Category: Culture Wars
If he does, he might remember that he already wrote this blog post. That was less than a year ago. I responded then, so have little to add. One thing is worth noting. Coyne's complaint is that the government is funding "accommodationism" because one page on the award-winning and widely loved Understanding Evolution website addresses misconceptions about evolution, including the idea that evolution is at odds with religious belief. Coyne is hardly the first person to think that this somehow gets the government in trouble ("funding theology" is his phrase). In 2003, creationist Larry Caldwell filed a suit on behalf...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:50 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
Satanism" title="Richard Dawkins -> Satanism" /> Richard Dawkins has a new book out – for kids no less – and Casey Luskin is on the case. Luskin, you'll recall is the Disco. 'tute's chief pettifogger (in the classical sense), and his tendency to work himself into uncanny heights of excitement over every new creationist argument has earned him the affectionate nickname "fainting dachshund." Dawkins's book is about myths, how we tell stories to explain things, but that sometimes those stories aren't true, and how science offers a way to tell stories that are true, and how kids can tell...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 2:44 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Shorter Jerry Coyne: Whence moderate Islam?: You'd think MEMRI's archives would be a great place to find the “moderate” form of Islam in the Middle East, but all I get from the right-wing propaganda shop dedicated to putting "emphasis on the continuing relevance of Zionism to the Jewish people and to the state of Israel" are stories about how Muslims hate Jews and Israel. If you are looking for moderate forms of Islam, perhaps it's wisest not to turn to MEMRI, a group known for selectively quoting and translating their sources. As Laila Lalami wrote in The Nation: MEMRI…consistently picks...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 4:57 PM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
Just under a year ago, I quoted and endorsed Stephen Post's argument that lack of civility isn't the problem we face in society, that incivility is a symptom, not an end unto itself. Civility matters, and there are good reasons to urge people to be more civil in their interactions, and to model that behavior ourselves. It's no accident that many uncivil styles of discourse are also informal logical errors. And there's a reason that deliberative venues - like the Senate floor - impose a standard of decorum and civility. Uncivil discourse often replaces substantive exchanges about ideas with personal reflections or...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 10:48 PM • 41 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
Martin Cothran – sometimes contributor to the Disco. 'tute blog, staffer for the Kentucky affiliate of Focus on the Family, general-purpose bigot, purported logic teacher – doesn't like Michael Shermer. Responding to an op-ed by Shermer, he writes: Secularist atheists are all about having a "steely-eyed visage." …The problem is that, while a few secularists like Harris can pull of the "steely-eyed" thing, others, like Shermer, look like way too professorial and grandfatherly for the part. And besides, most of these kinds of secularists are of the politically leftist type that Rand would consider wimpy. Maybe we ought to be...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 6:25 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at 
