Danish scientist Uffe Schjødt ran MRI scans on 20 devout Christians during different types of prayer, and found results that made everyone happy:

In the first task, they silently recited the Lord's Prayer, then a nursery rhyme. Identical brain areas, typically associated with rehearsal and repetition, were activated.

In the second, they improvised personal prayers before making requests to Santa Claus. Improvised prayers triggered patterns that match those seen when people communicate with each other, and activated circuitry that is linked with the theory of mind - an awareness that other individuals have their own independent motivations and intentions... He says the results show people believe they are talking to someone when they pray, an outcome that pleased both atheists and Christians: "Atheists said it shows that it's all an illusion," says Schjødt, while Christians said it was evidence that God is real.

Am I the only one who wanted to know what the results were like while they were talking to Santa?

Praying to God is like talking to a friend [New Scientist]

According to Spencer, there are a few reasons for evangelicalism's dire prospects. Evangelicals focused too much on the culture war, and didn't spend enough time on promoting a compelling theology. And the only thriving churches are "megachurches."

Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

But meanwhile, there's going to be a rising tide of secularism as our culture becomes more "religiously antagonistic" and "Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile to evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good." The biggest beneficaries of evangelicalism's downfall, however, will be Orthodox and Catholic churches, which can offer more doctrinal underpinnings and a long history. The whole article is worth reading, as is the commentary on it at BeliefNet.

[Christian Science Monitor via BeliefNet]

Admittedly, the abstract for the talk sounds more than a little dry:

Science fiction has become increasingly respectable and influential in recent years, portraying a variety of futures.  God usually seems to be absent from those futures, together with every other aspect of Christianity.  But is that really the case?  Religious questions often surface in new and challenging guises, and are sometimes quite explicit.  This talk will reflect on religion and science in the science fiction world, with reference to a number of popular books, films and TV shows, and will suggest some ways in which science fiction can help to communicate the Christian message.

Real Faith and Fictional Worlds [Calvin.edu]

• Say what you will about the meh movie version of comic book Constantine, but Tilda Swinton's awe-inspiring depiction of the fallen angel Gabriel makes up for Keanu Reeves' mumbles. This androgynous angel is more like a beautified version of Predator than a fluttery creature you read about in Sunday School. She punches, kicks, growls, and gets her wings burned down to goth-gorgeous stumps, and still keeps on fighting the bad guys. Or is she fighting the good guys?
• Lyda Morehouse has a series of Unitarianpunk novels, including Archangel Protocol and Fallen Host, about angels who suddenly start appearing on the immersive internet-like communication network of the late twenty-first century. In a world where you must be part of a religion (any religion, including Pagan) in order to have access to social services, the creatures become a political and social issue of the utmost importance. But are they genuine spiritual beings who have chosen to reveal themselves on the 'net? Or are they just AIs with alien connections who have gained self-awareness?
• In Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, including The Golden Compass, a young girl named Lyra and her companions fight to dethrone God (known as The Authority) and his band of fascist angels (known as angels). Although it's undeniable that the Authority and his angels have tremendous power — they can fly, have what seem to be spaceships, and are superstrong — they seem more like alien or mutant powers than spiritual ones. In fact, part of Pullman's point is that the creatures we think of as angels and gods may just be alien creatures with powers we don't understand. Deifying them may not be the best idea.
• One reason why so many science fiction fans love Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff Angel is that the shows' demons and devils (and occasional appearance from the godlike Powers That Be) are so damn alien-like. Hanging out in Sunnydale near the Hellmouth, or in that demon Karaoke bar in Los Angeles, is like walking into the sleazy bar on Tatooine where Luke met Han Solo. Buffy creator Joss Whedon is a known science fiction buff (he also created Firefly), and neither of his shows make any effort to give spiritual explanations for the rubber-headed baddies and goodies who haunt Buffy and her Scooby Gang. Basically, Buffy could be Buffy the Alien Hunter if you just called the Hellmouth the Dimension Doorway (or the Stargate).
• A favorite plotline in the Star Trek franchise is the God or angel who turns out to be nothing more than an annoying alien. Sometimes the alien calls the humans "ugly bags of mostly water," and sometimes it teaches them a lesson, and sometimes it just becomes the desktop background of people who like to laugh at the more embarrassing moments in cheesy SF. Nevertheless, Star Trek's ongoing obsession with unmasking spiritual beings as material ones marks it as one of the best places to find angels who are really aliens.

And don't even get me started on aliens who are really angels. That, as they say, is another post.