July 27, 2010
Category: Mathematics
A few weeks ago I spent a day at the Virginia Home Educators Convention in Richmond. These are the religious home schoolers we are talking about, meaning creationism was very well-represented indeed. Ken Ham gave several keynote talks. Yay!
I never got around to doing a proper write-up of the conference, but I do want to tell you about one of the talks I attended. It was called “Math From a Biblical Worldview?” Indeed, it was when I saw this talk advertised in the program that I knew I had to attend.
Read on »
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:10 PM • 68 Comments
July 26, 2010
Category: Anti-Creationism
If you are in the mood for a little light reading, have a look at this account of Skip Evans, formerly of the National Center for Science Education, conversing with some of the local creationists in Madison, WI.
It's almost a shame that an apparently sincere and pretty decent guy like Kevin has fallen into the Answers in Genesis trap. He's been gullible enough to hitch his theological wagon to the complete and utter stupidity that is young earth creationism. He's been duped into believing, along with denying a staggering amount of legitimate science, that if all the animals alive today didn't descend from a handful floating around on a boat for a year and being brushed, fed and shit-shoveled by an old man and his family then there's no god, no heaven, no salvation and probably no good cheese steak left in Philly.
That's just a taste. Go read the rest!
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:29 PM • 35 Comments
Category: Mathematics
In my last math post I casually mentioned that the sum of the reciprocals of the primes diverges. That is
\[
\frac{1}{2}+\frac{1}{3}+\frac{1}{5}+\frac{1}{7}+\frac{1}{11}+\frac{1}{13}+ \dots=\infty
\]
That seems like a hard thing to prove. Certainly none of the traditional convergence tests from Calculus II will get the job done. The problem is how to “get at” the primes. Plainly we need to do something clever.
As it happens, the proof is a bit tricky. It has a lot of ingredients, too. On the other hand, each one of those ingredients is pretty interesting in its own right. So how about a series of posts building up to the proof of the equation above?
First ingredient: The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic!
Read on »
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 1:02 AM • 14 Comments
July 21, 2010
Category: Literature
I only have time for a quick post today, so how about another quote from Elmer Gantry? Keep in mind that this was published in 1927. See if it sounds familiar:
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Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:24 PM • 6 Comments
July 19, 2010
Category: Literature
Over the past week or so I have been dutifully plugging a hole in my literary education. I am reading Sinclair Lewis' novel Elmer Gantry. If you are unfamiliar with the story, the title character is a rudderless, narcissistic, unsavory fellow who, through a series of somewhat implausible events, gets ordained as a Baptist minister. Mayhem ensues! The book was somewhat controversial when it was first published, since it does not exactly make evangelical Christianity look good. I am currently halfway through it and loving every page of it.
In reading the following brief excerpt, keep in mind that this was published in 1927. The “Sharon” mentioned here is the leader of a traveling group of evangelists.
The lady Director of Personal Work had unexpected talent in making up anecdotes about the death-beds of drunkards and agnostics; Lily Anderson, the pretty though anemic pianist, had once been a school teacher and had read a couple of books about scientists, so she was able to furnish data with which Sharon absolutely confuted the rising fad of evolution; and Art Nichols, the cornetist, provided rude but moral Maine humor, stories about horse-trading, cabbages, and hard cider, very handy for cajoling skeptical business men. But Elmer, being trained theologically, had to weave all the elements -- dogma, poetry to the effect that God's palette held the sunsets or ever the world began, confessions of the dismally damned, and stories of Maine barn-dances -- into one ringing whole.
The more things change, and all that.
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 3:53 PM • 7 Comments
July 18, 2010
Category: Mathematics
Blake Stacey directed me towards a terrific tool for embedding TeX code into a web page. So how about we do ourselves a math post!
Remember the harmonic series? No doubt you encountered it in some calculus class or other. It's the one that goes like this:
$$
1+\frac{1}{2}+\frac{1}{3}+\frac{1}{4}+\frac{1}{5}+\frac{1}{6}+\dots
$$
The series is divergent. If you keep adding more and more of the terms your running tally will just get bigger and bigger forever.
Read on »
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 10:32 PM • 42 Comments
July 15, 2010
Category: Religion
Any time I am looking for something to blog about, I know the HuffPo religion section will serve up something delicious. In this essay, Peter Enns of the BioLogos Foundation exposes the naivete some people bring to reading the Bible:
I've read enough of the New Atheists to see a pattern in their thinking about the Bible, and it is disturbingly similar to what you see in the Southern Baptist Convention or Bob Jones University. Conservative Christians and New Atheists share naïve views of what the Bible “ought” to be, namely the notion that if the Bible is really the “Word of God,” it will provide accurate historical and scientific information.
Well, yes, actually I do think something called the “Word of God” ought to provide true information about history and science. I thought that was pretty strongly implied by the phrase “Word of God.”
Read on »
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:53 PM • 112 Comments
July 14, 2010
Category: Religion
Be sure to read this excellent post by Julian Sanchez addressing the old chestnut, “Why is there something instead of nothing?”
Sanchez was replying in particular to an appallingly bad essay by Ron Rosenbaum in Slate. How bad? Here's one sample:
Read on »
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 1:33 PM • 20 Comments
July 13, 2010
Category: Evolution
Jerry Coyne has a post up reporting on new polling data on science and religion coming out of Virginia Commonwealth University. Jerry notes that the numbers for the evolution questions are broadly consistent with what past surveys have found. I mostly agree, but there was one number that jumped out at me. Here was the question:
Which of these statements comes closest to your views on the origin of biological life: biological life developed over time from simple substances, but God guided this process, biological life developed over time from simple substances but God did not guide this process, God directly created biological life in its present form at one point in time?
The option, “biological life developed over time from simple substances but God did not guide this process,” was selected by 18% of the people. That struck me as higher than normal.
Read on »
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 1:41 PM • 60 Comments
July 12, 2010
Category: Religion
Karl Giberson has a new column up at the Huffington Post.
Jerry Coyne and I had an interesting exchange yesterday that will appear in a brief video on USA Today's website at some point. The question related to the compatibility of science and religion. Can one accept the modern scientific view of the world and still hold to anything resembling a traditional belief in God?
My answer to this question is “yes, of course,” for I cannot see my way to clear to embrace either of the two alternatives -- a fundamentalist religion prepared to reject science, or a pure scientism that denies the reality of anything beyond what science can discover. But my position seems precarious to me in many ways, since I am getting shot at so vigorously by both sides.
Getting shot at? Spare us the melodrama. Your arguments are being criticized. On blogs. No one is shooting at you, not even metaphorically.
Now let us get down to business.
Read on »
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:20 PM • 22 Comments
