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Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at the National Center for Science Education. He is also a graduate student at the University of Kansas, completing a doctorate in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. When not modeling species distributions or battling creationists, he writes about developments in progressive politics and the sciences.
The opinions expressed here are his own, do not reflect the official position of the NCSE. Indeed, older posts may no longer reflect his own official position.
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Culture Wars:
Category: Culture Wars
A week or so ago, John West pimped a new Disco. Inst. website on faith and religion in the Washington Post's On Faith blog. His claims were as mendacious as you would expect from looking at the site, most bizarrely inventing a movement of "new theistic evolutionists," when the folks he names are simply repeating a position on the compatibility of faith and science which has been part of Christian theology since the time of Augustine of Hippo. You don't need to know more about West's piece. NCSE Faith Project Director Peter Hess responded in On Faith today. His brief...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 5:55 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
Why Aren't Scientists Allowed to Believe In God? It's a shame that some people try to stop scientists from believing in God.Is Darwinian Evolution Compatible with Religion? Scientists who accept evolution are wrong to believe in God.Sounds like they need to work on message discipline....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:27 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
Martin Cothran, the hateful bigot who touted the words of an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier on Holocaust Remembrance Day, is confused. He cannot fathom why I called him a moral monster. The reason is simple. On June 4, less than a week after George Tiller was shot and killed in his church, Cothran advocated that "the murder of abortionists" be "safe and legal." This is disgusting. Cothran offers no particular defense for the conscienceless (and tasteless, natch) attempt at justifying cold-blooded murder. Like Scott Roeder, who pulled the trigger on George Tiller, Cothran is "deadly serious." The cold-blooded murder of a...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:44 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
Apologies for the profanity in the cartoon above, but it is as nothing compared to the eldritch horror quoted below. I offer Penny Arcade's theory as a possible explanation of where this comes from. Martin Cothran, who blogs for the Disco. Inst., who purports to teach logic (though he's has odd affections for elementary fallacies), and who works for Kentucky's Focus on the Family ally, wants to "keep the murder of abortionists safe and legal." Seeking clarification of that insane title, we learn that: Reading Ann Coulter is, for me, something of a guilty pleasure, given her gift of...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 3:07 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
Hilzoy and Megan McArdle have had an exchange over abortion, which includes, as these discussions always do, a ton of talking-past-each-other. This tends to happen, because anti-choicers tend to ignore the pregnant woman, and put all their attention on the well-being of the embryo (and my friend John B., a member of George Tiller's church, has a great post showing how this framing of the issue has influenced our national discourse on abortion). Pro-choice advocates are focused on the pregnant woman's rights, and have diverse views on the moral status of an embryo. This results in one person trying to...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 1:49 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
Medgar Evers was a civil rights activist in Mississippi. Growing up black in a state where dark skin was a crime, he had the courage to stand up for his rights and the rights of his friends and family. He organized boycotts, sued for admission to a segregated law school, and became field secretary for the NAACP. His house was attacked with Molotov cocktails, but he didn't back down. In Phil Ochs' immortal phrasing, "They tried to burn his home and they beat him to the ground/ But deep inside they both knew what it took to bring him down."...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:42 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
Texas Board of Education chairman Don McLeroy's nomination to continue in that capacity was just rejected by the Texas Senate. For all the gory details, check out TFN's liveblog. The vote was 19-11 in favor, and requires 2/3 for approval. The Senate President briefly had trouble with the math, either thinking 19>20 or that 30 * 2/3 ≠ 20, but it all sorted out. Check out my article on events in Texas for more background on McLeroy's antics....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 2:04 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
Reluctant as I am to endorse anything on America's Shittiest Website™, this article should be required reading for any politically active atheist. It's written as advice for social conservatives/political evangelicals, but for reasons which have implications I won't get into, it applies equally well to the New Atheists or whatever their favored term is these days. Maggie Gallagher, a loon associated with various fringe evangelical projects like limiting access to marriage and complaining loudly about how much sex everyone else is having, observes: Social conservatives simply have not been in politics. We lack institutions that can defeat our enemies and...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 7:02 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
Martin Cothran takes a break from defending Pat Buchanan's anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial to pick a fight over the definition of the Holocaust. All you need to know is that the definition employed by Yad Vashem, the Anti-Defamation League, historians at the Holocaust History Project, and Wikipedia (for what it's worth) all use is now my "pet definition of the Holocaust." Apparently he also thinks I "sa[id] that Focus on the Family defends Holocaust denial," which I never did (a typo in an earlier post could have been misinterpreted to indicate that, so I've clarified that post). I did say...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 4:53 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
I've been curious how close Disco. Inst. blogger and Focus on the Family stooge Martin Cothran would get to defending Holocaust denial in the abstract, rather than defending the Holocaust denial of Pat Buchanan specifically. In comments at his blog, Cothran inches closer. I observed that: You say Buchanan "does not deny the Holocaust." I've offered the generally accepted definition of the Holocaust, and shown that Buchanan denies it. You've offered no definition of the Holocaust, and point only to the fact that Buchanan uses the word. This is like the old joke: Q:If you call a tail a leg,...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 3:18 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
