December 5, 2011
Since it now seems that Newt Gingrich has a decent shot at becoming the Republican nominee for President, let me encourage you to have a look at this post, by Sarah Posner. She provides an impressive rundown of Gingrich's many jaw-dropping statements about church and state. If you're currently…
December 4, 2011
As I mentioned at the start of Thursday's post, my discussion of the Friedman and Dolansky column about homosexuality in the Bible was really a prelude to discussing this essay by David Lose.
Lose seeks to persuade us that the Bible is in some sense a reliable guide to morality. Beneath the…
December 2, 2011
Time now for the third installment in my series about great short stories. (Previous installments can be found here: Part One and Part Two.)
Today we focus on “The Nine Mile Walk,” by Harry Kemelman. If you are familiar with Kemelman it is probably because of his series of detective novels…
December 1, 2011
For a while now I've been meaning to have a look at this essay by David Lose, on the question of whether or not the Bible is a reliable guide to morality. His answer is a qualified yes, where the qualification seems to be that you bring to your exegesis a highly-developed sense of right and wrong…
November 30, 2011
I think I am now officially old. I think this because I was horrified by this article, from HuffPo:
Movie theaters and entertainment venues have long banned the use of smartphones during performances.
But now one venue just outside Seattle is reversing that etiquette by welcoming cellphone and…
November 29, 2011
I just spent the last week working out of my New Jersey office, which is to say I was visiting the family for Thanksgiving. Before that I was spending a lot of time going over the page proofs and compiling the index for the BECB (the big evolution/creationism book, for those not up on the local…
November 14, 2011
It's time to hit the road once more. Tomorrow I am off to Newport News, VA, to visit Christopher Newport University. I shall be delivering not one, but two edge of your seat, barn-burners. Tomorrow afternoon I shall be speaking about evolution and creationism, based on my forthcoming book. Then…
November 8, 2011
Writing in 1866, John Venn (of Venn diagram fame) wrote:
To many persons the mention of Probability suggests little else than the notion of a set of rules, very ingenious and profound rules no doubt, with which mathematicians amuse themselves by setting and solving puzzles.
A classic example is…
November 5, 2011
Your homework for today is to go read Michael Shermer's op-ed in the L. A. Times about the big “In God We Trust” vote. Shermer's take?
As risible a reason as this was for knocking out a few bricks in the wall separating state and church, it was at least understandable in the context of the times…
November 3, 2011
As I noted in yesterday's post, John Haught has relented and has allowed the video of his appearance with Jerry Coyne to be posted online. I am pleased that he ultimately decided to do the right thing.
Having now had a chance to watch the two presentations, let me say that I stand by my…
November 1, 2011
Later today I will hop into the Jasonmobile and sally forth to Richmond, VA, where I will be the guest speaker in the Discrete Math Seminar at Virginia Commonwealth University. I will be giving an edge-of-your-seat barn burner of a talk called, “Cheeger Constants of Graphs and Surfaces.” Should…
November 1, 2011
Update 11/2/11, 11:26pm: John Haught has relented, and the video has now been released. You can find it here. Haught has also provided a lengthy explanation of his initial refusal to allow the tape to be released. Jerry has replied.
A few weeks ago, Jerry Coyne and John Haught discussed…
November 1, 2011
David Barash has a short, but interesting post about consciousness. Responding to someone who asked him about the most difficult unsolved problem in science, Barash writes:
I answered without hesitation: How the brain generates awareness, thought, perceptions, emotions, and so forth, what…
October 29, 2011
The National Catholic Register has the full text of a recent speech given by Pope Benedict XVI. It includes this:
In addition to the two phenomena of religion and anti-religion, a further basic orientation is found in the growing world of agnosticism: people to whom the gift of faith has not been…
October 28, 2011
Writing at the Huffington Post, John Blumenthal offers a humorous take on intelligent design:
Thanks to Michele Bachmann, the tired concept of Intelligent Design has once again become a topic of conversation among Creationists, most of whom, ironically, often sound like Neanderthals. In case you…
October 27, 2011
Today we continue our series about great short stories. (Click here for Part One.)
For several decades Fredric Brown was a prolific author of mysteries and science fiction, producing most of his work in the 1940's and 50's. I could have chosen several of his works for inclusion in this series. “…
October 26, 2011
Sorry for the disappearing act. It seems like every time I work up a good head of blog steam, something happens to knock me off track. This term is turning out to be unusually busy. But I did want to poke my head up to take note of this recent essay, at HuffPo, by John Shelby Spong.
Spong, a…
October 14, 2011
Here's Herman Cain, from an interview with Chris Wallace:
Here is how we arrived at it. I had some of the best economists in this country help me to develop this plan. You know, my background is mathematics. It was a simple regression analysis. We took the government data and looked at how much…
October 12, 2011
My new issue of Answers Update, the monthly newsletter of Answers in Genesis, turned up in the mail today. It's a twenty-four page magazine, more than half of which contains advertisements for their various products. But there is also a lead article on the cover, written by Ken Ham himself. Here…
October 11, 2011
Here's Timothy Gowers, a Fields Medalist, from his book Mathematics: A Very Short Intorduction:
However, there certainly are philosophers who take seriously the question of whether numbers exist, and this distinguishes them from mathematicians, who either find it obvious that numbers exist or do…
October 9, 2011
This is the first in what will be an occasional series about some of my favorite short stories. These are the sorts of stories that remind me of what I aspire to as a writer. They are the ones I enjoy partly for their engaging plot lines, and partly for the skillfulness of the writing itself.…
October 8, 2011
The latest issue of Free Inquiry magazine turned up in the mail this week. Lots of interesting material, as always. One article that caught my eye was “Building on a Religious Background,” by C. L. Hanson. Hanson grew up as a Mormon, but is now an atheist. She currently lives in Switzerland and…
October 7, 2011
The brou ha ha over original sin continues apace. Andres Sullivan has replied to Jerry Coyne. It's a very bad post, arrogant but contentless. Jerry has already delivered the well-deserved spanking.
Sullivan uncorks nuggets like this:
I would argue that original sin is a mystery that makes sense…
October 6, 2011
The big original sin debate goes on. Ross Douthat has weighed in, as has Andrew Sullivan in this post. Both gentleman go after Jerry Coyne. Jerry has already stolen some of my thunder by replying himself (here and here.) He's a much more efficient blogger than I am. Still, I'll throw in my two…
September 28, 2011
I'm pathetically excited about this:
The last we heard of the troubled and mystical Danny Torrance, he had just conquered the malicious Overlook Hotel, losing his father, Jack, along the way. Over thirty years later, his story will be continued via Stephen King's sequel to The Shining, titled…
September 26, 2011
Forthcoming from Oxford University Press:
The book is partly a memoir of my experiences at various creationist conferences, partly an exploration of creationist thought and argumentation, and partly a broader discussion of issues related to science and religion. I'm pretty happy with how it came…
September 25, 2011
Huffington Post has a short article up about the phenomenon of Jews who don't believe in God. Turns out there are a lot of us:
Atheism is entrenched in American Judaism. In researching their book American Grace, authors Robert Putnam and David Campbell found that half of all American Jews doubt…
September 23, 2011
I am not now, nor have I ever been, married. Most of the time I like being single, but I do have my moments of weakness. They're infrequent and don't usually last long, but every once in a while, if I squint a bit and tilt my head just so, I can just see the appeal of marriage. On the other hand…
September 14, 2011
Picking up where yesterday's post left off, we have one more point to consider. Recall that the set-up here is that Edward Feser suggested a reinterpretation of the Adam and Eve story to bring it into line with modern genetics. In particular, Feser's scenario hypothesizes that Adam and Eve were…
September 13, 2011
Edward Feser has posted a reply to my previous post about original sin. I shall reply in two posts, but that will be it from my side. If Feser wants to reply to these posts then he can have the last word.
The problem is this: Several lines of evidence tell us that there was never a time when the…
