jrosenhouse | October 23, 2007Christian apologist John Mark Reynolds answers no:
Recently, J.K. Rowling announced to the world that one of her characters, the heroic mentor of Harry Potter, Dumbledore was gay.
Nonsense. There is no evidence of it in the books and the books (at this point) are all that matter. I have always thought the books deeply Christian not because Rowling told me so (which she recently confirmed), but because the text is full of Christian images and ideas. She had a chance to give Dumbledore a boyfriend, but she muffed it. I refuse to denigrate friendship by reading every close one as sexual . . .…
jrosenhouse | October 23, 2007I see P.Z. Myers already has the video of Bill O'Reilly's interview with Ben Stein. But just in case you're at work and don't want to get caught watching such filth, I have taken the liberty of providing a transcript below. Read it and weep:
O'REILLY: In the unresolved problems segment tonight, how did life begin? Religious people believe a higher power created the universe; secular progressives say all kinds of things, but God is not in the equation. And some believe, those who subscribe to intelligent design; that is a deity created life; are being persecuted in America. Joining us…
jrosenhouse | October 22, 2007J.K. Rowling made some news at Carnegie Hall the other night:
But when the questions began -- they had been submitted by audience members before the event -- she came into her own. Finally able to talk freely about the end of a series that had been so long-anticipated, she left nothing out. The big revelation of the night came when she was asked if Dumbledore had ever found love. With a sigh, she seemed on the verge of saying no, but then revealed, “my truthful answer to you... I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.” After a collective gasp, the audience roared with applause. Rowling was…
jrosenhouse | October 22, 2007A while back I wrote an opinion piece (PDF Format) for BioScience magazine entitled “Leaders and Followers in the Intelligent Design Movement.” The intent of the essay was to draw a distinction between the rampant dishonesty among the leaders of the ID movement, with their blatantly out of context quotations and cartoon versions of modern science, with the somewhat better behavior I have sometimes encountered from the rank and file ID folks listening to the leaders
The existence of Tom Woodward has shown me that there is at least one further category of ID person. He is certainly not a…
jrosenhouse | October 18, 2007Slate has an interesting piece on som erecent dinosaur finds in Argentina:
Paleontologists announced on Monday that they had discovered the remains of a 105-foot-long dinosaur on the banks of a lake in the Argentine portion of Patagonia. The Futalognkosaurus dukei ranks among the largest known dinosaurs, along with two other species whose remains were discovered in Patagonia, the Argentinosaurus and Puertasaurus reuili. Why are all the biggest dinosaurs found in Patagonia?
They died at the right time in the right place. Patagonia happens to be an excellent place to find fossils from the…
jrosenhouse | October 17, 2007In my blog entry of a few days ago regarding Jerry Fodor's poorly argued essay in The London Review of Books, I remarked that Fodor divided his criticisms of natural selection into both an empricial and a conceptual criticism. I focused entirely on the empricial side of his essay. Happily, Bob O'Hara has taken care of business on the conceptual side of things:
The latest “fun” on the evolutionary (pro and anti) parts of the web has been discussion of an article in the London Review of Books by Jerry Fodor. In it he proclaims that natural selection is on its way out. Alas for him, his…
jrosenhouse | October 17, 2007It's been pointed out to me that the banner residing atop my blog is a bit dull. There's a very good reason for that. I haven't the faintest idea how to make a snazzier one.
Apparently other people have had contests to find a banner. That sounds good. Make other people do the work. I like that.
So how about it? Anyone have any ideas? Got a good image to use for a banner? Er, when people have had these contests in the past, have they also offered prizes?
jrosenhouse | October 17, 2007From the public editor of The Sacramento Bee:
There they were, two stories on the Metro cover last Monday about a common topic: religion and beliefs.
Yet they were as opposite as night is to day.
The headlines said it all.
“Atheists stand proud,” said one. “Church's members unite to aid schools,"”said the other.
The juxtaposition of these stories caused a controversy. Can you guess what it was about?
Having gotten this far into the essay, I expected to read how atheist groups objected to the headlines. Placing atheists standing proud right next to Christians selflessly raising money for…
jrosenhouse | October 14, 2007Sunday's New York Times offers a poignant look at some of the victims of the Iraq War:
IT was a bitterly cold night in the Baghdad winter of 2005, somewhere in the predawn hours before the staccato of suicide bombs and mortars and gunfire that are the daily orchestration of the war. Alone in my office in The Times's compound beside the Tigris River, I was awaiting the telephoned "goodnight" from The Times foreign desk, eight time zones west, signaling that my work for the next day's paper was done.
That is when I heard it: the cry of an abandoned kitten, somewhere out in the darkness,…
jrosenhouse | October 14, 2007Philosopher Jerry Fodor offers up the latest example of a familiar genre: essays declaring the forthcoming demise of natural selection, coupled with very little in the way of supporting argument. He is writing in the London Review of Books. There's quite a bit I find wrong with Fodor's essay. In this post, however, I will focus solely on what I take his main argument to be, and explain why I find it inadequate.
Fodor writes:
In fact, an appreciable number of perfectly reasonable biologists are coming to think that the theory of natural selection can no longer be taken for granted. This is…
jrosenhouse | October 12, 2007The new issue of the Reports of the National Center for Science Education turned up in my mailbox the other day. As always, it contains lot's of interesting nuggets.
Michael Ruse reviews Sahotra Sarkar's recent book, Doubting Darwin: Creationist Designs on Evolution. The review is well done, by which I mean it says exactly what I would have said were I reviewing the book. (Short version: It's a good book with a lot of sharp arguments, but at times Sarkar's explanations of scientific or philosophical ideas are not as clear as they might have been).
But this was the part that caught my eye…
jrosenhouse | October 12, 2007Paul Krugman does his usual fine job of exposing the utter lack of conscience on the American political right:
Soon after the radio address, right-wing bloggers began insisting that the Frosts must be affluent because Graeme and his sister attend private schools (they're on scholarship), because they have a house in a neighborhood where some houses are now expensive (the Frosts bought their house for $55,000 in 1990 when the neighborhood was rundown and considered dangerous) and because Mr. Frost owns a business (it was dissolved in 1999).
You might be tempted to say that bloggers make…
jrosenhouse | October 11, 2007UPDATE: October 12, 5:00 pm. It has been pointed out to me that my statement that support for Israel has been a constant of post WWII American foreign policy is not correct. President Truman recognized Israel upon its formation, but relations between Israel and the US were distinctly chilly through most of the fifties and early sixties. This only changed in the late sixties, as a response to the warm relations between Syria, Egypt and the Soviet Union. The strong support of the US for Israel has far more to do with American interests in the region than it does with the influence of the…
jrosenhouse | October 10, 2007My reviews of Phillip Kitcher's Living With Darwin and Francisco Ayala's Evolution and Intelligent Design are now available over at Skeptic's website. Enjoy!
I should probably mention that I wrote this review some time ago, and in the meantime Ayala has published a slightly more detailed book on the same subject, entitled Darwin's Gift. I got about fifty pages into it before being sidetracked by other reading. I'll withhold final judgment until I've read the whole thing, but my impression is that the new book gives me no reason to revise my opinion of Ayala's arguments.
jrosenhouse | October 9, 2007As if worried that fellow lunatic Michael Barone might receive the honor for the silliest attack on universities in recent memory, Dennis Prager steps in with his own worthy pretender to the title.
His jumping off point is the recent “editorial” in the Colorado State University student newspaper that said, in its entirety, “Taser this -- F*** Bush.” Mentally healthy people look at such incidents and see an unsurprising instance of college students showing poor judgment. For Prager, by contrast, this editorial tells us something profound about the rottenness of modern universities.
Prager's…
jrosenhouse | October 9, 2007Town Hall columnist Michael Barone has a bee in his bonnet about universities:
I am old enough to remember when America's colleges and universities seemed to be the most open-minded and intellectually rigorous institutions in our society. Today, something very much like the opposite is true: America's colleges and universities have become, and have been for some decades, the most closed-minded and intellectually dishonest institutions in our society.
Fox news pundits like Barone really ought to be more careful describing other institutions as closed-minded and intellectually dishonest.…
jrosenhouse | October 9, 2007It seems that Larry Craig is not resigning:
Senator Larry E. Craig of Idaho, defying the wishes of many in his own Republican Party, said Thursday that he would remain in the Senate through next year despite a court ruling against him in Minnesota, where he had sought to rescind his guilty plea stemming from an undercover sex sting.
Shortly after a judge denied his request to withdraw the August plea admitting to disorderly conduct, Mr. Craig said he had reversed his previously announced decision to leave the Senate if he could not get the plea thrown out. He said he would instead serve out…
jrosenhouse | October 8, 2007Take away the question mark and that's the name of a blog maintained by Zack Exley. I came across it by following links from BoingBoing and Andrew Sullivan.
Exley's premise is that “secular progressives” ought to take a second look at Evangelical Christianity. He writes:
Right after the 2004 elections, a cynical map made the rounds of progressives' inboxes everywhere, separating “Jesusland” from the “United States of Canada.” Several other self-righteous riffs followed.
The image was a hit because it expressed a sinking feeling in the hearts of many progressives that America had been…
jrosenhouse | October 8, 2007From the stopped clock department, two of my least favorite New York Times columnists have managed to get it right on the subject of Clarence Thomas.
Here's Frank Rich:
This could be seen most vividly on “60 Minutes,” when he revisited a parable about the evils of affirmative action that is also a centerpiece of his memoir: his anger about the “tainted” degree he received from Yale Law School. In Mr. Thomas's account, he stuck a 15-cent price sticker on his diploma after potential employers refused to hire him. By his reckoning, a Yale Law graduate admitted through affirmative action, as he…
jrosenhouse | October 1, 2007Viswanathan Anand of India is the new, mostly undisputed, World Chess Champion, thanks to his stellar performance at the Mexico City tournament. The Chess Ninja has the details.
By all accounts Anand is a class act and a well-deserving champion. He played, and lost, a title match with Gary Kasparov in 1995. This steback did not long stop him from returning to top form, and he has ben a fixture in top level chess for more than twenty years. So congratulations to him!
If all goes according to plan, Anand will play a match with Kramnik (who officially lost his title by only finishing tied for…