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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.
July 31, 2008
Category: Religion
Karl Giberson offers up the usual cliches of the genre in in this essay for Salon. Those mean ol' atheists are trying to make a religion out of science, but savvy clear thinkers like him see the problems with that...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 8:01 PM • 42 Comments •
July 29, 2008
Category: Mathematics
Continuing my perusal of the new Notices of the American Mathematical Society, I came across this review (PDF format) of John Allen Paulos recent book Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up. The review...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:31 PM • 64 Comments •
July 28, 2008
Category: Mathematics
Via Mark Chu-Carroll, I just finished reading this article by mathematician Keith Devlin. He writes: Let's start with the underlying fact. Multiplication simply is not repeated addition, and telling young pupils it is inevitably leads to problems when they subsequently...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:10 PM • 31 Comments •
July 24, 2008
Category: Miscellaneous
Time for lighter fare. There are some really good movies out there... Warning: A few minor spoilers ahead....
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:28 PM • 22 Comments •
July 23, 2008
Category: Evolution
There's an interesting discussion going on between Larry Moran and Richard Dawkins. The subject is the title of Dawkins' 1996 book Climbing Mt. Improbable. It started with this post over at Larry's blog. He included Dawkins in his list of...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:00 PM • 41 Comments •
July 22, 2008
Category: Religion
James Carse directed the Religious Studies Program at New York University for thirty years. In this interview with Salon, regarding his new book The Religious Case Against Belief, he gives us a taste of what he learned from all that...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:04 PM • 60 Comments •
July 21, 2008
Category: Mathematics
The new issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society turned up in my mailbox today. It features an interesting, if slightly disturbing, editorial (PDF format) by CUNY mathematician Melvyn Nathanson. He wonders about how confident we can really...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 3:52 PM • 22 Comments •
July 14, 2008
Category: Literature
For Part One, go here. Let us return now to the weighty topic of great locked room mysteries. In Part One I focused on the works of John Dickson Carr, who is certainly a central figure in the history of...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 9:18 PM • 23 Comments •
July 12, 2008
Category: Religion
Andrew Sullivan was not amused by P. Z.'s post: It is one thing to engage in free, if disrespectful, debate. It is another to repeatedly assault and ridicule and abuse something that is deeply sacred to a great many people....
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:51 PM • 53 Comments •
Category: Religion
As I was mulling over what I wanted to say about the PZ Myers / William Donohue kerfuffle, I came across this post (via Bora) by Jeff Fecke, that said perfectly exactly what I was thinking. Go read it....
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 1:33 AM • 17 Comments •
July 10, 2008
Category: Literature
Somehow I'm not in the mood for a heavy post today. So how about an essay on another of my favorite topics: Locked Room mysteries. Here are the first two paragraphs of what I regard as the finest detective story...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:09 PM • 18 Comments •
July 8, 2008
Category: Evolution
Let's see. An op-ed in the New York Times entitled “Doubleday and Darwin”, with the following opening paragraph: As I sat in my high school math class one day, my teacher asked a question that I doubt will find a...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:27 PM • 15 Comments •
July 7, 2008
Category: Religion
Remember a few posts back, when we saw Michael Ruse lecturing Richard Dawkins as follows: More seriously, Dawkins is entirely ignorant of the fact that no believer-with the possible exception of some English clerics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-has...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:46 PM • 147 Comments •
July 6, 2008
Category: Anti-Creationism
During my recent trip to the Creation Museum I picked up a copy of David DeWitt's book Unraveling the Origins Controversy. DeWitt is the Director of the Center for Creation Studies at Liberty University. It's been a while since I've...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 7:40 PM • 5 Comments •
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