Highlights from a 2008 Harris Poll nation-wide survey of 2,126 U.S. adults:

• Americans who believe in God: 80 percent (unchanged since the last survey in 2005)
  
  
• Americans who believe Jesus is the Son of God: 71 percent
  
  
• Americans who believe in the resurrection of Jesus: 70 percent
  
  
• Americans who believe in the Virgin Birth: 61 percent
  
  
• Americans who believe in the survival of the soul after death: 68 percent
  
  

Knowing tells the story of John Koestler (Nicholas Cage), a professor who discovers a cryptic document that was hidden in a time capsule in 1958. A scene early in the film shows the depth of Koestler's existential wrestling—a struggle that has been going on long before the strange document makes an appearance.

The scene begins with a wide angle shot of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...

A new movement has emerged from California's Silicon Valley. It's a combination of philosophy, faith, and science known as transhumanism. An article in The Futurist magazine describes transhumanism as "radical life extension and life expansion." Those devoted to the movement "perceive the human body as a work in progress." They believe that "evolution took humanity this far…and only technology ...

In his book The Cell's Design: How Chemistry Reveals the Creator's Artistry, Fanzale Rana gives the following account of the approach used to authenticate a piece of artwork by Picasso, often referred to as The Unknown Masterpiece:

In the early 1970s, a junk dealer came across five ink drawings while clearing out a deceased woman's apartment in London. He hung onto them for several years, [and then] ...

Dove soap has released a series of commercials that question the beauty industry's relentless pursuit of the "perfect woman."

In a commercial called "Evolution," a woman wearing no makeup walks to a chair and sits down. As the camera focuses on her face, we see a series of time-lapse pictures that show her "evolve" into a billboard model.

First the make-up artists tone her skin to perfection. Then ...

High-school biology teachers who say they devote at least one or two classroom hours to creationism or Intelligent Design: 25 percent

Of these, teachers who "emphasize that this is a valid scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species": 48 percent

Americans who say life has evolved over time: 48 percent
Americans who say life has always existed in its present form: 42 percent
Americans who say evolution was guided by a supernatural being: 18 percent

Advances in technology have allowed scientists to come closer than ever to the physical origins of life. But they are as far away as ever from defining life.

Several research teams around the world are trying to create life out of chemicals, and they estimate they will have success in three to ten years. "We're all sort of thinking that the next origin of life will be in somebody's lab," say Dr. David ...

After discovering how to clone humans, two scientists challenged God:

"We don't need you anymore," they said. "We can make life by ourselves now."

"Okay," God replied, "let's have a man-making contest."

"All right," said the scientists. "We'll do it like you did in the beginning." Then they reached down to grab a handful of dirt to begin to form a man.

Then they heard God's voice from heaven: "Hold it—get ...

Camp Quest West, just north of Sacramento, California, is no church camp. Designed for children of agnostics, atheists, freethinkers, and humanists, the mission of the camp is to "promote respect for others with different viewpoints, values, and beliefs." It goes one step further to say, "we deplore efforts … to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms and to look outside nature for ...