Commentary on the Endless Dispute Between Evolution and Creationism
Jason Rosenhouse received his PhD in mathematics from Dartmouth College in 2000. He subsequently spent three years as a post-doc at Kansas State University. Observing the machinations of the Kansas Board of Education led to his unhealthy obsession with issues related to evolution and creationism. Currently he is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at James Madison University, in Harrisonburg, VA.
May 28, 2007
Category: Anti-Creationism
Tonight's edition of The O'Reilly Factor featured a discussion of the brand new creation museum outside Cincinnati. Guest host John Kasich was sitting in for Bill O'Reilly. Representing darkness and ignorance was creationist impresario Ken Ham, president of Answers in...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 10:34 PM • 74 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 24, 2007
Category: Chess
Alexander Shabalov took clear first place in the just completed U.S. Championship. He scored seven points out of nine (six wins, two draws, one loss) in a field of 36 players. For a while Shabalov seemed on course to match...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 8:24 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
From last night's Hardball:...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:59 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 23, 2007
Category: Science
And speaking of bad science journalism, here's Nature's take on the Gonzalez situation: He's a young astronomer with dozens of articles in top journals; he has made an important discovery in the field of extrasolar planets; and he is a...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 10:27 PM • 22 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Anti-Creationism
The New York Times gives us sneak peek at the big Creation Museum opening in Kentucky this weekend: The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 9:45 PM • 150 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 22, 2007
Category: Religion
I only have time for quick blogging today, but we ought to tak a quick look this account, from The Washington Post, about Newt Gingrich's speech to the graduates at Liberty University: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich decried a “growing...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:12 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 21, 2007
Category: Religion
Over at BeliefNet, Gregg Easterbrook writes the following: Israelis and Palestinians are killing each other by the hundreds in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Hindus and Muslims are slaughtering each other in India, herding neighbors into house or trains...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 8:14 PM • 31 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 18, 2007
Category: Literature
And now for something completely different. As a high school freshman I was assigned to read a heavily abridged version of Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables. I loved it immediately. Later I resolved to procure a copy of the full,...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 9:33 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 17, 2007
Category: Miscellaneous
Two other items caught my eye while I was slumming over at Town Hall. First, here's William Rusher warning us all about the pernicious influence of junk science: As regular readers know, I seldom review books in these columns, preferring...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 10:41 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
The next time you see someone criticize Richard Dawkins for not giving adequate treatment to the modal logic version of the ontological argument, remind him that this column, from Town Hall columnist Doug Giles, is far more representative of the...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 10:22 PM • 41 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Miscellaneous
Well, I guess it's about time I weighed in on the Gonzalez situation. Guillermo Gonzalez is an astronomer at Iowa State University, but he is best known as the coauthor (with Jay Richards) of The Privileged Planet, published by Regnery....
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 10:09 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 15, 2007
Category: Miscellaneous
Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of my call-up to the bigs! Since then I have done 339 posts and have received over 6100 comments. Seems like a good opportunity to thank Seed for putting together this little party, and to...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:39 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
I spent the day in Washington D.C. yesterday. My SciBlings Matthew Nisbet and Chris Mooney were speaking at the annual meeting of the AIBS (that's the American Institute of Biological Sciences). The subject: How to communicate science effectively. They make...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:41 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 12, 2007
Category: Religion
Since I'm criticizing my SciBlings today, permit me a few words about this post from Orli over at Neurontic. Orli is unimpressed with the recent glut of atheist books. She begins by reproducing a segment from a previous post:...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 9:16 PM • 41 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Anti-Creationism
P.Z. Myers does not agree with my take on Mitt Romney's statement regarding evolution. Now, I agree with P.Z. on about 99% of everything in life. But on this one, and on theistic evolution generally, he is way off. Let's...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:18 PM • 49 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 11, 2007
Category: Evolution in Pop Culture
Matthew and Land look like Nobel Prize winners compared to Bill O'Reilly. He had Kirk Cameron on to discuss the vexing questtion of whether God exists. The video is available here. The interview opened with O'Reilly boasting of having defeated...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:34 PM • 80 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution in Pop Culture
On yesterday's edition of the MSNBC chat show Hardball, host Chris Matthews had the following surreal discussion with Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Convention:...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:36 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Anti-Creationism
According to Michael Luo at The New York Times blog, Mitt Romney has clarified his views on evolution. Here's the set-up: Mitt Romney expanded on his belief in evolution in an interview earlier this week, staking out a position that...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:18 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 10, 2007
Category: Religion
So I watched Nightline tonight, buoyed by the fact that the clips that appeared on the website earlier today were not too bad from the atheist standpoint (as I described here.) I should have known better. Having just watched the...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 1:01 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 9, 2007
Category: Politics
You really have to have a look at this column, from David Limbaugh, posted at Town Hall. It is simply not to be believed. The title: Leftist Thought Control. I'd respond to Limbuagh's arguments but for the fact that he...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:49 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Miscellaneous
Robert Farley, writing at Tapped, has an excellent review of the new Spider-Man movie. I think he perfectly summarizes the film's good points and bad points. He makes the point, exactly right in my opinion, that it's not that Spider-Man...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:06 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
If you have any interest, clips from the big Nightline God debate are now online at the ABC News website. Mostly what you'd expect, though I think things went a bit better for the atheists than I had anticipated. Representing...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:43 PM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 7, 2007
Category: Miscellaneous
I saw Spider-Man Three this weekend. I liked it. A lot. The critics have been panning it pretty severely, but they are wrong. They've been complaining that there is too much CGI, that there are too many supervillains, and that...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:53 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
Last Thursday the American Enterprise Institute sponsored a debate on the subject of Darwinism and Conservatism. A video of the debate is available online, but I haven't had a chance to view it yet. In the meantime, I'll have to...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:45 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 4, 2007
Category: Politics
In last night's Republican candidates debate, the topic of evolution was briefly mentioned. As I discussed here, McCain said plainly that he “believed in” evolution, but then quickly qualified his answer by adding that he also believed in God. Three...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:11 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
Moving on, we then had an interesting exchange with Governor Romney: MR. MATTHEWS: Governor Romney, what do you say to Roman Catholic bishops who would deny communion to elected officials who support abortion rights? MR. ROMNEY: I don't say anything...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 2:22 AM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
The New York Times has posted a transcript of the big Republican candidates deabte. So, as promised, let's have a look at some other items of interest. Here's Governor Huckabee trying desperately to avoid saying he believes global warming is...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 1:49 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
There were a number of interesting tidbits in the Republican candidates debate tonight. There was the spectacle of Mitt Romney desperately trying to explain away his flip-flop on abortion. There was the stampede to declare embryonic stem-cell research immoral and...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 12:44 AM • 35 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 3, 2007
Category: Anti-Creationism
Ed Brayton, Orac, and the Hoofnagles have already covered this story (click here, here, and here, respectively.) But why should they have all the fun? Over at Uncommon Descent, Salvador Cordova discusses the MacCallum essay, Now, I've seen several of...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:42 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Writing in PLoS Biology, Catriona MacCallum offers these wise words on the subject of evolution and medicine. The article describes a conference MacCallum attended on the subject. MacCallum writes:...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:11 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
In a pleasant change from the ordinary, Slate has been posting a lot of good stuff lately. Today they have this review of a new book by Janet Browne entitled Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography. The review is by...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:21 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science
Via Larry Moran I came across this article, from the journal Cell, about the growth of the science blogosphere: There are close to 50 million weblogs or blogs for short. Blogs provide an online discussion forum for issues of current...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:14 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 2, 2007
Category: Chess
Writing at Slate, Ann Hulbert offers some thoughts on the use of chess as an educational tool in elementary schools:...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:03 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 1, 2007
Category: Administrative
The all-encompassing, all-devouring, Science Blogs combine has assimilated another member. Be sure to say hello to the brothers Hoofnagle (if that's really their name) who write the denialism blog. Only a few posts so far but all of them worth...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:40 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
Reviews of Hitchens' book are already appearing. Here's one from Bruce DeSilva of the Associated Press. I found two items of interest. The first is an amusing instance of an error in word choice. DeSilva writes: Hitchens is the reincarnation...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:09 PM • 41 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Religion
Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris have had things to themselves for too long. Now it's time for Christopher Hitchens to join the party. His new book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is now available. So,...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 2:50 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
