jrosenhouse | March 19, 2012Jimmy Carter has a new book out about the Bible. He discusses it in this short interview over at HuffPo.
He takes a straightforward approach to dealing with morally or scientifically troubling passages:
Thank you so much for talking with me President Carter. As I warned, I am going to be asking the tough questions. So ... Did God write the Bible?
God inspired the Bible but didn't write every word in the Bible. We know, for instance that stars can't fall on the earth, stars are much larger than the earth. That was a limitation of knowledge of the universe or physics, or astronomy at that…
jrosenhouse | March 18, 2012Apparently there's a rally coming up in Washington DC:
The Reason Rally is an event sponsored by many of the country's largest and most influential secular organizations. It will be free to attend and will take place in Washington, D.C. on March 24th, 2012 from 10:00AM - 6:00PM at the National Mall. There will be music, comedy, speakers, and so much more. We hope you can join us!
I'm so there!
But it gets even better. You see, the following day the American Atheists will be holding their annual convention:
The Annual Convention of American Atheists will be held March 25th and 26th, 2012 (…
jrosenhouse | March 15, 2012This article is so powerful that it pretty much defies comment. It is a first-person account of a pregnant woman in Texas who learned that her son would be born with horrible, painful birth defects, if he survived long enough to be born at all. Thanks to the vile misogynists who run the state, she was made to suffer several further rounds of emotional torture before she could avail herself of the only viable option, an abortion. All I can say is that the Republicans who support these laws are monsters. If you vote for them, then you're a monster too.
Here's the opening, but no excerpt can…
jrosenhouse | March 14, 2012Back in October, philosopher Michael Lynch published thie essay in The New York Times He was discussing the problem of finding an epistemic justification for our confidence in science. A few days ago The Times continued the discussion with this exchange between Lynch and physicist Alan Sokal. The two pieces together are rather long. There is a lot to discuss, too much, in fact, for just one post. It seems to me, though, that both gentlemen are wrong about a central point in the discussion.
Here's Lynch, from his original essay:
Rick Perry's recent vocal dismissals of evolution, and his…
jrosenhouse | March 12, 2012As I write this, the lead headline over at HuffPo is, “Shock Poll: 52% of Mississippi GOP Voters Say Obama is a Muslim,” leading to this story. The shock, I would think, is that the number is so low.
jrosenhouse | March 10, 2012I watched HBO's film Game Change tonight, about the rise and fall of Sarah Palin in the 2008 presidential race. It was pretty good! Which is to say that it makes Palin look pretty bad.
As presented in the film, Palin is not merely uninterested in filling the gaps in her understanding of domestic and foreign policy, but is actually incapable of learning anything even when she tries. Her decent performance in the debate with Joe Biden is presented, quite correctly, as the result of pure cynicism. When her prep team realizes that it is simply impossible to bring her up to speed on the…
jrosenhouse | March 9, 2012Continuing with the process of getting caught up on things I should have blogged about a while ago, let's take a look at this bizarre article from Bryan Appleyard, published in The Guardian. It is a contribution to a familiar genre, in which the New Atheists are criticized for being so mean and nasty:
Two atheists - John Gray and Alain de Botton - and two agnostics - Nassim Nicholas Taleb and I - meet for dinner at a Greek restaurant in Bayswater, London. The talk is genial, friendly and then, suddenly, intense when neo-atheism comes up. Three of us, including both atheists, have suffered…
jrosenhouse | March 8, 2012I'm way behind on this, since other bloggers have already piled on, but I wanted to comment on this essay by Alain de Botton. Here's how it opens:
Probably the most boring question you can ask about religion is whether or not the whole thing is “true.” Unfortunately, recent public discussions on religion have focused obsessively on precisely this issue, with a hardcore group of fanatical believers pitting themselves against an equally small band of fanatical atheists.
De Botton hails from that segment of the nonbelieving population that endlessly trumpets its own moderation. Not for them…
jrosenhouse | March 4, 2012The electronic version of Among the Creationists is now available! Yay! Click here for the Kindle version. Click here for the Nook version. The print version will be available soon.
Buy it, read it, and let me know what you think!
jrosenhouse | March 1, 2012Over at HuffPo, paleontologist Robert Asher serves up the standard cliches about reconciling science and religion:
For many theists, even if they would phrase it differently, “religion” requires a deity who leaves behind evidence in a similar fashion as a human being might do, like Santa Claus not finishing his cookies or a toga-clad Charlton Heston dispensing rules on stone tablets, capriciously ignoring his own natural laws. Many anti-theists agree: if God exists, “he” has to leave behind evidence in a human-like fashion. Notably, such a perspective is at the core of the so-called “…
jrosenhouse | February 28, 2012The Mathematical Association of America has now posted a thorough review of the Big Sudoku Book. The review is by Mark Hunacek, of Iowa State University. His verdict:
This is a delightful book which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. In some sense it is hardly surprising that I would enjoy it, since I enjoy Sudoku, mathematics and good writing, and this book combines all three of these. However, I doubt anyone needs to enjoy all three to enjoy this book; a person with very limited background in mathematics, or a person without much experience solving Sudoku puzzles, could still find something…
jrosenhouse | February 27, 2012If you have a few minutes to kill, go check out this podcast over at Sol Lederman's website “Wild About Math.” Laura Taalman and I discuss the BSB (by which I mean the Big Sudoku Book). We talk Sudoku, math, education and plenty of other stuff. We originally planned on talking for thirty minutes. but everything went so well that we ended up hanging around for fifty. So go enjoy and let me know what you think!
jrosenhouse | February 26, 2012Me and my homeys got together last week for one more run at the US Amateur Team East:
The fellow in the Rocky Balboa hat is Ned Walthall. In the middle is Curt Kimbler, followed by Doug Proll on the end. How long have we been playing chess together? Well, let's just say that Ned used to give me rides to chess tournaments, back in the days before I was driving.
As big a chess fan as I am, I haven't been playing many tournaments over the last few years. Competing seriously means putting in some serious time and effort, and I just haven't felt too motivated in that direction lately.…
jrosenhouse | February 17, 2012Well, I'm off to sunny Parsippany, New Jersey to participate in the annual chess extravaganza known as the US Amateur Team East. It's the best tournament of the year, and, frankly, pretty much the only one I still play in. See you when I return!
jrosenhouse | February 15, 2012If anyone reading this lives near Harrisonburg, Virginia, let me encourage you, in the strongest possible terms, to check out the high school's production of the musical Les Miserables. You have until Sunday. I've seen some good high school shows in my time, but this is really something special. The high school seems to have an exceptionally deep bench of very talented people this year.
I am something of a Les Miz aficionado. I regard it as quite simply the finest novel ever written. I haven't decided what number two is, but it's pretty far back. I even have a vague idea for a book (…
jrosenhouse | February 14, 2012Here's a logic puzzle for you: Suppose I offer you a million dollars, in return for which you agree to answer a certain yes/no question. You can answer either truthfully or falsely as you desire. That's it. Should you accept that offer? Solution below the fold.
Those of you reading this who enjoy logic puzzles are probably familiar with Raymond Smullyan. I was pretty young, eight or nine I think, when I first discovered his writing. Somehow I noticed his book What is the Name of This Book? sitting in a bookstore, and I persuaded my parents to buy it for me. The book opened with some…
jrosenhouse | February 12, 2012The current issue of The Philosopher's Magazine contains a lengthy interview with philosopher Elliott Sober, a prominent philosopher of biology. Most of the interview focuses on the problem of reconciling evolution and theism, with Sober serving up the standard talking points. For me the interview is a reminder of what I find most frustrating about theistic evolution. Too often the defender of reconciliation acts as though his job is done as soon as he has tossed off a logically possible scenario that includes both God and evolution.
The interview does not seem to be freely available…
jrosenhouse | February 10, 2012Over the last few days, there has been no shortage of crazed invective on the contraception issue from certain religious folks. For them, the notion that religious institutions providing public services ought to play by the same rules as everyone else constitutes tyranny. So we have Rick Santorum, for example, casually invoking images of the guillotine and the French Revolution.
This is all just election-year grandstanding, of course. It is this year's Ground Zero Mosque. If this were February 2013, or if a Repeublican were President, we would not be hearing the usual bleats and howls…
jrosenhouse | February 2, 2012Here's Alabama state senator Shadrack McGill explaining why it's a bad idea to raise teachers's salaries:
If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach.
To go in and raise someone's child for eight hours a day, or many people's children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn't want to do it, OK?
And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It's just in them to do. It's the ability that God give 'em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn't…
jrosenhouse | February 1, 2012By now I'm sure we are all familiar with the Jessica Ahlquist case in Cranston, RI. The New York Times provides a helpful summary:
She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.
A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer's presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding…