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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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Creationism:
Category: Creationism
Todd Wood is a creationist. He is a professor at Bryan College, named for William Jennings Bryan, who prosecuted John Scopes in 1925. He is, in particular, a professor of baraminology, the creationist notion that his particular Christian God created the "kinds" in the first week, and that by careful measurement, he can identify those "kinds." He thinks the earth is less than 10,000 years old. He thinks evolution is wrong, but he also freely acknowledges that it is the very best scientific knowledge available, and has been on a minor crusade to move other creationists away from the absurdities...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:50 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
There's been much ink spilled lately about the latest work from the authors of Freakonomics. I should say before getting into this that I haven't read their last book, and don't plan to read the sequel. I also haven't read any of Malcolm Gladwell's books, for largely the same reasons (note that the Freakonomists apparently acknowledge that they cut one section of their latest book because Gladwell scooped them). Basically, I see these sorts of books as attempts by minimally-informed dilettantes to insert themselves into complex topics by applying a canned methodology and pretending that the naive solutions resulting from...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 8:04 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
Jason Rosenhouse, criticizing Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum's reply to Jerry Coyne's review of their book in Science, ends with this thought: You can not consistently argue that one side hurts the cause every time they open their mouths, but then object that you are not telling them to keep quiet. Free speech has absolutely nothing to do with this, as has been explained to M and K many times. No one thinks they want the government to come in and do anything. To be honest, I'm baffled that M and K persist in getting so irate on this point....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:09 PM • 90 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
I'll be back in Kansas to take part in the celebration of KCFS's tenth anniversary, and I hope to see you all there...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 4:15 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
Slacktivist is talking sense. He notes a common problem in dealing with creationists: I find I'm unable to communicate with them -- not just because I'm less fluent in the language of science, but because when they start talking about science then words no longer seem to mean what they mean for the rest of us. They use familiar-sounding words, but you quickly realize that they're using these familiar words in unfamiliar ways, using them to communicate vastly, irreconcilably different things.In particular, they use the word "theory" in ways that don't reflect the term's actual meaning in science. The "just...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 6:27 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
It seems like a better hypothesis than that religion is epistemically incompatible with science. (Trying to replace political science with CNN? Really?) Consider. Roughly half of scientists are religious, but fewer than 10% are conservatives. John McCain, the leader of the Republican party, denigrated astronomy education by calling a star-projector for a planetarium "foolishness" and "an overhead projector." His hand-picked successor suggested that fruit fly research should be defunded, and suggested that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth together. By contrast, the Catholic church's leader said that evolution is "more than an hypothesis," adding "The convergence in the results of...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 2:32 PM • 31 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
The Disco. 'Stute is upset. Not only has disco been overtaken by that rap music, but you can't even hear the good stuff any more. Also, no one returns their phone calls. Atheist Richard Dawkins dodges Debate Challenge: Ray Comfort, author of the Amazon.com’s best seller, You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think – is offering $20,000 to Richard Dawkins (probably the world’s most famous atheist) simply for Dawkins to appear in a public debate on the issue of the beginnings of the universe with him. However, it seems Prof Dawkins would rather keep...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 8:51 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
Newsweek interviews Richard Dawkins: Are those incompatible positions: to believe in God and to believe in evolution? No, I don't think they're incompatible if only because there are many intelligent evolutionary scientists who also believe in God--to name only Francis Collins [the geneticist and Christian believer recently chosen to head the National Institutes of Health] as an outstanding example. So it clearly is possible to be both. This book more or less begins by accepting that there is that compatibility. The God Delusion did make a case against that compatibility in my own mind. I wonder whether you might be...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 3:57 AM • 93 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
Darwinism and popular culture: Darwinists resort to whining when they are not popular (Also, this just in, water runs downhill): In responding to a news item from two weeks ago, I'll assume Creation still has gotten a distributor. Therefore it's crummy and boring and will never get a distributor, as it did last week. With Bonus Shorter D'oh! Leary: Origin of life theory: Complexity theorist Kauffman moving on: I don't know who Stuart Kauffman is or what he does, but he sure isn't a genius. Neither is Bill Dembski, who at least has the courtesy not to self-aggrandize, for instance...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 7:45 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
Last Friday I made some remarks about polling and evolution and atheism that got some knickers in twists. To summarize: Kevin Padian was asked to comment on a stupid stunt by Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, who are passing out copies of the Origin of Species along with a foreword that alleges Darwin caused the Holocaust. Padian was appropriately dismissive, and noted that "The two kinds people who believe that religion and evolution can not coexist are extreme atheists and extreme religious fundamentalists. Everyone else doesn’t really have a problem. [A majority] of Americans believe that a belief in god...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 3:01 PM • 80 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
