EvolutionBlog

Book Update

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:06:49 -0500

I am slowly making progress on the big evolution/creation book. I passed the 25,000 word mark yesterday (Whoo hoo!) but my contract calls for 100,000 words (D'oh!). I am nowhere near running out of things to say, but I am such a painfully slow writer that 75,000 more words seems like an awful lot. I am one of those people who writes a sentence, then stares at it for a while, then runs off to play three games of internet chess before deleting it and trying again. Oh well. All you can do is keep chipping away.

Which is my long-winded way of saying that blogging is going to continue to be very sporadic around here for a while. If you want something to read, I recommend Gina Welch's new book In the Land of Believers in which she describes the two years she spent undercover at Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church. I'm about two-thirds of the way through it, and I am finding it completely engrossing. It makes a nice companion piece to Kevin Roose's book The Unlikely Disciple, which describes the semester he spent undercover at Liberty University after transferring from Brown. It is also excellent.

My book has a number of similarities to theirs. Some differences, too. For one thing, my book is based specifically on my experiences at evolution/creation conferences, unlike Roose and Welch who focus more on evangelical Christianity generally. For another, whereas they are writing primarily as journalists, I intend to use my experiences as a springboard for discussing various issues of math and science. Probably the biggest difference is that they were both undercover, whereas I was most definitely above cover. The fact remains that I recognize the sorts of people they describe in their books. I well know the feeling of liking them personally while being horrified by many of the things they believe.

Welch, like me, is a secular Jew, while Roose, as I recall, came from a background of liberal Christianity. I wonder what it is that makes fairly extreme forms of religion seem so fascinating to us.

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Thought For the Day

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:36:08 -0500

A little point to ponder from Jason Lisle, a young-Earth creationist with Answers in Genesis. This is from his book The Ultimate Proof of Creation:

Laws of logic pose a very serious problem for the evolutionist. Almost all evolutionists know they should be logical, and yet they have no basis for las of logic within their own professed worldview. The problem is particularly embarrassing for the materialistic atheist. A materialistic atheist does not believe in anything beyond the physical universe. In his view, all that exists is matter in motion. But of course laws of logic are not matter; they are not part of the physical universe. Therefore, laws of logic cannot exist if materialism is true! Not only is the materialistic atheist unable to account for the existence of laws of logic, but they are actually contrary to his worldview. His worldview is necessarily irrational. (p. 55)

Discuss.

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Are Pigeons Better Than Humans at the Monty Hall Problem?

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:10:58 -0500

From Yahoo News:

To shed light on why humans often fall short of the best strategy with this kind of problem, scientists investigated pigeons, which often perform quite impressively on tasks requiring them to estimate relative probabilities, in some cases eclipsing human performance. Other animals do not always share the same biases as people, and therefore might help provide explanations for our behavior.
Scientists tested six pigeons with an apparatus with three keys. The keys lit up white to show a prize was available. After the birds pecked a key, one of the keys the bird did not choose deactivated, showing it was a wrong choice, and the other two lit up green. The pigeons were rewarded with bird feed if they made the right choice.

In the experiments, the birds quickly reached the best strategy for the Monty Hall problem - going from switching roughly 36 percent of the time on day one to some 96 percent of the time on day 30.

On the other hand, 12 undergraduate student volunteers failed to adopt the best strategy with a similar apparatus, even after 200 trials of practice each.

It is a pity I did not have this paper in time for the big book. It would have been perfect!

The 12 undergraduates described here seem to have performed exceptionally badly. Other such experiments have shown higher rates of people learning the correct solution after repeated trials, as I describe in Chapter Six of the book. Still, ninety-six percent is pretty impressive.

The technical paper, published in The Journal of Comparative Psychology, has been printed out and is now sitting on my desk. Now to find time to read it!

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Why Would God Create Through Evolution?

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:15:21 -0500

Before leaving behind Denis Lamoureux's book I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution, there is one lengthy excerpt I would like to present. If I presented only a small portion of this you would think I was taking it out of context. If I paraphrased it you would not believe me. I will simply have to present the whole thing, as a painful illustration of the sheer depths to which special pleading can aspire.

Here is Lamoureux's explanation of why God of love would do his creating through a cruel and wasteful process like evolution. I promise you I am not making this up.

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My Review of I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:28:39 -0500

In my recent post on Interpreting Genesis, one of the commenters suggested to me the writing of Denis Lamoureux as a good example of defending a non-literal interpretation of Genesis. A quick visit to Amazon revealed that his big book on this subject, Evolutionary Creation, was over four hundred pages long and was quite expensive. Happily, last year Lamoureux, who is a professor of science and religion at the University of Alberta and holds doctoral degrees in dentistry, theology and biology, published a Cliff's Notes version of his book called I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution. I purchased a copy and have now read it.

Short Review: I don't think I'll be reading the longer version. Lamoureux's arguments are very unconvincing.

Longer review below the fold.

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Evolution and Alliteration

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:43:51 -0500

Browsing through Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth the other day I came across the following sentence: “The slow drifting apart of South America and Africa is now an established fact in the ordinary language sense of `fact', and so is our common ancestry with porcupines and pomegranates.” Elsewhere, in a discussion of human breeding efforts, Dawkins refers to “cows, cabbages and corn.”

I know I have seen this sort of thing many times before. That is, using alliterative organism names to make some point about universal common descent. Here's another example, this time from YEC Don Batten: “Do accidental copying mistakes add the complex genetic information needed to transform microbes into mollusks, mites, mangoes, magpies and mandkind?” This is from his contribution to the YEC anthology, In Six Days: Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation.

I'd like to collect as many instances of this as I can, both from evolutionists and creationists. If you know of any good (or not so good) examples, no matter how obscure, let me know. Thanks!

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Interpreting Genesis

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:56:59 -0500

Via Jerry Coyne I came across this essay regarding the interpretation of Genesis. (Click here for Part One of the essay.)

The article is by Kenton Sparks, a professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University. His argument will be entirely familiar to connoisseurs of this issue. The Bible, you see, was never intended to teach us science. Augustine and Calvin understood that if the Bible conflicts with well-established scientific truths, then it is our understanding of scripture that must yield. Modern creationists err in treating Genesis like a science textbook, and would do better to adopt the attitude of Augustine and Calvin..

The “Genesis is not a science book” canard is one of the more annoying cliches of this genre. As a way of salvaging any notion of the inerrancy of scripture it falls short. It also represents a serious misunderstanding of how YEC's view the matter.

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Barr Bashes ID

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:03:28 -0500

Writing in the religious journal First Things University of Delaware physics professor Stephen Barr lays into the ID Movement. Here's the first paragraph:

It is time to take stock: What has the intelligent design movement achieved? As science, nothing. The goal of science is to increase our understanding of the natural world, and there is not a single phenomenon that we understand better today or are likely to understand better in the future through the efforts of ID theorists. If we are to look for ID achievements, then, it must be in the realm of natural theology. And there, I think, the movement must be judged not only a failure, but a debacle.

Preach it, brother!

Sadly, much of what comes after this most excellent opening is not very persuasive. Let us take a more detailed look:

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Evolution at Wheaton

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:21:31 -0500

I am currently reading the book Believers: A Journey into Evangelical America by Jeffery Sheler, published in 2006. There is a chapter about Wheaton College in Illinois, which is generally considered one of the best, if not the best, evangelical college in the nation. Sheler recounts part of a conversation he had with Dorothy Chappell, dean of natural and social sciences.

“Our students are recognized as among the best,” she said. “That must say something about our program. We don't teach Christian science here. We teach science, period. It's the same science as the University of Illinois teaches, or the University of Chicago.”

Sounds good, but things soon start getting weird.

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My Review of Galileo Goes to Jail

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:15:01 -0500

In a couple of recent posts I have mentioned the book Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion edited by Ronald Numbers. Since I have now finished reading it, I figure it is time for a proper review.

Short review: Mixed. As a compendium of interesting facts about the history of science and religion the book works rather well. The myth/reality format, however, is not always successful.

Longer review below the fold.

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My Review of Creation

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:45:44 -0500

Blogging will continue to be sporadic for a while, sorry about that. But having dragged myself down to Washington D.C. last weekend to see the new movie Creation, I figured I should at least get a blog post out of it.

Short review: Excellent! Completely engrossing, and historically accurate on the important things.

Longer review, and minor spoilers, below the fold.

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Science as Religion's Rebellious Child

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:52:37 -0500

Here's a quote from the book Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion:

In Augustine's influential view, then, knowledge of the things of this world is not a legitimate end in itself, but as a means to other ends it is indispensable. The classical sciences must accept a subordinate position as the handmaiden of theology and religion -- the temporal serving the eternal. The knowledge contained in classical sciences is not to be loved, but it may legitimately be used. This attitude toward scientific knowledge cam to prevail throughout the Middle Ages and survived well into the modern period. Augustine's handmaiden science was defended explicitly and at great length, for example, by Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century, whose defense of useful knowledge contributed to notoriety as one of the founders of experimental science.

That's historian David Lindberg. For the record, the “myth” he was addressing was, “That the Rise of Christianity was Responsible for the Demise of Ancient Science.” But that's not really what interests me about this.

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Leno to Host WHCD

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:02:32 -0500

Well, this is just great:

The White House Correspondents Association has picked Jay Leno -- also known as this week's most publicly unpopular stand-up comic -- to headline the White House Correspondents Dinner in May.
An NBC rep confirmed the invitation to The TV Column.

To be clear, the association asked Leno weeks ago -- when he was simply the host of a prime-time show that was failing five nights a week. But when he appears at the annual Washington bash -- which over the past few years has become a Hollywood petting zoo -- Leno will be the guy who pushed aside Conan O'Brien to become the newly returned host of NBC's “Tonight” show. He has also been the butt of pretty much every other late-night talk-show host's jokes for the past couple of weeks.

Splendid visual, don't you think? President Obama sharing a stage with the comedic embodiment of big corporations screwing the little guy. (Yes, in this context Conan O'Brien is the little guy, forty million dollar severance package or not.)

Of course, the WHCD is an obscenity to begin with. If you are not familiar with it you should be picturing the final scene of Animal Farm, the one where the other animals can no longer tell the difference between the pigs and the humans. The picture of supposed journalists yukking it up with the politicians they are supposed to be covering is not very pleasant.

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Maddow States it Plain

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:43:59 -0500

I thought Rachel Maddow had a very smart take on the fallout from the Massachusetts Senate race. I've placed a lengthy excerpt below the fold.

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Department of Low Standards

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:38:22 -0500

Just in case you were thinking that religious institutions have not always bathed themselves in glory in their relations with science, here's Ronald Numbers to set you straight:

Historians of science have known for years that White's and Draper's accounts are more propaganda than history. ... Yet the message has rarely escaped the ivory tower. The secular public, if it thinks about such issues at all, knows that organized religion has always opposed scientific progress (witness the attacks on Galileo, Darwin, and Scopes). The religious public knows that science has taken the leading role in corroding faith (through naturalism and antibiblicism) . As a first step toward correcting these misconceptions we must dispel the hoary myths that continue to pass as historical truths. No scientist, to our knowledge, ever lost his life because of his scientific views, though, ... the Italian Inquisition did incinerate the sixteenth century Copernican Giordano Bruno for his heretical theological notions. (Emphasis in original)

That's from the introduction to his recent edited anthology, Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion.

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