Reality is always more complicated than you think.
Profile
Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine focusing in Neuroscience. He is due to graduate in 2032. He received a BS and a MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University -- where he spent most of his time drinking heavily and building vegetable catapults instead of learning information that would now be eminently useful. When he is not failing terrifically to perform his sworn duties, he enjoys watching bad movies, ethnic food, and running.
Pure Pedantry is a blog about science -- social sciences and otherwise -- as well as academic and scientific culture. No one can live on science alone, so I also like to dwell on pop culture, periodically explore the humanities, and indulge in other types of geeky goodness.
Jake is joined periodically by two wonderful guest bloggers: Kara Contreary and Kate Seip. See the About Page.
DISCLAIMERS: 1) Jake Young is not a licensed physician (yet). He is merely a medical student. The information published on this site is not intended for use in medical decision making. Please seek advice from a licensed, medical professional before making any health decisions. 2) The opinions expressed are my own or those of my co-bloggers. They do not represent the views of SEED magazine or the educational establishments we currently attend.
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Religion:
A cat hit by a motorcycle in Port Harcourt, Nigeria allegedly turned into a middle-aged woman. Good thing there were lots of people around to kill a second cat-person and beat the accident survivor into a confession of witchcraft. What...
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Posted on May 31, 2008 9:26 AM • 3 Comments •
...this has got to be in the top ten at least. I haven't been following this much, but Ben Stein is coming out with a movie called Expelled. The movie purports to challenge Darwinism's monopoly of classroom instruction -- which...
Posted on March 21, 2008 9:04 AM • 1 Comments •
A Christmas present, maybe? Maybe not. A "neurotheology" researcher called Dr Michael Persinger has developed something called the "God Helmet" lined with magnets to help you in your quest: it sounds like typical bad science fodder, but it's much more...
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Posted on March 12, 2008 9:52 AM • 3 Comments •
And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. (Exodus 3:2) Moses was high when...
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Posted on March 5, 2008 1:45 PM • 5 Comments •
Writing in the City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple criticizes the equivalence of religion with the immoral and atheism with the moral: Lying not far beneath the surface of all the neo-atheist books is the kind of historiography that many of us...
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Posted on October 29, 2007 1:45 PM • 9 Comments •
Last week, I posted a long argument for why I believe pairing science and atheism is a poor strategic choice for scientists. The response to that article has I think been largely positive, but I do want to address the...
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Posted on September 17, 2007 10:21 AM • 29 Comments •
In 1922, John Dewey, pragmatist philosopher and champion of Progressive education, wrote an article in The New Republic entitled "The American Intellectual Frontier." The subject was William Jennings Bryan's attack on evolution that would later culminate in the Scopes...
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Posted on September 12, 2007 3:34 PM • 69 Comments •
As an American living in Europe, I am at times accutely aware of the differing levels of religiosity between my country of origin and my current residence. But an article from this past weekend's edition of the Wall Street Journal...
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Posted on July 18, 2007 9:11 AM • 1 Comments •
The latest issue of Science magazine (May 18) has several reviews devoted to the coming of age of behavioral neuroscience. However, one by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg caught my eye. The review is entitled "Childhood Origins of Adult...
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Posted on May 23, 2007 11:07 AM • 9 Comments •
Daniel Lazare, writing in the Nation, has an interesting article about differences of opinion even among atheists: This is the problem, more or less, confronting today's reinvigorated atheist movement. For a long time, religion had been doing quite nicely as...
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Posted on May 21, 2007 11:19 AM • 5 Comments •
The Economist has a great article summarizing all the ways in which the debate between evolution and religion has gone global. It also does a good job of analyzing the different strains within the American debate, depicting it as much...
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Posted on April 26, 2007 1:31 PM • 16 Comments •
The NYTimes magazine has an excellent article on the controversy within science as to the meaning of God. This is different from the cultural controversy as to the validity of Revelation because it is concerned with why religion may have...
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Posted on March 5, 2007 10:36 AM • 1 Comments •
Dinesh D'Souza, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, defends organized religion from criticism that links it with violence and wars: - In recent months, a spate of atheist books have argued that religion represents, as "End of Faith" author Sam...
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Posted on November 22, 2006 11:58 AM • 11 Comments •
I don't really have time to post stuff today, but this post by Chad at Uncertain Principles is really good. It relates the failure to fully disprove Einstein's idea of Local Hidden Variables (read it and he will explain) to...
Posted on October 27, 2006 12:03 PM • 6 Comments •
