EvolutionBlog

Brief Blog Break

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:36:58 -0500

My 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'll be visiting the 'rents in New Jersey, then the cousins in Pennsylvania on Thanksgiving day. I'll be making the guacamole. Three mashed Hass avocadoes, Two roughly chopped Roma tomatoes, One finely diced rib of celery, One finely diced jalapeno pepper, A handful of chopped cilantro, The juice of one lime, salt and curry powder to taste. Combine. You are not ready for anything so delicious. Just make sure you have thick chips.

Sadly, blogging is going to be low priority until I return. See you then!

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Slate Indexes Palin's Book

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:20:09 -0500

Sarah 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 everything that happens to her, from meeting Todd to her selection by Mr. McCain for the Republican ticket, she sees the hand of God: “My life is in His hands. I encourage readers to do what I did many years ago, invite Him in to take over.”

Personally, I tend to see her extraordinary success, out of all proportion to her abilities, as further evidence that there is no God. Po-TAY-to, Po-TAH-to.

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Religion and Gay Rights

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:11:07 -0500

Here'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 discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

“If the city requires this, we can't do it,” Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. “The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that's really a problem.”

Actually the city is saying that if you receive public money you can not discriminate against homosexuals. But I appreciate the clear implication that religion and anti-gay animus go hand in hand.

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Cincinnati Magazine on the Creation Museum

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:19:49 -0500

Remember 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.
That's right. Evolution is only a theory. But God's Truth is supported by . . . dragons.

Snarky!

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Under the Dome

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:25:27 -0500

I 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, The Eyes of the Dragon and The Green Mile. Most of his novels not included here were also quite good, of course.

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How Creationists Do History

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:39:56 -0500

John 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 at the true believers rather than the academic community. The temptation may thus be for professional historians to ignore their claims - a temptation that I feel must be rejected. As historians, we have a social duty to correct error and over-simplification where it is foisted on the public by politically and religiously motivated individuals, and this responsibility goes beyond what sociologist and ID sympathizer Steve Fuller has dismissively seen as “catching the errors” of the creationists. There is something far more fundamental at stake. At a time where historians have eschewed Whig or “Great Man” histories, anti-evolutionists are presenting their “Not-So-Great Man” view of Darwin. They misrepresent the very nature of historical enquiry; they manipulate history until it risks becoming a mere shadow of the rich and intricate tapestry that it is.

The immediate context for this is the several recent attempts by ID folks to draw simplistic, straight-line paths between Darwin's ideas and the actions of the Nazis.

It really is impressive how creationiss manage to get everything wrong. I recommend reading the whole essay.

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Check Out Amazon's List of the Year's Best Science Books

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:57:39 -0500

Seriously! 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...)

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Three Vignettes on Faith

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:28:16 -0500

Update, 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 framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well. (Bold face in original)

Richard Dawkins could not have said it better.

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For the Crossword Enthusiasts

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:52:09 -0500

For 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.

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Ruse, Again

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:40:55 -0500

Michael 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, generally today known as the “new atheists”, loathe and detest my thinking.

Amateur hour.

A while back I was a counselor at a summer camp, keeping an eye on a group of rowdy nine year olds. One of the kids was taunted relentlessly by the others for his incessant whining. He did not help his cause by answering such taunts with, “I don't whine!” said in a pathetically whiny tone of voice.

If you have to tell people you are not whining, you're whining.

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Coyne Clarifies His Views

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:58:33 -0500

As 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. And if they must say something about compatibility, let them recognize that a large fraction of scientists see science and faith as incompatible.

This goes a bit too far for me.

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How About Another Post on Accommodationism?

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:52:45 -0500

I 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 diversity of religious opinion, and persuade them towards more moderate forms of religious belief I think that is great.

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Blogging Dawkins, Chapters Three and Four

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:44:08 -0500

What 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 time, a lot of humility is in order when asserting what can and can not happen over the course of geological time.

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!!Ong Bak 2!!

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:51:29 -0500

OMG! 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, choreographed, and starred in by Jaa himself.

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Unscientific America, Revisited

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:40:23 -0500

I'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 the same issues that I did, and moved on again. But now Mooney and Kirshenabum, hereafter M and K, have revived the issue with this post, which charges that Coyne's reviews was “misleading.” They write (referring to a post from Josh Rosenau:

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