jrosenhouse | December 6, 2010Jerry Coyne and P. Z. Myers, those little scamps, are kvetching about the NCSE again. It seems that the NCSE posted a link to this series of videos defending the compatibility of evolution and Christianity. Here is the NCSE's post:
Interested in exploring the issues raised by science and faith? A free webcast series promises to assemble “thirty of today's most inspiring Christian leaders and esteemed scientists for a groundbreaking dialogue on how an evolutionary worldview can enrich your life, deepen your faith, and bless our world.” To be broadcast throughout December 2010 and January…
jrosenhouse | December 5, 2010Over at HuffPo, John Farrell has an interesting post up about the dissatisfacton with ID expressed by many Catholics. He writes:
The Discovery Institute has from its beginning claimed it would in short order get actual scientists to consider intelligent design as a viable scientific theory, by publishing peer-reviewed articles in the leading science journals.
But they've failed. And no matter how much cheering the Institute Fellows get from friendly audiences at Bible schools and church socials, the reality is: this was not the way things were supposed to turn out.
And now, they're losing…
jrosenhouse | December 2, 2010It used to be that Kentucky was known primarily for bourbon and horse racing. But now they seem determined to add creationism to that list:
Gov. Steve Beshear said Wednesday that a creationism theme park, expected to open in Northern Kentucky in 2014, would have a $250 million annual impact on the state's economy.
Ark Encounter, which will feature a 500-foot-long wooden replica of Noah's Ark containing live animals such as juvenile giraffes, is projected to cost $150 million and create 900 jobs, Beshear announced at a Capitol press conference.
“Make no mistake about it, this is a huge deal…
jrosenhouse | November 30, 2010When people ask the question in the post's title, or the roughly equivalent question, “What is the meaning of life?” my reply is that I don't understand what is being asked. They both seem like category errors to me; universes don't have purposes and lives don't have meanings. If I were to attempt to give an answer, without any regard for whether the answer were true, I would have no idea what to say.
Perhaps there is some guidance to be gained from the answers others give. One answer I have heard is that the meaning of life is to glorify God in word, thought and deed. But that sounds…
jrosenhouse | November 29, 2010As a way of easing our way back into regular blogging, let's take a quick look at what Michael Ruse has been up to. This was posted at HuffPo on October 28:
Neither I nor the well-known philosopher Philip Kitcher believes in the existence of God or in the claims of the major (or minor) religions. I don't know how he would describe himself, but I say I am an agnostic or skeptic. In truth, when it comes to the basic claims of Christianity and the others, I am an atheist.
Yet both Kitcher and I persist in trying to make a space for people who are religious, in the sense that we both want to…
jrosenhouse | November 11, 2010In happier news, the BSB (that's the Big Sudoku Book) is now finished! Yay! It will take a while to turn it around into an actual book, so look for it next summer. Now it's time to get back to the BECB (the big evolution/creation book). I'm still hoping to have a first draft of that done by the end of the year, but with everything else that's been going on that might not be realistic. I hope to get back to regular blogging shortly. Between book deadlines, the looming end of the semester, and now a basement flood, it's been hard to find the time.
jrosenhouse | November 11, 2010That way, if you have a flood in your basement that completely submerges the bottom shelves of your bookcases, you don't lose anything especially valuable.
Early on Monday morning a water main burst in front of my house. This caused water to back up through the toilet and shower drain in my basement, leading ultimately to close to two feet of water covering everything. Fun! I discovered the flood at 3:30 in the morning, the clear moral being that it's very important to keep eccentric hours. Had I been asleep like a normal person the water could have been in my living room before I noticed…
jrosenhouse | November 3, 2010Not much to say about last night's elections. Basically the Republicans just got rewarded for their policy of obstructionism and cynicism. Now they can return to their back rooms and laugh at all the suckers they fooled into voting for them. There are many villains behind this election, but we should probably reserve our strongest contempt for the folks who were just too unmotivated to vote last night. If all of the sensible people had managed to show up at the polls all the corporate money and sleazy television ads in the world would not have saved the Republicans.
At any rate, Michael…
jrosenhouse | November 1, 2010The Washington Post recently published an op-ed by mathematician G. V. Ramanathan. The subject? Mathematics education. It is a mix of good points and bad points. Let's have a look.
Twenty-seven years have passed since the publication of the report “A Nation at Risk,” which warned of dire consequences if we did not reform our educational system. This report, not unlike the Sputnik scare of the 1950s, offered tremendous opportunities to universities and colleges to create and sell mathematics education programs.
Unfortunately, the marketing of math has become similar to the marketing of…
jrosenhouse | October 31, 2010Your humble blogger went to the big rally yesterday. Here's what it looked like:
I never noticed it before, but the National Mall looks a lot like the Vienna/Fairfax Metro stop. But let me start at the beginning.
I hit the road at 8:30 in the morning, which normally would get me to DC well before noon. I figured there would be traffic and delays, but I did not feel obligated to attend the whole, three-hour event. Maybe I get there by one, I thought, and still have two solid hours of rally fun! It had occurred to me to drive to DC the night before and find a place to stay for the…
jrosenhouse | October 22, 2010Turns out I have a blog. Who knew! A combination of lack of time and, frankly, lack of enthusiasm have kept me from the blogosphere lately, but I thought I would poke my head up just to let y'all know I'm still here.
So let's see. I have a busy weekend on tap. Tomorrow is JMU's annual Shenandoah Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics (SUMS) conference. It promises to be a big math party! I will be running the poster session. Of course, it goes against my grain to get up early on a Saturday, but once a year I will make an exception.
Then on Sunday there is the big Science Expo in…
jrosenhouse | October 14, 2010An interesting exchange between moderator Wolf Blitzer and Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, from a recent debate.
BLITZER: Let's give you a chance to respond to some of the things she said because in a television appearance back in 1998 on Bill Maher's show you said evolution is a myth. Do you believe evolution is a myth?
O'DONNELL: I believe that the local -- I was talking about what a local school taught and that should be taught -- that should be decided on the local community. But please let me respond to what he just said.
BLITZER: We'll let you respond but answer the…
jrosenhouse | October 12, 2010I should probably warn you that this is a long one. So either get comfortable or go elsewhere!
Josh Rosenau has a post up, replying to this earlier post from Jerry Coyne, who was discussing this L. A. Times article about the recent secular humanist conference in Los Angeles. At the conference there was a panel discussion between Chris Mooney, Genie Scott, P. Z. Myers and Victor Stenger on everyone's favorite topic: Accommodationism!
During his presentation, Mooney repeated some of the sentiments from his USA Today op-ed discussing the notion of “atheist spirituality.”. I discussed some…
jrosenhouse | October 6, 2010The reason for the recent blog drought, I am happy to report, is that the book writing has been going well lately. I shot past the 80,000 word mark the other day, which leaves just 20,000 to go. Alas, it is now clear that the first draft will be somewhat overlength, so I am not quite as close to finishing the draft as it might seem. Still, I managed to polish off a few chapters that had been giving me a hard time. There will probably be substantial rewriting, of course, but revising is always easier than creating. At any rate, I have been hammering the book so hard lately that other…
jrosenhouse | September 27, 2010People I respect keep telling me there is marvelous work being done in the area of theology. I have never encountered it, and not for lack of looking. Sometimes I wonder, though, whether perhaps I am just reading the wrong things. The religion and theology section of my university's library is quite large, and the percentage of it I have read is quite small. So I am open to the possibility that the really good arguments are in the books I have not read.
As it happens, Jerry Coyne has been wondering the same thing. A philosopher correspondent of his selected two books for him to read.…
jrosenhouse | September 22, 2010Jerry Coyne has an important post up responding to this awful essay by Peter Doumit, posted at the BioLogos website. Doumit's essay has nuggets like this:
Divine revelation comes in two forms: the Word of God (including both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition) and the Work of God (including the natural, physical world and the laws that govern it). Both are equally valid forms of truth, as they stem from the same Source. And since truth can never contradict truth, a truth revealed in one cannot ever be in conflict with a truth revealed in the other. Once this is fundamentally understood,…
jrosenhouse | September 22, 2010If you are looking for some popcorn reading, have a look at this post from John Farrell, over at HuffPo. He takes John West of the Discovery Institute to task for parroting ye olde “Darwin was a big, fat racist!” canard. Here's the conclusion:
So, what is one to make of these ceaseless ideological attacks on Charles Darwin? Apparently, having failed at the Dover Trial to get their revised "intelligent design" philosophy into public school science classes, the Discovery Institute now resorts to the only strategy they have left to undermine science and science education: smear the…
jrosenhouse | September 22, 2010Let's see to what my homeys have been up.
Richard Dawkins, that little rabble rouser, is rightly vexed by the respectful treatment the Pope has been receiving during his trip to England.
Addressing a crowd of roughly 15,000 people, Dawkins unleashed this:
Joseph Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity.
He is an enemy of children, whose bodies he has allowed to be raped and whose minds he has encouraged to be infected with guilt. It is embarrassingly clear that the church is less concerned with saving child bodies from rapists than with saving priestly souls from hell: and most concerned with…
jrosenhouse | September 20, 2010Recent editions of Monday Math have seen us working pretty hard. So how about we lighten the mood a bit and think about fractions.
Let us start with the obvious. Fractions have tops and bottoms. Got that? Numerators and denominators exist only in elementary and middle school math classes. Their sole purpose is to make mathematics as offputting and unpleasant as possible. If you refer to the top of the fraction and the bottom of the fraction everyone knows what you mean. Say numerator and denominator (which come respectively from Latin words meaning roughly “one who numbers” and “that…
jrosenhouse | September 14, 2010This comes from Jerry Korsmeyer's book Evolution and Eden: Balancing Original Sin and Contemporary Science, published in 1998. Korsmeyer is both a physicist and a theologian.
The tremendous amount of time it took for the simplest elements of matter to form themselves into stars, and to make the other elements, is consistent with the concepts of persuasive power and minimal creaturely response. A God with classical omnipotent power who could create anything at a word, would not produce the universe as we know it today. The messy aspects of evolution, the diversity of life bursting into all…