EvolutionBlog

The Trouble With Theistic Evolution

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:39:51 -0500

The current issue of The Philosopher's Magazine contains a lengthy interview with philosopher Elliott Sober, a prominent philosopher of biology. Most of the interview focuses on the problem of reconciling evolution and theism, with Sober serving up the standard talking points. For me the interview is a reminder of what I find most frustrating about theistic evolution. Too often the defender of reconciliation acts as though his job is done as soon as he has tossed off a logically possible scenario that includes both God and evolution.

The interview does not seem to be freely available online, so I will transcribe a few sections. The first person pronouns refer to the interviewer, James Garvey.

The interview starts off acceptably enough, with Sober discussing the threat of religious extremism both in society generally and in science education. But things go wrong when Sober is asked to discuss the various views people hold on this subject:

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The Contraception Kerfuffle

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:19:12 -0500

Over the last few days, there has been no shortage of crazed invective on the contraception issue from certain religious folks. For them, the notion that religious institutions providing public services ought to play by the same rules as everyone else constitutes tyranny. So we have Rick Santorum, for example, casually invoking images of the guillotine and the French Revolution.

This is all just election-year grandstanding, of course. It is this year's Ground Zero Mosque. If this were February 2013, or if a Repeublican were President, we would not be hearing the usual bleats and howls from the right-wing outrage machine. As Rachel Maddow pointed out on her show, numerous Catholic universities and law schools already provide coverage for contraception, and some Republicans are on record in the past supporting this.

With all the crazy talk out there, my nomination for the most utterly oblivious comment comes from Catholic blogger Edward Feser. He writes:

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What Teachers Put Up With

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:01:35 -0500

Here's Alabama state senator Shadrack McGill explaining why it's a bad idea to raise teachers's salaries:

If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach.
To go in and raise someone's child for eight hours a day, or many people's children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn't want to do it, OK?

And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It's just in them to do. It's the ability that God give 'em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn't matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity.

If you don't keep that in balance, you're going to attract people who are not called, who don't need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance.

To answer your obvious question: No, he has no problem with raising the salaries of state legislators:

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That School Prayer Banner in Cranston

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:28:02 -0500

By now I'm sure we are all familiar with the Jessica Ahlquist case in Cranston, RI. The New York Times provides a helpful summary:

She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.
A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer's presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding that it violated the principle of government neutrality in religion. In the weeks since, residents have crowded school board meetings to demand an appeal, Jessica has received online threats and the police have escorted her at school, and Cranston, a dense city of 80,000 just south of Providence, has throbbed with raw emotion.

State Representative Peter G. Palumbo, a Democrat from Cranston, called Jessica “an evil little thing” on a popular talk radio show. Three separate florists refused to deliver her roses sent from a national atheist group. The group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has filed a complaint with the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights.

Looks like they have some charming folks up there in Cranston.

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Another Review for the BSB!

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:38:41 -0500

The Big Sudoku Book has received another review, and in an unexpected venue: The Wall Street Journal! The review is by Keith Devlin, a mathematician at Stanford University and the author of a small library of books of his own. Devlin writes:

The authors show vividly that mathematics is really about the power of abstraction, the push to explain as much as possible in the most compact form possible. Numbers and arithmetic are a part of that enterprise, but there is a lot more besides. “Taking Sudoku Seriously” is an excellent vehicle whereby devotees of the puzzle can come to understand the nature of mathematics.

Score!

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In Praise of Teachers's Unions

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:18:12 -0500

Over at Talking Philosophy, Mike LaBossiere offers a defense of teachers's unions. He is a bit too tame for my taste, and he is far too respectful towards anti-union arguments that have far more to do with general hostility to public education than they do with measured criticism, but in the end he arrives at the right place:

In general, it would be rather odd if unions did not cause some problems. If they did not, they would be truly unique. However, it seems more sensible to address these problems rather than simply condemning unions. Given the fervor with which these unions are being attacked, it might be suspected that some folks stand to make a profit by getting rid of these unions. But perhaps that is merely cynicism on my part. After all, I am sure that the people funding the attacks on unions and the politicians who will attack them are merely driven by a love of the public good and are doing it for the children.

The simple fact is that as a society we do everything in our power to make teaching as unappealing a profession as possible. In most districts the pay and benefits are laughable compared to other professions. Even worse, there is a deep lack of respect for the work that teachers do. People who haven't set foot in a classroom since their own, typically undistinguished, academic careers, and who wouldn't last five minutes if they ever did enter a classroom, seem perfectly happy to give lectures on how easy teachers have it, what with their nine-month school year and workday that ends at 3:05. Teachers are the only one's blamed for poor student performance. It is never the fault of spineless, unsupportive administrators, or lazy, shiftless students and their irresponsible, enabling parents. The only forces working against all this are the unions, and bless their hearts for doing so.

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Department of Self-Promotion

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:58:03 -0500

Well, the BSB (that's the Big Sudoku Book) has now received its first review. It comes from Ed Pegg Jr., who runs an excellent website about mathematical games and puzzles and is very well-known among those interested in recreational mathematics. Did he like the book?

Along with Sudoku Masterpieces and Mutant Sudoku, this is one of the best Sudoku books ever written. And I do mean written/crafted -- too many Sudoku books are computer generated. This book shows a lot of careful craftsmanship.

He did! Go check out the rest of the review. Then go buy multiple copies before they are all gone and you are left feeling silly for not having bought one when you had the chance...

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Another Round on Adam and Eve

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:33:41 -0500

Since my little break has turned out to be longer than I anticipated, I fear that my blog muscles have atrophied a bit. So let's start flexing them again by revisiting a familiar topic: Adam and Eve.

Over at HuffPo, Peter Enns makes another contribution to the genre that tries to explain why evangelical Christians should not be troubled by the fact that science completely refutes the traditional understanding of Adam and Eve. He gets off to a good start:

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A Solution to the 17-Clue Problem?

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:27:16 -0500

In honor of the publication of the BSB (that's the Big Sudoku Book, for those not up on the local slang), my coauthor, Laura, and I hosted a session at last week's Joint Mathematics Meetings about the mathematics of Sudoku. I gave the opening talk in the session, an overview of some interesting mathematical questions that arise naturally from thinking about Sudoku. Of course, I had a slide discussing what, until recently, was considered the biggest open problem in this area: What is the minimum number of clues a sound puzzle can have?

Of course, everyone knew the answer was 17. After all, plenty of 17-clue puzzles were known, but despite extensive computer searching no one had ever found a 16-clue puzzle. Still, since persistent failure to find a counterexample does not count as a proof, the problem was open. I had a slide in my talk saying as much.

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ID's Demise, Revisited

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 15:00:05 -0500

I have a general policy of not blogging when I'm on the road, but I couldn't resist poking my head up to call your attention to this article, by Paul Wallace, over at HuffPo. Follow the link to see why...

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To Boston!

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 17:34:34 -0500

Tomorrow I will observe New Year's Day by hopping into the Jasonmobile and driving to my New Jersey office. Which is to say, I will be visiting my parents. Then on Tuesday I shall hop on a train and sally forth to Boston, which is hosting the annual math extravaganza knows as the Joint Mathematics Meetings. Lots of math, lots of socializing, what's not to like? I won't be arriving back in Harrisonburg until Sunday the eigth. Alas, on Monday it's right back into the classroom for the spring semester.

Which is to say, I won't be posting anything for a little while. Now, now, let's have none of that. Show a little dignity.

The spam filters around here sometimes get a little touchy, and a lot of worthy comments end up in my spam folder. During my brief blog break, of course, I will not be checking in very often to clear out the ones that should have gone through in the first place. Sorry about that. If you keep your comments short and without links you should be OK.

So best wishes for 2012! See you in a little bit...

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Another Round on Morality

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 20:18:06 -0500

Michael Ruse has written another post about morality. Sadly, he hasn't really clarified much of anything. Throughout this discussion his position has been that there are moral facts that we come to know through non-scientific means. I have been trying to understand how he justifies either part of that, but I'm afraid I still have no idea.

He writes:

First, the complaint that since I think morality is a product of evolution through natural selection, I must therefore be using science to justify my ethical claims. I too am committing the naturalistic fallacy. Not so. Distinguish between an explanation of the origin of something and its justification. Suppose David Barash starts writing columns claiming to be the Queen of the May. We discover that this is because a group of Christian fanatics captured him and, as in The Manchurian Candidate, brainwashed him. That is the explanation for why he now thinks the way he does. It is hardly a justification of the claim--delightful though it would be, were it true--that he is in fact the Queen of the May.

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Euler's Identity, Part Two

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 21:55:03 -0500

Time to show you the dramatic conclusion to the story I began yesterday.

Our problem was to define the complex exponential function in a way that was consistent with everything we knew about real exponential functions. We noticed that one of the standard rules for exponents implies

\[ e^{x+iy}=e^xe^{iy}. \]

Since we already know how to deal with the first term in that product on the right-hand side, our problem has been reduced to deciding what to do with “pure imaginary” exponents.

The key to doing that is to remember that we have a Taylor series expansion for the exponential function:

\[ e^x=1+x+\frac{x^2}{2!}+\frac{x^3}{3!}+\frac{x^4}{4!}+\frac{x^5}{5!}+\dots, \]

which is a pretty result all by itself. We have previously discussed Taylor series, so if you need a refresher course just follow the link.

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Euler's Identity, Part One

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 21:42:57 -0500

Euler's identity is the equation:

\[ e^{i \pi} +1=0. \]

If you have any taste for mathematics at all, it is hard not to smile at this. In one equation we have each of five “special” numbers (e, i, pi, 1 and 0), along with one instance of each of three basic arithmetic operations (addition, multiplication and exponentiation.) Not too shabby!

But why is the equation true? Well, the first thing to notice is that we have an imaginary number in the exponent. That means that appreciating this equation requires an understanding of how we deal with such things. Towards that end, we have the following definition:

\[ e^{i \theta}=\cos \theta+ i \sin \theta, \]

where theta is some real number.

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A Follow-Up Post About Scientism

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 23:59:29 -0500

My earlier post on this subject was entitled “What is Scientism?” because, while I have seen the term thrown around in a number of venues, I have never been entirely sure what it means. Having had a chance now to digest some of the arguments raised in the comments, as well as the thoughts expressed at other blogs, I think it's time to go another round.

The first point I made in my earlier post was that, in the context of science/religion disputes, to be accused of scientism was to be accused of being insufficiently respectful towards religion. A perfect example of what I had in mind is this post by Ian Hutchinson. He writes:

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