jrosenhouse | December 5, 2011Since 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 drinking any water, I recommend swallowing now. Here's a quick taste:
At that announcement, Boston later wrote in the November 1994 issue of Church and State magazine, Gingrich called the 1963 Supreme Court school prayer decision “bad law, bad history and bad culture.” He lauded David Barton's book…
jrosenhouse | December 4, 2011As 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 headline, “Is the Bible a Reliable Moral Guide?” he opens:
I know, I know: given that I teach, preach and write about the Bible for a living, I'm hardly the kind of person you think would ask this kind of question. But maybe it's precisely because I spend so much time with the Bible that this question…
jrosenhouse | December 2, 2011Time 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 featuring Rabbi David Small. Kemelman originally wanted to write books about Judaism, but found it too difficult to get such things published. So he embedded discussions of Jewish thought into his mystery novels. The Rabbi novels were also memorable for their subplots, which typically involved the…
jrosenhouse | December 1, 2011For 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 to keep you from taking seriously the Bible's nasty bits. That seems a bit dubious, but rereading Lose's column it is clear that addressing his argument requires first addressing this essay by Richard Elliott Friedman and Shawna Dolansky
Friedman and Dolansky have written a book called The Bible…
jrosenhouse | November 30, 2011I 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 camera use in the theater, according to The New York Times.
With the newly constructed 2,000 seat theater set to open in 2014, the move is intended to attract younger audiences by cultivating a digital-friendly environment where people can update Facebook and send text messages and tweets throughout…
jrosenhouse | November 29, 2011I 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 slang). So it's nice to see that particular project work its way down the home stretch.
It was probably sometime during 2006 when I first started thinking seriously about writing a book about my experiences at creationist conferences. When I first started mentally outlining the book I honestly…
jrosenhouse | November 14, 2011It'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, on Wednesday afternoon, it's back to the Monty Hall problem. Should be fun!
jrosenhouse | November 8, 2011Writing 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 the Tuesday Birthday Problem (TBP), which a reader has asked me to comment on. Let's dive right in by stating the problem:
You meet a man on the street and he says, “I have two children and one is a son born on a Tuesday.” What is the probability that the other child is also a son?
Seems innocent…
jrosenhouse | November 5, 2011Your 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. But today, what is the point of having this motto? There are no communist threats, and belief in God or a universal spirit among Americans is still holding strong at about 90%, according to a 2011 Gallup Poll. The answer is in the wording of the resolution voted on: “Whereas if religion and…
jrosenhouse | November 3, 2011As 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 speculation, from yesterday's post, regarding what happened:
I picture Jerry making his points calmly but forcefully, and I picture Haught not really saying much of anything.
I had intended to go through Haught's talk carefully and explain, point by point, why I think his argument does not hold up at all…
jrosenhouse | November 1, 2011Later 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 be fun, so if you're anywhere near Richmond at noon tomorrow stop on by!
jrosenhouse | November 1, 2011Update 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 science/religion compatibility in a forum held at the University of Kentucky. Jerry wrote a brief account of what transpired. It seems that Jerry prepared thoroughly for the debate by reading no less than six of Haught's books and watching all of his presentations on You Tube. Haught, on the other…
jrosenhouse | November 1, 2011David 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 philosophers call "the hard problem of consciousness."
It's a hard one indeed, so hard that despite an immense amount of research attention devoted to neurobiology, and despite great advances in our knowledge, I don't believe we are significantly closer to bridging the gap between that which is physical,…
jrosenhouse | October 29, 2011The 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 given, but who are nevertheless on the lookout for truth, searching for God. Such people do not simply assert: “There is no God”. They suffer from his absence and yet are inwardly making their way towards him, inasmuch as they seek truth and goodness. They are “pilgrims of truth, pilgrims of peace…
jrosenhouse | October 28, 2011Writing 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 don't know, this boneheaded theory claims that the human body is simply too remarkable to have come into being through millions of years of haphazard evolution, and that some super-intelligent deity must have been the engineering wizard behind the miracle of our anatomies.
Miracle? Really? If you're…
jrosenhouse | October 27, 2011Today 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. “Arena” s perhaps his most famous story, both for its own merits and for its adaptation into a memorable episode of Star Trek (Captain Kirk vs. the Gorn!) And while I have quite a few of his novels and story anthologies sitting on my shelf (lovingly rescued from the shelves of various used…
jrosenhouse | October 26, 2011Sorry 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 former bishop in the Episcopal Church, writes books with titles like Why Christianity Must Change or Die, and A New Christianity for a New World. He is very critical of all facets of traditional Christian belief. Frankly, his version of Christianity is so theologically liberal it seems awfully…
jrosenhouse | October 14, 2011Here'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 tax revenue from personal income tax, how much tax revenue came from corporate tax, how much revenue came from capitol gains tax, how much revenue from the death tax. We added them all up and you do a simple regression analysis and say in order to reduce this much on corporate income, personal income…
jrosenhouse | October 12, 2011My 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's the opening:
I'm sure you have heard the famous saying from the Star Trek TV series, “Beam me up, Scotty!” The 1960s series, which has become a cult classic (I have to admit I've watched many episodes myself!), told stories of the crew of a futuristic starship, the Enterprise, as it explored…
jrosenhouse | October 11, 2011Here'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 not understand what is being asked.
Everyone knows there is friction between scientists and philosophers of science. Richard Feynman spoke for many scientists when he quipped that, “Philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.” From the other side, it is not…