Answers to all but problems 2 and 10 vary. The answers below just highlight the important points required for a baseline correct answer.

1. The "Big Bang" is the name given to a theory of the evolution of the universe that says our universe has been expanding and cooling for the last 13.7 billion years, having been at that time really hot (≅10⁵⁰K) and really small (some say the size of an atom, some say a few centimeters at most). Evidence supporting this theory includes:
   • Today's observed expansion can be played backwards.
   • The cosmic background radiation is as predicted by the theory.
   • Large-scale homogeneity is as predicted by the theory.
   • The abundance of hydrogen, deuterium, and helium compared to the rest of the elements is as predicted.
2. The time of return is 2076-08-05T00:18:46. You can find it with a little script. Here's one in Ruby:

   require "date"
   puts DateTime.new(2013, 5, 20, 12) + 365*2 / Math.sqrt(1 - 0.9995 ** 2)
   

   Oh, not too good at programming? No problem! Use an online date calculator!

3. Dark matter is matter that emits no electromagnetic radiation but we know it's there because of gravity. It was "discovered" by Zwicky who in 1933 noticed that visible matter in galaxies didn't provide enough gravitation to hold them together, and Oort who in 1940 found that the mass computed by galaxy rotation curves didn't match up with the mass predicted by the emitted electromagnetic radiation. Vera Rubin's observations in the 1970's were the first to be considered more or less conclusive.

   Dark energy is the energy that tends to make space expand. We can't actually detect it yet. It is sometimes said Einstein "discovered dark energy without knowing it," but the thing we call dark energy today was more-or-less discovered by two separate teams (working independently), one headed by Adam Reiss and the other by Saul Perlmutter.

4. General relativity and quantum mechanics "conflict" because in GR things follow the gently curving countours of spacetime — you've seen the pretty pictures — while QM has particles disappearing and reappearing, only probabilistically in a given place and time, and so on. But the predictions of both theories have been experimentally verified to astonishing precision and "they work, bitches." The main point is that they work at different scales: stars don't pop in and out of existence, and quarks don't appear to bend spacetime like a planet would to keep those electrons in orbit. More explanations here.
5. (I don't need to give bios here, but you do to receive full credit, and you must also include their discoveries and religious affiliation or practices. A simple answer to this question would be to pick three people from Wikipedia's list of Jesuit scientists.)
6. (This was a very tricky question because the examples given in the prompt had nothing to do with "being condescending to religion." When you get a question like this, you are supposed to ask for clarification. Anyway, here goes.... If you take "condescending" as "apologizing for" or "not being too tough on" then many of the possible criticisms are already in the question prompt; you will be graded on how well you structure your paragraph and whether you added anything new. If you actually understand the meaning of condescending, you'll have to attack de Botton's superior attitude towards religious people holding on to their fairy tales of deities and mindlessly repeating incantations and following their calendars without taking into account what religion offers them. He doesn't see to hammer on these points, though, so it might be hard to say he is too condescending....)
7. (You need to mention Zaehner as having been an intelligence officer, a speaker of many languages, and a scholar specializing in Eastern religions, comparative religions, and mysticism. He wrote about similarities between religions to be sure, but here's the money line from Wikipedia: "Zaehner criticized on several occasions the simplistic idea of the mystical unity of all religions." He knew quite a bit about modern spirituality, and was complimented by Michael Dummett who said of Zaehner: "His talent lay in seeing what to ask, rather than in how to answer... ." That's related to one of the class themes: questioning.)
8. Teleology is the doctrine or belief that nature is shaped by a purpose toward some end. Biological evolution often appears teological because it operates in such a way as to maximize the chance of a species' survival, but there is a good deal of randomness in the process: some individuals are just unlucky. And most species don't make it. Besides, evolution can work without goals: the more camouflaged one is, the less likely it is to get eaten. Astrophysics sometimes has the appearance that something teological is at work: the universe is just so damn fine-tuned for us to be here. But alas, asteroids are here too, and our sun is going to swallow us up someday....
9. It not just "simple" as in "fewest words" that Occam's Razor is about; it's about explaining all the observations with the fewest concepts and the fewest assumptions. To say species were separately created as they exist today leaves open some very big questions: "Why were the species created to look the way they would had they evolved by natural selection?" and "Why would some creator painstakingly create millions of separate species only to watch (nearly all of them) go extinct?" Those who hold the separate-creation-of-species view must thus assume a creative entity that is either (1) a prankster or (2) is capricious and wasteful, and thus must, in their theory, explain the intent of a creator, which is difficult at best. And finally, there is a big, qualitative (and quantitative) difference between the evidence for natural selection and the, uh, "evidence" for that of creation-as-is. (A related objection to separate-creation is that it is hard to falsify, but that's not required to appear in an answer.)
10. We're given P(D) = 0.00015, P(~D) = 0.99985, P(y|D) = 0.98, and P(y|~D) = 0.02. Using Bayes' Theorem, we find P(D|y) = P(y|D)P(D) ÷ P(y) = P(y|D)P(D) ÷ (P(y|D)P(D) + P(y|~D)P(~D)) = (0.98 × 0.00015) ÷ (0.98 × 0.00015 + 0.02 × 0.99985) = 0.0072974583.

    You have a 0.73% chance of having the disease. It went way up, didn't it? Still, you got to admit, things look pretty good.

11. Sheremer says some people vote Republican because they believe their lives will be better by doing so; Schank says they make no such reasoned choice at all, but go with core beliefs that have been "instilled by parents mostly and by assorted other authorities." Both Shermer and Schank appeal to scientific reasoning: Shermer using lots of data, and Schank appealing to a work done on studies modeling behaviors and belief systems. However, no indication of sample sizes were given and no indication was made that these results were given to any peers to review nor was any corroborating evidence cited. At least the claims are in theory falsifiable!
12. Loosely speaking, group, or multilevel, selection, is the idea that natural selection directs the evolution of groups of organisms (in addition to that of genes), and hence tends to favor altruistic groups over selfish groups. Pinker takes it apart in his Edge essay and Jerry Coyne has a good blog post on its problems with links to other critics. I'll leave you to reread those critiques to gather the main points of criticism, one of which is that the whole concept is nebulous (difficult to measure, among other things). We know how genes replicate, and do so "digitally" with pretty good accuracy, with copying errors adding in the randomness. How can one begin to quantify how groups "replicate"? Where's the group DNA? And it sure doesn't look random. Anyway, are Pinker's arguments scientific? He is actually not making a scientific argument here; he is writing a critique. But we can give him kudos for all the scientific sources he cites.

    When you are ready to take on Homework #3, consider (but don't feel obliged to) model your work after Pinker's essay.