jrosenhouse | November 30, 2009Via Jerry Coyne I came across this brief essay from Michael Shermer on the subject of science and religion. Here's the part that jumped out at me:
If one is a theist, it should not matter when God made the universe -- 10,000 years ago or 10 billion years ago. The difference of six zeros is meaningless to an omniscient and omnipotent being, and the glory of divine creation cries out for praise regardless of when it happened.
Likewise, it should not matter how God created life, whether it was through a miraculous spoken word or through the natural forces of the universe that He created. The…
jrosenhouse | November 18, 2009My calculus students had a test yesterday. Having now graded them I understand, like never before, the meaning of the word “futility.” Their logic is not like our Earth logic.
My future elementary school teachers had their test today. About forty minutes in to a fifty minute period, as I was begininning to get nervous that no one had yet handed it in, one of my students asked if I was angry at the class when I wrote the exam. Everyone else then noted they were wondering the same thing. Get the idea?
At least we get a week for Thanksgiving, starting at the end of business on Friday. I'…
jrosenhouse | November 18, 2009Sarah Palin's new book does not contain an index. So Christopher Beam, writing at Slate made one for her! Not that you were planning to read the book anyway, but this will save you the trouble.
If for some reason you want to know more about the book, have a look at the review in The New York Times. For example:
Elsewhere in this volume she talks about creationism, saying she “didn't believe in the theory that human beings -- thinking, loving beings -- originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.” In…
jrosenhouse | November 12, 2009Here's a delightful article from the Washington Post:
The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.
Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting…
jrosenhouse | November 11, 2009Remember that trip to the Creation Museum during the big paleontology conference this summer? Linda Vaccariello has a lengthy, and pretty good, article about it in the current issue of Cincinnati Magazine. Here's a nugget I liked:
Looking over the exhibits in the Dinosaur Den, we learn that the flood killed all the dinosaurs except for the ones on Noah's ark. “But their days were numbered,” the signage explains ominously. What happened? Here, the museum makes a rare admission of uncertainty. But it does present a tantalizing possibility: “Dragons could have been dinosaurs,” the sign says.…
jrosenhouse | November 10, 2009I already made my trip out to Barnes and Noble today to pick up Stephen King's new novel Under the Dome. I have not been this excited about the release of a novel in quite some time. No doubt I am setting myself up for a disappointment, but I think this will be a long-awaited return to form for King.
I have been a diehard Stephen King fan since before high school. His ouvre includes several slam-dunk masterpieces: The Shining, The Stand, Firestarter, Different Seasons, It and Needful Things, along with quite a few others that were merely very good: Carrie, The Dead Zone, Christine, Misery,…
jrosenhouse | November 10, 2009John Lynch has an important essay in the current issue of the Newsletter of the History of Science Society. I'm sure we are all familiar with creationist abuses of science and philosophy (not to mention their abuses of common decency and basic integrity), but their comparable abuses of history often fly under the radar. Mind you, the problem is not simply that creationists routinely get their facts wrong. It is that their whole approach to the subject is rather blinkered:
In short, anti-evolutionist historical scholarship accurately mirrors creationist scientific work in being directed…
jrosenhouse | November 6, 2009Seriously! Go have a look.
It seems my book The Monty Hall Problem: The Remarkable Story of Math's Most Contentious Brainteaser made the list! And to think I wasn't planning to do a blog post today.
Browsing through the other entries, it looks like my reading list just got a bit longer. (Of course, they will have to get in line behind Stephen King's forthcoming magnum opus, coming out on Tuesday. But that's a different post...)
jrosenhouse | November 5, 2009Update, 7:32 PM I have revised portions of the second vignette in response to the first comment below.
Via Josh Rosenau I came across this post from Todd Wood. Wood is an unabashed young-Earth creationist. What makes him considerably more interesting than most YEC's is that he sometimes writes things like this:
Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive…
jrosenhouse | November 3, 2009For anyone who has access to a print edition of The New York Times, today's crossword was constructed by my cousin Barry Boone! I believe this is his fourth puzzle for the TImes. It has an election day theme, so go have a look.
jrosenhouse | November 2, 2009Michael Ruse has a very bad op-ed in The Guardian. Jerry Coyne and P. Z. Myers have already laid into him (here and here respectively), but why should they have all the fun? Ruse writes:
If you mean someone who agrees that logically there could be a god, but who doesn't think that the logical possibility is terribly likely, or at least not something that should keep us awake at night, then I guess a lot of us are atheists. But there is certainly a split, a schism, in our ranks. I am not whining (in fact I am rather proud) when I point out that a rather loud group of my fellow atheists,…
jrosenhouse | November 2, 2009As a coda to the previous post, have a look at this post from Jerry Coyne. Since some of his blog posts have been at the center of the recent dust-ups about accommodationism, he elected to provide a clear statement of his views on this topic. He presents things in a list of six numbered points, five of which I agree with. Here's the one with which I disagree:
I think the National Center for Science Education and other scientific organizations should make no statements about the compatibility of science and religion. When they insist on this compatibility, they are engaging in theology.…
jrosenhouse | October 30, 2009I had intended to leave this subject behind, at least for a while, but Josh Rosenau has a lengthy post up that I think merits a reply. See also this post and the ensuing comments.
On several occasions at this blog (here and here for example) I have endorsed the efforts of the NCSE and other science advocacy groups to reach out to religious groups. I think it is great that NCSE has a permanent employee devoted to such outreach. Religious supporters of evolution have been essential in every major victory, both legal and political, our side can claim. If we can open people's eyes to the…
jrosenhouse | October 29, 2009What with all the general business and the ample supply of recent blog fodder, I seem to have gotten away from my Blogging Dawkins project. That state of affairs ends now.
In Chapter Two Dawkins laid out the case that artificial selection can and has caused enormous changes in the physical features of organisms in a relatively short amount of time. In terms of the broader case for evolution, this can be viewed as a plausibility argument. If random variations sifted through selection can craft both chihuahuas and Great Danes from a common wolf-like ancestor in a relatively short amount of…
jrosenhouse | October 23, 2009OMG! A new Tony Jaa movie:
Back in 2003, a little Thai movie called Ong Bak introduced the world to an elephant-herder-turned-martial-artist named Tony Jaa. Directed by Prachya Pinkaew, the movie became a global sensation and rocketed Pinkaew and Jaa into the international celeb-o-sphere. They quickly collaborated on a follow-up called Tom Yum Goong (aka The Protector) that became the most successful Thai film ever released in America. Two times lucky, the Thai studio Sahamongkol Films eagerly green-lighted Jaa's dream project: Ong Bak 2 (Magnet Releasing), to be written, directed, produced…
jrosenhouse | October 21, 2009I'm sure we all remember the book Unscientific America, by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum. I found the book to be very disappointing, for reasons I explained in my epic, three-part review (Part One, Part Two, Part Three.) In short, I felt the book was superficial in its analysis of the problem and, as as result, offered solutions that were unlikely to be effective (and were highly impractical to boot.)
I had mentally moved on to other things, but then Jerry Coyne published a hostile review of the book in Science. I read the review when it was published, noted that it raised some of…
jrosenhouse | October 20, 2009So says NPR:
Last month, atheists marked Blasphemy Day at gatherings around the world, and celebrated the freedom to denigrate and insult religion.
Some offered to trade pornography for Bibles. Others de-baptized people with hair dryers. And in Washington, D.C., an art exhibit opened that shows, among other paintings, one entitled Divine Wine, where Jesus, on the cross, has blood flowing from his wound into a wine bottle.
Another, Jesus Paints His Nails, shows an effeminate Jesus after the crucifixion, applying polish to the nails that attach his hands to the cross.
“I wouldn't want this on…
jrosenhouse | October 19, 2009The trip to California went well. Suspiciously well, in fact, to the point where, even though I am now back home, I am still waiting for something to go wrong.
I first became suspicious during the two-hour drive over to Dulles Airport. There was no traffic. How odd. My rule of thumb when flying out of Dulles is to leave home five hours before flight time. That almost never happens, however, and usually it is closer to three and a half hours, which is really cutting it close. Heavy traffic only seems to occur when you are already in danger of missing your flight. Some corollary to…
jrosenhouse | October 15, 2009For my San Bernardino readers, I will be flying out to California tomorrow to deliever one of the keynote talks at the big MAA meeting. The talk will be at CSU San Bernardino at 9:00 am on Saturday morning. Nine am on a Saturday? They didn't mention that when they invited me!
The title of my talk is -- surprise! -- the Monty Hall Problem, Reconsidered. Should be a good time. See you when I return!
jrosenhouse | October 15, 2009So wonders Razib Khan over at Secular Right::
In any case, I'm on the record as saying that predictions for 2012 are very premature. But, it looks like 3 of the front-runners for the G.O.P. nomination are rather frank Creationists (Palin, Huckabee and Pawlenty). I'm skeptical about any of these as likely candidates (i.e., if you had to make a bet you're going to be surprised), but if you keep adding individuals to the list it seems likely that we're looking at a serious probability that the G.O.P. nominee in 2012 will be a Creationist.
In a primary debate last year John McCain forthrightly…