Koranic scholar predicts tsunamis for US (ReasonOnline)

Here's an interesting development: A Palestinian Koranic scholar believes that the Koran predicts that the US will be wiped out by massive tsunamis in 2007, according to Charles Freund in ReasonOnline. According to Ziad Silwadi, passages in the Koran about divine punishment of terrible sins apply to the United States. Freund cites the Jerusalem Post which quotes Silwadi as saying that:

International law penalizes such crimes... If no one on earth is capable of punishing [the U.S.], Allah was and remains able to do so. All these actions have been documented by Allah in a big archive called the Koran.

Apparently, the scholar has arrived at his conclusion by calculations derived from verse counting in the Koran - a typical approach by apocalyptic prognosticators. Check out the whole story here.

Soul Survival: Is the new neuromorality a threat to traditional views of right and wrong? (Reason)

Cathy Young reports on a fascinating conference that took place in June which discussed the question Will neuroscience revolutionize our understanding of law and morality? If so, can law and morality be saved? Neuroscience researchers claim to be discovering more and more about how the brain actually works and some suggest that the conclusion we will inevitably come to is that our neurobiology will remove the need for such concepts as morality, free will, the soul, and personal responsibility. There are also issues related to the increasing sophistication of brain imaging which one of the presenters at the conference suggested may potentially raise questions about privacy. It's a fascinating debate - you can read the whole article here.