Policy and Politics
tfk | October 7, 2009I still don't know if I'm using that word right, but Science and Religion Today asked me a question about the award Chad wants to give me. They wonder "Do moderates have a responsibility to be more vocal in science and religion discussions?"
It's an admittedly vague question, and they left off my epigram, from Petronius: "Moderation in all things, even moderation." Ah well.
In brief, I said yes. I used "religious moderates" in what I think is an idiosyncratic way, taking it as the religious subset of moderates on a particular question much under discussion lately, not members of congregations…
tfk | October 6, 2009The Disco. 'Stute is upset. Not only has disco been overtaken by that rap music, but you can't even hear the good stuff any more. Also, no one returns their phone calls.
Atheist Richard Dawkins dodges Debate Challenge:
Ray Comfort, author of the Amazon.com’s best seller, You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think – is offering $20,000 to Richard Dawkins (probably the world’s most famous atheist) simply for Dawkins to appear in a public debate on the issue of the beginnings of the universe with him. However, it seems Prof Dawkins would rather keep his tirades against God…
tfk | October 5, 2009Conservapedia is the gift that keeps giving. Recall that Conservapedia formed to correct the nefarious liberal bias of the collectively edited Wikipedia. That is, they kept losing edit wars because they could support their claims, and since they couldn't conform reality to their beliefs, they'd just write an encyclopedia enshrining them. Much fun. But now there's a bigger threat to their goal of completely isolating conservatives from any differing views: The Bible (h/t):
As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:[2]…
tfk | October 5, 2009Jerry Coyne is right:
Nobody who has followed Dawkins’s work and writing could possibly think he’s an accommodationist
Or rather, he's probably right. I've never been clear what "accommodationist" means, it seems to adapt itself in perfect Calvinball style to suit whatever enemy someone might have. Thus, when Eugenie Scott answers the question "Are science and religion compatible?":
I don't have to address that as a philosophical question, I can address that as an empirical question. It's obvious that it is. Because there are many people who are scientists who are also people of faith. There…
tfk | October 1, 2009Newsweek interviews Richard Dawkins:
Are those incompatible positions: to believe in God and to believe in evolution?
No, I don't think they're incompatible if only because there are many intelligent evolutionary scientists who also believe in God--to name only Francis Collins [the geneticist and Christian believer recently chosen to head the National Institutes of Health] as an outstanding example. So it clearly is possible to be both. This book more or less begins by accepting that there is that compatibility. The God Delusion did make a case against that compatibility in my own mind.
I…
tfk | September 30, 2009Disco. clubber Bruce Chapman, a former census director who ought to have learned something about demography and perhaps accounting along the way, writes that the Public Doesn't Know the Truth About Social Security:
â¦how many Americans (may we see a poll?) understand that â¦we really are at point (and past it for the next two years) when spending on Social Security finally exceeds income from Social Security taxes? Can a tax hike and/or benefits reductions be long away? Meanwhile, add this new item to the list of runaway Federal deficit spending.
Yes we can see a poll! This, from 2005, seems…
tfk | September 28, 2009Darwinism and popular culture: Darwinists resort to whining when they are not popular (Also, this just in, water runs downhill):
In responding to a news item from two weeks ago, I'll assume Creation still has gotten a distributor. Therefore it's crummy and boring and will never get a distributor, as it did last week.
With Bonus Shorter D'oh! Leary: Origin of life theory: Complexity theorist Kauffman moving on:
I don't know who Stuart Kauffman is or what he does, but he sure isn't a genius. Neither is Bill Dembski, who at least has the courtesy not to self-aggrandize, for instance by…
tfk | September 28, 2009Last Friday I made some remarks about polling and evolution and atheism that got some knickers in twists. To summarize: Kevin Padian was asked to comment on a stupid stunt by Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, who are passing out copies of the Origin of Species along with a foreword that alleges Darwin caused the Holocaust. Padian was appropriately dismissive, and noted that "The two kinds people who believe that religion and evolution can not coexist are extreme atheists and extreme religious fundamentalists. Everyone else doesn’t really have a problem. [A majority] of Americans believe that a…
tfk | September 26, 2009FDA Admits Politics Trumped Science on Knee Device:
For the first time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has publicly admitted that politics has trumped science. The agency acknowledged yesterday that it approved a device to help with knee-replacement surgeriesâa device the agencyâs own scientists said often failedâonly after it received pressure from a cohort of Democratic congressmen from New Jersey, where the deviceâs manufacturer is located.
The $3000 device was known as the Menaflex, a âcollagen scaffoldâ that supported a damaged meniscus in the knee. It failed its initial reviews…
tfk | September 25, 2009Jerry Coyne, 9/21/2009:
Kudos to the National Center for Science Education for putting up these videos [of Texas science standards hearings], and for their tenacious defense of evolution in Texas.
Thank you, Jerry. Since I shot those videos, and was present in Texas as part of that defense, I thought I was off Coyne's shitlist, and it certainly seemed like NCSE was off it as well.
But three days later he objects to a line I wrote about "atheists bent on insisting that literalism is the true form of religion":
Quote of the week, from the personal website of the Public Information Project…
tfk | September 24, 2009I've finally gotten around to reading through hundreds of comments on my posts about truth claims and ways of knowing and whatnot, and posted replies to as many commenters as I could manage (hopefully touching on themes raised by some commenters I didn't respond to by name). I'll be monitoring those threads more closely now, and hope to have a few new posts up on related topics tomorrow. Sorry for the delay, but I've been working and catching up on stuff from my laptop-less stretch.
Unread blog posts: 9997. Whee!
tfk | September 24, 2009Nicholas Beaudrot defends the (second) bag fee against Atrios's opposition to any fees, and against Matt Yglesias's defense of all fees for checked luggage. Atrios rightly notes that the fees are part and parcel of the generally crappy air travel experience, Matt argues that the fees discourage excessive packing, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of travel. Nick replies that Matt's economic analysis fails to consider shifts from checked luggage to carry-on:
bag fees on the first bag encourage two behaviors:
Travelers pack the largest bag they think they can carry on to the plane. This…
tfk | September 18, 2009Several commenters on earlier posts have suggested that I am claiming that religious truth claims are the same as literary truth claims.
I understand how that misunderstanding could be reached, but it is a misunderstanding. I think that religious truth claims would include aspects of literary truth claims (the Bible surely uses metaphor and other literary techniques), but for religious believers, it clearly encompasses much more. As a non-theist, I don't fully grasp the level of meaning that theists experience in religion, and my analogy to literary truth claims is meant to set a lower…
tfk | September 16, 2009On Monday I posted a reply to Jerry Coyne's clique-ish and philosophically naive report on a talk he didn't see. I thought this would be a useful exercise because:
Coyne is a former professor of mine, I respect him, and don't want to see him embarrass himself.
High school-level cliqueishness seems unbecoming in a tenured professor.
Philosophically naive claims about the nature of science are unbecoming in a tenured biology professor.
Launching invective-laden attacks on a talk one hasn't seen is entirely unbecoming.
I reply again because efforts to address some of the issues underlying the…
tfk | September 14, 2009Jerry Coyne is nervous. He isn't sure if NCSE's Genie Scott will sit next to him at lunch, and he's not sure if he wants to sit next to her, when you get right down to it.
Why? Because in a talk at DragonCon (a talk Jerry didn't attend and only has second-hand information about), Genie said that there are "ways of knowing" other than science.
This is all part of the long and tedious battle between a clique of atheists who seem intent on enabling creationists in their muddling of the nature of science (enablers) and people who think it's possible for science and religion to exist without…
tfk | September 2, 2009Dear internets,
Why does anyone read Megan McArdle? The debunking of her silliness is clogging my RSS reader, and I'd like you all to just stop reading her already.
I tuned her out way back when she went by the name "Jane Galt." I consider it entirely fair to treat Ayn Rand fandom as an automatic disqualifier from rational discourse, and McArdle's use of a Randian pseudonym told me all I needed to know about what I'd get by reading her. So whenever someone links to her, I ignore it.
If everyone else did the same thing, my blog-reading would be much nicer.
And honestly, what would you be…
tfk | September 2, 2009Brad Monton, creationists' newest favorite atheist, is upset. Carl Zimmer and Sean Carroll, upset that BloggingHeads allowed and utterly bungled an interview between conservative linguist and apparent ID sycophant John McWhorter and creationist Michael Behe, have declared that they will not participate in diavlogs at that site any more. Monton, a philosopher who thinks every critique of ID creationism but his sucks goats, thinks thats a bad idea. His defense of this claim begins rockily and then crashes into a hill and catches fire. To whit:
while Iâm no expert on biology, I find Beheâs…
tfk | August 28, 2009According to various sources, including Pennsylvania State Representative Mark Cohen, posting at Young Philly Politics, Larry Frankel passed away recently. The cause is unclear.
Frankel was the ACLU's chief lobbyist in state legislatures, guiding state civil liberties unions through the thickets of their states' legislatures, building coalitions with partners across the political spectrum, and defending the rights of every American.
As Cohen writes:
Frankel was an outstanding lobbyist for the Pennsylvania ACLU in Harrisburg, taking positions on scores to hundreds of bills each year. He was a…
tfk | August 26, 2009Ted Kennedy was a great man, one whose flaws occasionally dominated headlines but whose legacy will be the lives saved and improved thanks to the numerous bills which bear his name, and which benefited from his wisdom as they moved through the Senate. For a man who lived his life as American royalty – the brother of a slain president and a martyred candidate for the presidency, one of the longest-serving members of the most exclusive club in America – his care for and attention to the needs of the poorest and least powerful Americans is an example to us all, and a reminder to his friends and…
tfk | August 24, 2009I know it's been a week since I got back from Netroots Nation, so this is a rather belated report, but I have a good excuse. I was on the road for 4 weeks before NrN, and it's taken me a little while to get caught up again.
Netroots Nation was awesome. It'll be in Las Vegas next year, and should be even better. It'll be the 5th year, returning to the scene of the first convention, back when it was called YearlyKos. They put on a great conference, and it's a great time. Next year it's the weekend before my birthday, which should be extra-fun.
This year was more subdued than last year,…