Now on ScienceBlogs: HeartlandGate: Anti-Science Institute's Insider Reveals Secrets
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 30, 2010
Category: Religion
Novelist Anne Rice, best known for her series of novels about vampires, has some choice words for institutional Christianity: For those who care, and I understand if you don't. Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 4:30 PM • 19 Comments •
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...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:10 PM • 111 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...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 5:29 PM • 43 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...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 1:02 AM • 15 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:...
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...
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....
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 10:32 PM • 45 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:...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 6:53 PM • 113 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...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 1:33 PM • 21 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...
Posted by Jason Rosenhouse at 1:41 PM • 60 Comments •
