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The new website appears to be a response to the recent launch of the BioLogos Foundation, the brainchild of geneticist Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project and rumoured Obama appointee-to-be for head of the National Institutes of Health. Along with "a team of scientists who believe in God" and some cash from the Templeton Foundation, Collins, an evangelical Christian who is also a staunch proponent of evolution, is on a crusade to convince believers that faith and science need not be at odds. He is promoting "theistic evolution" – the belief that God (the prayer-listening, proactive, personal God of Christianity) chose to create life by way of evolution.

Watching the intellectual feud between the Discovery Institute and BioLogos is a bit like watching a race in which both competitors are running full speed in the opposite direction of the finish line. It's a notable contest, but I don't see how either is going to come out the winner.

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When I first read Isaac’s gentle “manifesto” about Sharism I was instantly pulled into to the clarity and intent of his writing. I thought here is a man contemplating the enormous cultural and technological development that he himself is thriving inside of and he has perspective and keen insight. I know that Stuart Kauffman is looking for a new global ethic and right in front of us is a powerful new tool and sensibility that is emerging.

To read Robert Muchembled’s compelling history of violence is to understand how deeply flawed this popular narrative is – and to appreciate that the “good old days” were often far more appalling. Violent impulses have been a permanent and universal feature of our lives since the dawn of time. But what have constantly changed are the ways in which political and religious leaders have sought to inflame or restrain them.

The statistics Muchembled cites are striking. The number of murders per year is just one per 100,000 in Europe today and six in the US. In 14th-century Europe it was estimated at 130 per 100,000. Yet some aspects of violence have remained constant over seven centuries: 90 per cent of murders are committed by men, most of them younger than 30, and southern Europe has always had a higher incidence of violence than in the north, giving some credence to the popular image of a hot-blooded Latin male.

Bloom says the two systems are autonomous, leaving us with two viewpoints on the world: one that deals with minds, and one that handles physical aspects of the world. He calls this innate assumption that mind and matter are distinct "common-sense dualism". The body is for physical processes, like eating and moving, while the mind carries our consciousness in a separate - and separable - package. "We very naturally accept you can leave your body in a dream, or in astral projection or some sort of magic," Bloom says. "These are universal views."

The other is that these beliefs are a side-effect of the actions of other useful cognitive processes we have developed. In other words, we have certain mental abilities, typically attributing intention and desire, which we unwittingly over-apply and hence attribute random uncontrollable events to mysterious but intelligent beings.