April 6, 2007
John Wilkins has a post up criticizing P.Z. Myers for criticizing Elaine Pagels for criticizing Richard Dawkins. Maybe we'd better start at the beginning.
An interview with historian Elaine Pagels appeared in Salon. The first two thirds of the interview addressed Pagels' work on the Gnostic…
April 5, 2007
One of the nice things about being a Big Shot science blogger is that sometimes people are willing to send you free copies of their books. One such person is John Farrell, who graciously sent me a copy of his book The Day Without Yesterday: Lematire, Einstein and the Birth of Modern Cosmology,…
April 5, 2007
Sorry for the light blogging this week. I've been spending my time doing all of the things I should have done last week, but didn't because I was writing long blog entries about my experiences in Knoxville.
You might want to have a look at this brief but interesting article from today's New York…
April 2, 2007
Two weeks ago I joined the chorus of Science Bloggers bashing Michael Egnor for his posts at the Discovery Institute's blog. I pointed out a fairly straightforward error in one of his posts. At that time I mentioned that I hadn't jumped in earlier because Egnor's arguments revolved around medical…
April 2, 2007
The folks over at Uncommon Descent have unveiled a new blogger: mathematician Granville Sewell. He's the latest know-nothing to convert a comically simplistic version of the second law of thermodynamics into an anti-evolution argument.
Of course, this is one of those shark-jumping, litmus-test…
April 2, 2007
Paul Cohen, one of the giants of twentieth century mathematics, has died of lung disease at 72.
Cohen's major claim to fame was his resolution of the Continuum Hypothesis. Here are the basic ideas:
Suppose you have two finite sets and you want to show they contain the same number of elements. You…
March 30, 2007
Read: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four.
I walked back to the convention center with the sixteen year old. The rest of the posse went a different direction. He seemed keen to persuade me of the absurdity of attributing consciousness to the purely physical properties of the brain. The…
March 29, 2007
Read: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
So I'm standing on line at Subway, contemplating the very long wait between me and my turkey on wheat, when I happen to overhear part of the conversation going on among the people immediately in front of me. There were four people, an older woman and…
March 28, 2007
Read Part One and Part Two.
Stephen Meyer was next up. Strobel and Richards played their parts well, but, let's face it, the conference thus far had mostly been amateur hour. Strobel stepped in it every time he mentioned something vaguely scientific, but he's not exactly thrust forward as one of…
March 27, 2007
Read Part One of this series here.
At this point Strobel and Meyer left the stage. The room grew dark, and a video came on the large screen to my left. It was an excerpt from the The Privileged Planet, based on the book of the same title. The book was written by astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez…
March 26, 2007
The ID folks put on one of their dog and pony shows in Knoxville, TN this weekend. My curiosity piqued, I decided to check it out.
So I left big bowls of food and water for the cats, piled into the Jason-mobile, pointed it South, and wound up in Knoxville six hours later. Things got off to an…
March 23, 2007
In the mood for a good brain workout? Well search no farther! The fourth installment of the Carnival of Mathematics has arrived! Just look beneath the fold for some first rate math blogging:
Over at Universe of Discourse, Mark Dominus gets us started with some wise words about Bernoulli…
March 22, 2007
Speaking of cranks, all of the recent fuss over Al Gore's testimony to Congress on the subject of global warming has seen the revival of statistician Bjorn Lomborg. You might remember him as the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, the book that was going to set us all straight on the subject…
March 22, 2007
Over at Red State Rabble, Pat Hayes has some further thoughts on the Darwin quote I discussed yesterday. Turns out Dembski's even more vile than I thought. After reproducing the quote in question, Hayes writes:
And Dembski, of course, drives home the point that these sorts of views, while once…
March 21, 2007
While I was slumming over at Dembski's blog I cam across a link to this article, by right-wing superhack David Horowitz. Apparently Dembski's crew thought this little essay was helpful to the cause.
Horowitz is discussing the horrors perpetrated by Women's Studies Departments in the name of “…
March 21, 2007
In yesterday's post I remarked that people seem to lose their minds upon deciding to become anti-evolution advocates. There is no better case in point than William Dembski. Ten years ago he was the star of the ID movement. A well-credentialed scholar with shiny new ideas holding down an actual…
March 21, 2007
As a companion piece to yesterday's post, have a look at this article from today's New York Times. It begins:
Damage to an area near the center of the brain, several inches behind the eyes, transforms the way people make moral judgments in life-or-death situations, scientists are reporting. In a…
March 20, 2007
I only have time for quick blogging today, so why not have a look at this article from The New York Times? It discusses the evolutionary origins of morality. Here's the opening:
Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo…
March 19, 2007
So far I haven't been participating in the anti-Egnor festivities. For those who don't know, Michael Egnor is a medical doctor who lately has become the flavor of the month over at the Discovery Institute's Blog. They get very excited, you see, when someone with actual credentials can be found to…
March 19, 2007
After all of our hard work last week, let us begin with something a bit lighter.
Via Larry Moran I came across this post, at Cosmic Variance, regarding the great muffin joke debate.
I reprint the joke below the fold. I find it very amusing indeed, but, incredibly, there seem to be others who…
March 15, 2007
While I am laying down the law regarding the proper usage of controversial words, allow me to express a few thoughts about spirituality.
P.Z. Myers gave this post, in which he comments on the awarding of the Templeton Prize, the following title: “Spirituality?” Another Word for Lies and Empty Noise…
March 15, 2007
On Tuesday I discussed a post by my SciBling Rob Knop on the subject of spirituality in an age of science. In that post I made three main points: (1) That Rob was badly mischaracterizing the views of Richard Dawkins on the question life's ultimate purpose, (2) That in downplaying the role of God…
March 14, 2007
Allow me to direct your attention to the cover story from the current issue of Newsweek. It provides a useful summary of recent developments in human evolution.
It's a decent article, and I recommend reading it through to the end. There are, however, a few irritating points:
The science of human…
March 13, 2007
That last post makes a nice lead-in to this post, from my fellow Science Blogger Rob Knop. This post is a follow-up to this previous post, in which Knop professed his own Christian faith, and protested what he perceives as a bias towards atheism here at SB. The present post is entitled, “What is…
March 13, 2007
I've just finished rereading Ed Larson's book Summer for the Gods. I first read this book in graduate school, before I had developed any serious interest in evolutionary biology.
The book is about the Scopes' trial and its aftermath. As an account of the trial itself, it pales in comparison to L…
March 13, 2007
I'm a little late to the party, but do go have a look at the third installment of The Carnival of Mathematics over at Michi's Blog. Lots of good procrastination material!
The fourth installment is set to go up on March 23. And I will be the host! If you write any sort of math-related blog entry…
March 8, 2007
It seems tha P.Z. Myers is is turning 50 today and, following the example of Richard Dawkins, we're all supposed to write him a poem.
Seems like a good way to wrap up the week's blogging. So here's my poem, with apologies to Edgar Allen Poe:
THE MYERS
Once upon a bleak December, back in Kansas I…
March 8, 2007
With all the fuss lately about the atheistic books of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, it is easy to overlook another glut of books that tend to threaten religion. I am referring to the series of books intending to provide a scientific basis for the prevalence of religious belief.
Examples of the…
March 7, 2007
According to this news brief, the Idaho Science Teacher's Association has come out against teaching ID in science classes:
Science teachers in Idaho are officially against teaching intelligent design in the state's public schools.
The Idaho Science Teachers Association has approved the official…
March 7, 2007
Have a look at this brief account of a recently unearthed fossil dinosaur. As reported by the International Herald Tribune, it provides yet another example of those transitional forms creationists say do not exist:
Ryan named the new dinosaur Albertaceratops nesmoi, after the region and Cecil…
