the current situation in the United States with regard to the central tenets of neuroscience and of evolutionary biology. These clash with intuitive beliefs about the immaterial nature of the soul and the purposeful design of humans and other animals — and, in the United States, these intuitive beliefs are particularly likely to be endorsed and transmitted by trusted religious and political authorities. Hence these are among the domains where Americans' resistance to science is the strongest.

PAUL BLOOM is a psychologist at Yale University and the author of Descartes' Baby.

DEENA SKOLNICK WEISBERG is a doctoral candidate in psychology at Yale University.

Paul Bloom's Edge Bio Page
Deena Skolnick Weisberg's Edge Bio Page 

This text sees Judas dying as a martyr—because here the other disciples hate him so much that they kill him! But the Gospel of Judas challenges the idea that God wants people to die as martyrs—just as it challenges the idea that God wanted Jesus to die. Whoever wrote this gospel—and the author is anonymous—is challenging church leaders who teach that. It's as if an imam were to challenge the radical imams who encourage "martyrdom operations" and accuse them of complicity in murder—the Gospel of Judas shows "the twelve disciples"—stand-ins for church leaders—offering human sacrifice on the altar—and doing this in the name of Jesus! Conservative Christians hate gospels like this—usually call them fakes and the people who publish them (like us) anti Christian. There was a great deal of censorship in the early Christian movement—especially after the emperor became a Christian, and made it the religion of the empire—and voices like those of this author were silenced and denounced as "heretics" and "liars." The story of Jesus was simplified and cleaned up—made "orthodox."

ELAINE PAGELS is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University and has published widely on Gnosticism and early Christianity. Her latest book, coauthored with Karen King, is Reading Judas.

ELAINE PAGELS' Edge Bio Page 

In the Middle Ages, we were told what we knew by the Church; after the printing press and the Reformation, by state censors and the licensers of publishers; with the rise of liberalism in the 19th and 20th centuries, by publishers themselves, and later by broadcast media—in any case, by a small, elite group of professionals.

But we are now confronting a new politics of knowledge, with the rise of the Internet and particularly of the collaborative Web—the Blogosphere, Wikipedia, Digg, YouTube, and in short every website and type of aggregation that invites all comers to offer their knowledge and their opinions, and to rate content, products, places, and people. It is particularly the aggregation of public opinion that instituted this new politics of knowledge.

LARRY SANGER, a co-founder of Wikipedia, recently started a new competitor, the Citizendium, or the Citizens' Compendium.

Larry Sanger's Edge Bio Page

The Reality Club: Jaron Lanier, George Dyson, Gloria Origgi, Charles Leadbeater 

What is Davos and how does it work? Officially the meeting is called the World Economic Forum. This is their annual meeting, but there are many other meetings during the year held around the world, but this is their big event they are known for. It was founded and run by Klaus Schwab in the early eighties as mostly a European event, but has grown huge and global with about 2000 participants from all over the world.

Introduction

Every year dozens of Edgies are invited to the World Economic Forum event and the dancing bears to perform for the corporate and govermental elite. Attending this years conference were Peter Schwartz, Larry Brilliant,John Markoff, Paul Saffo, Lord Martin Rees, Adam Bly, Dan Dubno, andYossi Vardi. Peter Schwartz, founder of Global Business Network (GBN), is equally at home and astute in the worlds of science, technology and the corporate boardroom. This year, he wrote a blog which is is distilled into this report.

—JB

PETER SCHWARTZ is cofounder and chairman of Global Business Network (GBN), now part of the Monitor Group. From 1982 to 1986, Schwartz headed scenario planning for the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies in London. Before joining Royal Dutch/Shell, he directed the Strategic Environment Center at SRI International. He is the author of Inevitable Surprises, and The Art of the Long View, and co-author of The Long Boom, When Good Companies Do Bad Things, and China's Futures.

Peter Schwartz's Edge Bio Page