Dang, I’m slipping

George Shollenberger is not happy with scienceblogs. He sent an email to the scienceblogs website (whatever that means) with a complaint:

I started to inform ‘the people’ on my website that our mathematicians are practicing atheism. Then, after I investigated the website, ScienceBlogs, I concluded that all sciences also practice atheism. So, my website is now informing ‘the people’ that mathematicians and scientists are practicing atheism.

However, I am dismayed to discover that the overwhelming godless influence on scienceblogs is not me, but Mark Chu-Carroll! I feel so inconsequential now, and clearly, Mark is better at driving men mad than I am.

We can’t pick on George too much, though … he reveals the true source of his problem.

However, by 1993 I experienced brain damage from a carotid artery blockage.

I’m sorry to hear that. To my shame, I still find this hilarious.

With my personal mind over body experience on my brain damage and my retirement in 1994, my attention shifted permanently to the theory of God and the sayings of Jesus Christ.

Not everyone can use brain damage to explain their religiosity.

My mutant superpower

It’s not what I would have picked if I had a choice, but it seems that my amazing mutant superpower is the ability to effortlessly drive people insane. I guess it’s not surprising that my talent would be both sinister and Lovecraftian, but I’d rather be able to fly or fire lasers out of my eyes — heck, even Aquaman’s powers would be kind of cool.

Ah, well … with great power comes great responsibility. Rather than afflicting innocent cognitive psychologists, who should I reduce to gibbering madness next? I tried doing a mind blast on Osama Bin Laden and GW Bush, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. My powers seem to be useless on most creationists, too. This is very disappointing!

Mazur, then Dawkins, with much driving between

I’m back! I had a long, busy day at a teaching conference, and got persuaded about a few things — I’m designing a new course for freshmen biology majors for the fall term (“Fundamentals of Genetics, Evolution, and Development”, or FunGenEvoDevo for short), and I’ve been following the pedagogical ideas of Eric Mazur for a while, and this was my chance to go hear him. He said what I wanted to hear about getting basic concepts across to students, which is going to help a great deal in my summer project.

I got back too late to catch Dawkins on the O’Lielly show, though. My wife saw it, said it was good but short and without much of substance. Fortunately, One Good Move was quick on the draw. O’Reilly started right off with idiocy. He doesn’t know how tides work, so he’s got to believe in God. There was the usual weird right-wing history lesson — Hitler was an atheist, the Founding Fathers wanted a god-worshipping nation; of course, O’Reilly’s explanation for why they wanted a Christian nation was that it would pacify the people. Is it good framing to argue for religion because it is the opiate of the masses?

I thought Dawkins was calm, relaxed, and treated the bozo lightly and with good humor. O’Reilly threw out that softball inanity right at the beginning, and you can almost see Dawkins crack up at the clown.

Tomorrow is my day at home before I make my Boston blitz — I might be able to squeeze in a few posts here, along with getting a pile of other work done.

Travelin’ Man

We’re coming into the home stretch for the semester here—this will be the second to the last week of classes, and just as I’m panicking about everything I have to cram into the last few lectures, what do I do? Disappear! Flit about from place to place! It would be a great way to dodge assassins if I weren’t also making my travel plans public.

Tonight and Monday, I’m going to be at a Teaching and Learning Conference at the UMTC. I’m not driving for a change, so this trip shouldn’t be too bad.

Tuesday is Café Scientifique here in Morris, with Tracey Anderson of the biology discipline telling us all about aquatic insects. This is a major concern to all Minnesotans, so if you’re in the area, come on down to the Common Cup Coffeehouse at 6 pm.

Wednesday I fly to Boston for dinner with a bunch of very interesting people.

Thursday I fly home.

Friday I sleep late, then try to get caught up on all the teaching prep I shirked this week.

Then the following Monday is the day I have to get student evaluations of my teaching. I’m really curious to find out whether abandoning my students the week before will have a positive or negative effect on their opinions…

Conflict sells. Use it.

Larry Moran listened to Nisbet’s podcast on Point of Inquiry. No surprise—he didn’t like it at all. I finally listened to it last night, too, and I have to crown Larry the King of the Curmudgeons, because I disagreed with fundamental pieces of his story, but I’ll at least grant Nisbet that there aspects of communication theory scientists would benefit from knowing. So why does he ignore those aspects in his own talks?

I want to focus on one thing: conflict. The podcast revealed another unfortunate inconsistency in the framing approach.

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Too many reviews in one place

David Barash tries to review 11 recent books on the religion/science conflict, all in one essay of middling length. It’s not entirely satisfying, nor could it be with that excess of books in so little space, but it does have a convenient short list of what’s been published lately.

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel C. Dennett (Viking Press, 2006)

The Creation: An Appealto Save Life on Earth, by Edward O. Wilson (W.W. Norton, 2006)

Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, by David Sloan Wilson (University of Chicago Press, 2002)

Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist, by Joan Roughgarden (Island Press, 2006)

Evolving God: A Provocative View of the Origins of Religion, by Barbara J. King (Doubleday, 2007)

The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)

The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, by Francis S. Collins (The Free Press, 2006)

Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris (Knopf, 2006)

Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, by Pascal Boyer (Basic Books, 2002)

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief, by Lewis Wolpert (W.W. Norton, 2007)

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, by Carl Sagan (The Penguin Press, 2006)

I’ve read most of these, and I roughly agree with most of Barash’s assessments except that he’s much milder in his criticisms than I would be. I was also disappointed in Wolpert’s book, which was a bit too scattered.

Next on my list: Boyer. It’s going to have to wait a little longer, though, until this term ends.