EvolutionBlog

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

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

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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Atheist Schism?

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:08:35 -0500

So says NPR:

Last month, atheists marked Blasphemy Day at gatherings around the world, and celebrated the freedom to denigrate and insult religion.
Some offered to trade pornography for Bibles. Others de-baptized people with hair dryers. And in Washington, D.C., an art exhibit opened that shows, among other paintings, one entitled Divine Wine, where Jesus, on the cross, has blood flowing from his wound into a wine bottle.

Another, Jesus Paints His Nails, shows an effeminate Jesus after the crucifixion, applying polish to the nails that attach his hands to the cross.

“I wouldn't want this on my wall,” says Stuart Jordan, an atheist who advises the evidence-based group Center for Inquiry on policy issues. The Center for Inquiry hosted the art show.

Jordan says the exhibit created a firestorm from offended believers, and he can understand why. But, he says, the controversy over this exhibit goes way beyond Blasphemy Day. It's about the future of the atheist movement -- and whether to adopt the “new atheist” approach -- a more aggressive, often belittling posture toward religious believers.

Some call it a schism.

Evidence-based group? What an odd description, though I like the implication that religious groups are non-evidence-based.

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Travel Should Always Be Like This

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:54:30 -0500

The trip to California went well. Suspiciously well, in fact, to the point where, even though I am now back home, I am still waiting for something to go wrong.

I first became suspicious during the two-hour drive over to Dulles Airport. There was no traffic. How odd. My rule of thumb when flying out of Dulles is to leave home five hours before flight time. That almost never happens, however, and usually it is closer to three and a half hours, which is really cutting it close. Heavy traffic only seems to occur when you are already in danger of missing your flight. Some corollary to Murphy's Law.

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California Here I Come!

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:02:12 -0500

For my San Bernardino readers, I will be flying out to California tomorrow to deliever one of the keynote talks at the big MAA meeting. The talk will be at CSU San Bernardino at 9:00 am on Saturday morning. Nine am on a Saturday? They didn't mention that when they invited me!

The title of my talk is -- surprise! -- the Monty Hall Problem, Reconsidered. Should be a good time. See you when I return!

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Do Republican Presidential Candidates Have to Pass a Creationist Litmus Test?

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:56:23 -0500

So wonders Razib Khan over at Secular Right::

In any case, I'm on the record as saying that predictions for 2012 are very premature. But, it looks like 3 of the front-runners for the G.O.P. nomination are rather frank Creationists (Palin, Huckabee and Pawlenty). I'm skeptical about any of these as likely candidates (i.e., if you had to make a bet you're going to be surprised), but if you keep adding individuals to the list it seems likely that we're looking at a serious probability that the G.O.P. nominee in 2012 will be a Creationist.

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Christianity Today Botches Bloggingheads Brouhaha

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:42:23 -0500

You are probably familiar with the Bloggingheads website. The site, founded by Robert Wright, features conversations between various bloggers, journalists and scholars on whatever issues it amuses them to talk about. The site has long featured scientists among its participants.

Two recent dialogues hurt that relationship. The first featured historian Ronald Numbers palling around with YEC Paul Nelson. Numbers seemed mostly uninclined to challenge Nelson on some of his more dubious pronouncements. Even more egregious was the dialogue between John McWhorter and Michael Behe, in which McWhorter drooled over Behe's every word.

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A Tale of Two Columns

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:06:14 -0500

I only have time for quick blogging today, so how about a brief observation.

Here is Paul Krugman's latest column. It is a characteristically lucid and informative column about some bad economic ideas that are circulating around Washington these days. Here's a sample:

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